nuclear-news

No sooner than the Saugeen Ojibway Nation had voted overwhelmingly against Ontario Power Generation’s effort to build a deep geological repository for low and intermediate nuclear waste the repository on the lip of Lake Huron, a similar, perhaps more lethal threat has emerged.

The Nuclear Waste Management Organization, the industry group tasked in 2002 with finding a permanent waste site for Canadian high-level nuclear waste, announced earlier this year that it had landed on two possible locations, down from 22 prospective sites — Ignace in northwest Ontario and the municipality of South Bruce, virtually next door to the now scrapped site for low and intermediate nuclear waste storage.

“High-level radioactive waste in Canada is used (irradiated) nuclear fuel that has been declared as radioactive waste. Used nuclear fuel produces ionizing radiation,” according to the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission. “This type of radiation has a strong ability to penetrate matter, so shielding against the radiation is required. Since used nuclear fuel contains significant quantities of radionuclides with long half-lives, it requires long-term management and isolation.”

Low and intermediate nuclear waste refers to all other forms of nuclear waste.

Calling any kind of radioactive waste “low level” is somewhat inaccurate, according to Diane D’Arrigo, the radioactive waste project director at the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, headquartered in Tacoma Park, Maryland.

“A lot of what’s in that waste might be low level, but it’s not low risk,” said D’Arrigo.

Both can contain the same dangerous radioactive elements.

Like the scrapped plan, the new effort calls for a deep geological repository. The effort relies on core samples from the shelved DGR to demonstrate the ostensible suitability of the site.

“In Huron-Kinloss and South Bruce, detailed assessment of available historic local and regional geo-scientific studies, including recent deep borehole data from the Bruce nuclear site, showed that the geological setting has a number of favourable characteristics for hosting a deep geological repository for used nuclear fuel,” according to information on the NWMO website.

OPG proposed to excavate a storage chamber in a layer of limestone 2,200 feet underground, capped by shale on the top and granite below; OPG geologists estimated that the rock had been stable for 450 million years. The proposed site would be about 600 feet less deep.

The members and financiers — via dedicated trust funds — of the NWMO are Ontario Power Generation, New Brunswick Power, Hydro-Québec and Atomic Energy of Canada Limited.

Huron-Kinloss, which neighbors South Bruce, is no longer under consideration for the dump. South Bruce sits 29 miles southeast of Bruce Power nuclear station and about 20 miles east of Lake Huron. The DGR proposed for the Bruce Power site, home to eight reactors, was a half mile from Lake Huron.

The nuclear complex is on the shore of Lake Huron, roughly 125 miles uplake of Port Huron and 150 miles uplake and upstream from Algonac.

The new high-level waste dump would accept spent fuel rods from the 18 nuclear reactors in Ontario and the single reactor at Point Lepreau, New Brunswick.

Like the previously proposed dump, the high-level dump is within the Great Lakes basin, inland from Kincardine, said Emily Grant, a South Bruce activist opposed to the project, via email. Grant is a member of the group Protect Our Waterways – No Nuclear Waste.

NWMO optioned about 1,300 acres of land in January and “the site will lie directly below the Teeswater River, a tributary of Lake Huron,” said Grant. “As you know, the Great Lakes provide drinking water to over 30 million Americans and 10 million Canadians … There isn’t a single DGR that houses high-level radioactive material in the world, and this experiment does not belong anywhere near the world’s largest body of freshwater.”

The Teeswater River flows generally north and joins the Saugeen River in Paisley, which then runs northwest and flows into Lake Huron at Southampton, 19 miles north of the Bruce Power nuclear station.

“Spent fuel is thermally hot as well as highly radioactive and requires remote handling and shielding,” according to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Three of the byproducts of the fission process used to generate nuclear power remain dangerous for long periods of time. “Strontium-90 and cesium-137 have half-lives of about 30 years (half the radioactivity will decay in 30 years). Plutonium-239 has a half-life of 24,000 years.”

Strontium-90 acts like calcium in the body, seeking out bones, where it can cause cancer; cesium-137 is a muscle seeker; plutonium-239 ends up in the bones, liver and spleen. “Some can give a lethal dose in 15-20 minutes unshielded,” D’Arrigo said.

There is no level at which human exposure to radiation has been deemed safe.

High-level nuclear waste will remain toxic for more than 100,000 years, ten times longer than the Great Lakes are old, and some of it for more than a million years.

NWMO acknowledges this potential problem.

“There is some uncertainty about how the system will perform over the very long term because we cannot obtain advance proof of actual performance over thousands of years,” says the organization.

Protect Our Waterways – No Nuclear Waste announced on July 3 that it had hired environmental lawyer David Donnelly to help fight the repository.

Right now, reactor operators are required to store high-level nuclear waste onsite. According to the Detroit Free Press in a December story, nearly 60,000 tons of spent fuel is parked at reactors that dot the shores of the Great Lakes in the U.S. and Canada. Nearly 3,000 spend fuel bundles await permanent interment in Canada.

According to the NWMO’s prospective timeline, a final site will be chosen by 2023 and construction will begin in 2033. Ten years later, after costs of at least $23 billion, the dump will be in operation, accepting high-level waste for 50 years. Over the course of its construction and operating life, more than 2,000 people will be employed. The repository would be sealed and monitored for a certain amount of time and then essentially Right now, reactor operators are required to store high-level nuclear waste onsite. According to the Detroit Free Press in a December story, nearly 60,000 tons of spent fuel is parked at reactors that dot the shores of the Great Lakes in the U.S. and Canada. Nearly 3,000 spend fuel bundles await permanent interment in Canada.

According to the NWMO’s prospective timeline, a final site will be chosen by 2023 and construction will begin in 2033. Ten years later, after costs of at least $23 billion, the dump will be in operation, accepting high-level waste for 50 years. Over the course of its construction and operating life, more than 2,000 people will be employed. The repository would be sealed and monitored for a certain amount of time and then essentially Right now, reactor operators are required to store high-level nuclear waste onsite. According to the Detroit Free Press in a December story, nearly 60,000 tons of spent fuel is parked at reactors that dot the shores of the Great Lakes in the U.S. and Canada. Nearly 3,000 spend fuel bundles await permanent interment in Canada.

According to the NWMO’s prospective timeline, a final site will be chosen by 2023 and construction will begin in 2033. Ten years later, after costs of at least $23 billion, the dump will be in operation, accepting high-level waste for 50 years. Over the course of its construction and operating life, more than 2,000 people will be employed. The repository would be sealed and monitored for a certain amount of time and then essentially abandoned.

Like the proposed dump for low and intermediate level nuclear waste, the NWMO says that the high-level dump will not go forward without the approval of the Saugeen Ojibway Nation, on whose historic lands the DGR will sit.

“I would imagine that we will not allow high-level waste to be buried within our territory either, because that was the big fear with the last project, that high-level waste would go into it,” Vernon Roote, a former chief with the Saugeen First Nation, told CTV News London in March.

Eighty-six percent of the first nation voted against the low and intermediate nuclear waste dump, 1,058-170, in January.  Jim Bloch is a freelance writer. Contact him at bloch.jim@gmail.com.