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Nuclear radioactive threat to the Great Lakes

natives, like 40 million Canadians and Americans draw their drinking water from the Great Lakes and they also rely on fish caught in them.

(Canada) Coalition opposes shipping plan, By CHIP MARTIN, The London Free Press : July 27, 2010 Aboriginal voices have joined the growing international chorus opposing plans to ship radioactive nuclear generators along the Great Lakes.

The Ontario Coalition of Aboriginal People, which represents 7,000 status, non-status Indians and Metis, opposes the plan by Bruce Power and is demanding consultation and accommodation from the provincial and federal governments.

“This is a big concern for all Canadians,” Brad Maggrah, president of the organization said Tuesday.

Despite appealing to Premier Dalton McGuinty, his environment ministry and to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, “we haven’t heard anything,” he said.

Bruce Power is looking for a licence from the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission to truck 16 decommissioned generators the size of school buses to Owen Sound harbour and then by boat along the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River to a recycling facility in Sweden.

The plan is to ship the 100-tonne steam generators which have low level radioactivity during a three-week period in September.

Already the mayors of Owen Sound and Sarnia have voiced objections to the plan, along with more than 50 anti-nuclear and environmental groups across Canada, the United States, Europe and as far afield as Indonesia.

Maggrah said natives, like 40 million Canadians and Americans draw their drinking water from the Great Lakes and they also rely on fish caught in them.

The route of the shipment would take the radioactive waste past the Cape Croker, Saugeen, Kettle Point, Chippewas of Sarnia and Walpole Island reserves in Western Ontario as well as those along the St. Lawrence including Akwesasne.

“If this shipment is allowed to take place,” Maggrah said, “the door will be opened for more shipments of nuclear waste.”……Among those lined up against the generator shipment plan are the Canadian Environmental Law Association, The Sierra Club, the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility, Greenpeace Canada, Coalition for a Nuclear Free Great Lakes, Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment, two representatives from the state government of Michigan and the Toronto Raging Grannies.

Coalition opposes shipping plan | London | News | London Free Press

July 28, 2010 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Canada, environment | antinuclear, nuclear, nuclear spin, nuclear weapons, radiation, radioactive, reactors, uranium