nuclear-news

  NUCLEAR MISINFORMATION.

Wendy O’Connor, 19 October, 2025

I’ve jousted on social media many times with Vince Ponka, NWMO’s “Indigenous and regional communications manager” over the fact that nuclear fuel waste can contaminate surface water in the course of a transportation accident, or groundwater in a deep geological repository.

Ponka maintains publicly that in a collision scenario the waste would soon all be “collected”, and with it, any contamination risk to water would be cancelled.

When I point out that the embrittled, irradiated fuel pellets have water-soluble Cesium-137 (among other radionuclides) on their surfaces, which would long since have been carried off in the water, he denies it or changes the subject. To bolster his position, in other conversations Ponka has said that, after all, this same waste is kept in cooling pools for many years and does not make the water radioactive.

I point out that the material DOES, however, contaminate the water with radionuclides, which is why the water must be filtered, and the filters themselves must be handled as radioactive waste. He plummily replies that see? Everything has been thought of by the nuclear industry – case in point: the filters have “safely removed” the contaminants, eliminating the problem.

I often wonder what others make of such conversations, and whether I should spend my time on them. I tell myself that there may surely be tens or hundreds reading them, who seek information but wisely do not step into the fray. It’s hard, not knowing, and not having a known “higher authority” that would take an interest in nuclear falsehoods

October 20, 2025 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | spinbuster