nuclear-news

The waste is to be buried in chambers carved out of a layer of limestone, 680 metres underground, near the Bruce nuclear station.

Greening lays out his concerns in a highly technical, 16-page letter.

In an interview, he said he was surprised when he first reviewed OPG’s calculations of radioactivity levels.

“The more I looked, the more I go: ‘My God, these numbers are hopeless; these numbers are not right.’ ”

“So I put together the letter and said: ‘Hey guys, I’ve been checking your estimates for pressure tubes and the numbers look terrible – and they’re always low.’ ”

The estimates were anything but conservative, he said.

“The truth is they were under-estimating, sometimes by a factor of over 100, sometimes as high as 600.”

He said in an interview that the understatement of radiation in the pressure tubes calls into question the rest of OPG’s science.

“If they’ve got these numbers wrong, what other numbers have they got wrong?” he said. “Because I’ve only looked at one set, and the set I’ve looked at was wrong.”

Greening said there’s a mass of data on radiation levels in pressure tubes that have been removed from Candu reactors like those used in Ontario.

But the company chose to calculate the levels using theoretical factors, he said.

“Much of the data are not based on direct measurements at all,” he wrote in his letter. “Indeed, none of the data for pressure tubes, end fittings and calandria tubes is based on direct measurements.” http://www.thestar.com/business/2014/02/28/bruce_waste_site_radiation_understated_says_former_opg_scientist.html