nuclear-news

Chalk River, or low-level nuclear governance.

Monique Pauzé, The author is a Bloc Québécois MP (Repentigny) and Environment critic., January 18, 2024

A few days ago, after several “rounds of work and consultation” that began in 2016, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) ruled in favor of the Chalk River Near Surface Waste Management Facility (NSWMF) project. Opposition to this open-air radioactive dump is undeniable: a multitude of aboriginal communities, citizen groups, scientists and over a hundred cities and municipalities spread around the Ottawa River, including Ottawa, Montreal and Gatineau.

To contextualize the issues surrounding this project, and to grasp the extent to which the authorization given is highly reprehensible, if not absurd, I believe it is pertinent to address it in the light of a study by the House of Commons Standing Committee on the Environment, specifically on Canada’s governance of radioactive waste. Held in 2022 and concluding with a report submitted to federal elected officials, the study is absolutely relevant today.

To begin with, we remind you that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) made suggestions and recommendations to the CNSC in 2019, during the peer review conducted by the Integrated Regulatory Review Service mission.  As a result, we had confirmation, despite the government’s expressed pride, that Canada was not beyond reproach in this area, and this justified the attention of federal elected officials.

Many decried it: the essential principle of keeping radioactive waste away from sources of drinking water is not respected, and in many respects the project is at odds with the recommendations and guidelines of the IAEA, as well as with the five principles agreed and adopted by the leaders of 133 First Nations in Ontario.

There is an absence of consideration for the possible hazards associated with the project’s location and underground, hazards that attract less attention than the risks of contamination of watercourses, tributaries of the river, from which potentially millions of people draw their drinking water.

Legitimate opposition

In addition, Chalk River is located at the junction of geological fractures and in the western Quebec earthquake zone, a seismic belt that spans the Ottawa Valley, the Laurentians and parts of eastern Ontario. The volume of various radioactive wastes that will be buried in the open pit is substantial. Witnesses and experts have raised the issue of the lack of clarity in identifying the substances that will be introduced into the mound.

Opposition to the project is absolutely legitimate.

Several witnesses to this study accurately addressed the physical characteristics of Canadian radioactive waste, highlighting the redefinition of what constitutes intermediate-level radioactive waste, hidden in a CNSC “proof regulation” adopted in June 2020. William Turner, retired from Atomic Energy of Canada Limited and a resident of Deep River, provided the committee with a detailed fact sheet on this issue.

Gilles Provost, a science journalist and witness to the study, wrote in Le Devoir on June 13 of the same year: “[…] we come up against a scientific absurdity: in physics, the activity of a radioactive product is its decay rate. The faster it decays, the higher its activity. This means that a radioactive product with [higher] activity according to physics would now be low-level waste according to the new definition decreed by the CNSC!”

This new definition has concrete effects, since the Chalk River SRWMF is designed to receive only low-level waste. The result? Waste considered to be medium-level by physical science will end up in the mound, since it is now considered to be low-level.

For the Aboriginal communities of Kebaowek and Kitigan Zibi, the process chosen by the CNSC constitutes a failure in its duty to consult properly.

In addition to the disturbing comments made or sent by their representatives during the parliamentary committee study in 2022 about the “coercive” nature of the consultative approach, the aboriginal communities are rightly relying on Article 29.2 of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which states that no decision on nuclear waste storage, small modular reactors, transport or decommissioning can be taken without free, prior and informed consent.

“[…] We could explain it to you, but you wouldn’t understand it anyway. We’ll give you all the information and you won’t understand it.” This excerpt from the testimony of Reg Niganobe, Chief of the Grand Council of the Anishinabe Nation and a witness to the 2022 study, is shocking: when a representative of the sector expresses himself in this way, I think the climate they want to create is incredibly unhealthy and contemptuous. Non-native groups have also been subjected to this type of “approach” in similar processes. Their submissions to the committee study attest to this.

If there is indeed a political will to consider the communities most directly affected by these issues, then they must be given the consideration they deserve.

Reconciliation? Participatory consultations? Transparent processes and compliance with IAEA standards? The CNSC reports to Minister Jonathan Wilkinson, and the mobilization against Chalk River will continue. The federal government had better change its mind… It has the authority to do so.

https://www.ledevoir.com/opinion/idees/805514/environnement-chalk-river-ou-gouvernance-nucleaire-bas-niveau

January 21, 2024 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Canada, wastes