nuclear-news

For opponents of the Deep Geologic Repository proposed by Ontario Power Generation, the news that Environment and Climate Change Minister Catherine McKenna has “paused the timeline” on the project is not good news enough.

Opposition voices have been crying for an outright “no” from Ottawa, as the deadline loomed for what had been promised as a March 1 decision on the plan to bury 200,000 cubic metres of low and intermediate-level radioactive waste approximately 1.2 km from the Lake Huron shore.

Yet in asking for further studies McKenna has signalled that the Environmental Assessment Report of the joint review panel, four years in the making, is insufficient, a decision that hardly seemed likely in the Stephen Harper era. And her request for additional technical studies and information on potential environmental effects highlights what has always been a fundamental flaw in OPG’s proposal: that no other site was drill-tested and environmentally assessed.

OPG’s plan as is consists of constructing a crypt on the Bruce nuclear power site, plunging 680 metres deep beneath sedimentary rock to a strata of limestone. The DGR would be the first in the world to use limestone as the host rock…….. http://www.thestar.com/business/2016/02/21/kincardine-nuclear-waste-sites-paused-timeline-not-enough-for-opponents.html