nuclear-news

At the Bruce plant, low and intermediate level wastes are accumulating.  Low-level includes worker clothing and tools.  Typically, they could be radioactive for 100 years.  Intermediate-level waste is described as resins, filters and used reactor components that could be a hazard for 100,000 years.

Some think that’s a terrible idea.  The repository could leak, it could be attacked, and the location on the Bruce site is barely a kilometer from Lake Huron, which has opponents on both sides of the Great Lakes up in arms.

She suggests humans have little concept of how long 100,000 years is.  She questions whether the facility would last and whether we can be sure we’ll be able to communicate the dangers to some future civilization.

………..The deep geological repository was approved by an environmental review panel in 2015, but both the Harper and Trudeau governments have put off giving the final go ahead. It now appears to hinge on the approval by indigenous people in the region.

For the Saugeen Ojibway Nation, it’s about time they were consulted.  Fifty years ago, the concerns of indigenous people were an afterthought when it came to major public policy decisions.

The nuclear plant was built on the traditional land of the Saugeen Ojibway. OPG says it has come to recognize the “historic wrongs of the past” and is negotiating compensation for those wrongs.  And moving forward, OPG has given its assurance that the repository will only be built if the Saugeen Ojibway approve – from an afterthought to the power of veto over a multibillion-dollar enterprise……….

Remarkably, this is the relatively easy stuff to deal with: low- and intermediate-level nuclear waste. An even bigger problem is high-level radioactive used fuel. It too is piling up, primarily at the three big Ontario plants. It may be toxic for a million years. ……..

Ultimately they need to find one particular community to be a “willing host” for what amounts to 57,000 tonnes of used nuclear fuel……..

The plan is to pack the bundles into carbon steel tubes coated in copper – 48 bundles per container. They look like a big torpedoes. Each one will be packed snugly into what look like coffins made of a special clay called bentonite.

Thousands of bentonite boxes will be moved by robotic machines into hundreds of long placement rooms deep underground. Dried slightly, the clay will expand and plug every last space, ultimately sealing the repository. ……

Picking a host community, getting regulatory approval, building the repository, and transferring high-level waste will take the next 50 years.

It is separate from the OPG plan for low- and intermediate-level waste, which could have an answer from the Saugeen Ojibway Nation by the end of this year, and federal approval in 2020.

As it turns out, two of the NWMO sites for high-level waste – South Bruce and Huron-Kinloss – are also on Saugeen Ojibway land, so they may ultimately have to decide on separate nuclear waste projects on their land………https://globalnews.ca/news/5329835/canadas-nuclear-waste-to-be-buried-in-deep-underground-repository/