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‘All we can do is hope for the best’: Concerns persist about Canada’s planned radioactive waste disposal site

dilution is not a solution to pollution. It just means that millions of people are going to be exposed to much smaller doses. When it comes to cancer-causing materials, the number of people exposed “is very important” because when even a small dose of tritium or any other radioactive material is allowed to enter the drinking water for millions of people, the number of expected cancers and genetic mutations is magnified by the size of the population”

By Natasha Bulowski | News, Ottawa Insider | February 6th 2024

Everyone agrees a safe solution is needed for Canada’s current and future radioactive waste. But whether a recently approved disposal facility in Deep River, Ont., is the answer is the subject of hot debate.

The “near-surface disposal facility” (NSDF) will see up to one million cubic metres of radioactive waste buried in a shallow mound at Chalk River Laboratories (CRL), about 190 kilometres northwest of Ottawa. Project proponents argue Canada must find a way to store low-level nuclear waste, some of which is currently not well-managed…….

Opponents argue the project, a kilometre from the Ottawa River, poses risks to the drinking water supply for millions, will not safely contain the waste and the company failed to adequately consult many Algonquin Nations. Representatives from six concerned groups recently wrote an open letter to the federal government urging it to halt the project. The waste contains long-lived radionuclides, which many experts say require far more robust containment than this facility will offer.

Radionuclides are unstable, radioactive atoms. Some will remain radioactive for thousands or millions of years, while others are short-lived and decay quickly. The Environmental Protection Agency and other health organizations classify all radionuclides as cancer-causing.

Of the radionuclides present in the waste destined for the NSDF, 19 of 29 listed by Canadian Nuclear Laboratories (CNL) have half-lives of more than a thousand years. This means they’ll be present for more than 10,000 years, said Gordon Edwards, president of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility, in his 2022 submission to the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC). Another 12 on the list have half-lives of more than 100,000 years, so they will remain in the NSDF for well over a million years, wrote Edwards, a retired professor of mathematics and science with over 45 years serving as a consultant on nuclear issues.

Several groups and many Algonquin Nations are worried about the radionuclides, particularly one called tritium. This radioactive form of hydrogen is a carcinogen most dangerous when ingested because it enters the waterways with ease and can’t be filtered out with water treatment methods either at CRL or at the municipal level, notes Edwards.

These long-lived radionuclides are in “limited” quantities and “intrinsically part of the radiological fingerprints of waste streams at CRL and other CNL sites,” reads CNL’s submission. “It is not practical, technical, or economical to separate the long-lived radionuclides” because much of the waste is in the form of soil and building debris, it says.

CNL is run by a consortium of private companies (including AtkinsRéalis, formerly known as SNC-Lavalin) and contracted by the federal government to operate its laboratories and deal with waste.

When completed, CNL says the facility will resemble a huge grassy mound the size of 10 soccer fields. The bottom and top of the mound will be lined with synthetic membranes to keep water from getting in, according to CNL.

Construction is expected to take three years and cost $475 million, along with an estimated $275 million in operating costs over 50 years. During that time, CNL will verify all waste placed in the hollowed-out depression in the hillside meets the waste acceptance criteria.

The loose soil and smaller building debris will be compacted into layers and larger debris and waste packaged in drums and containers will be placed in the mound. Water that contacts areas where waste is stored or handled will be routed through a wastewater treatment plant and discharged in nearby Perch Lake. Once all the waste is inside, the final cover of earthen materials and a synthetic membrane go on top to keep precipitation away from the mound.

According to CNL’s draft monitoring plan, wastewater treatment will continue for 30 years and after that, it will be up to the liner and facility design to contain the mound’s contents. Some surveillance will take place to verify the facility is meeting environmental requirements. The top and bottom liners — which are supposed to “remain functional” for 500 years — will eventually erode.

However, it is “a critical flaw” that CNL didn’t plan for waste to be retrieved if something goes wrong later, the Canadian Environmental Law Association argued at the 2022 licensing hearings.

A retrieval plan is important because it gives future generations access to the waste for monitoring, repairs, to move it to a safer location or take advantage of safer technologies in the future, said Tanya Markvart, the law association’s environmental consultant.

“We really don’t know what’s going to happen over the next 100 to 500 or 2,000 years,” said Markvart.

CNL says there’s no plan to retrieve the waste because the facility design will safely manage it long term, but notes nothing is stopping future generations from retrieving its contents. But the law association says it is “unjust to shift the burden” to future generations, who neither created nor benefited from activities that made the radioactive waste………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Water worries

The NSDF’s proximity to the Ottawa River concerns environmentalists, many Algonquin leaders and more than 140 municipalities downstream. CNL materials indicate the facility’s base will be 50 metres above the current water levels of the Ottawa River and on bedrock sloping away from the river.

“Any site anywhere in the Ottawa Valley eventually drains to the river. That’s just basic hydrogeology,” said Mayor D’Eon, a member of CNL’s environmental stewardship council, when asked about opponents’ concern for the river.

“So whether you put it on that military base, which some people have said, or five kilometres away, hydrogeology takes everything to the Ottawa River,” she said.

The bedrock slopes towards Perch Lake, which has a creek that feeds directly into the Ottawa River and in the event of an overflow or other design failure, it wouldn’t take long for contaminated water to reach the lake, according to the Ottawa Riverkeeper, a charity focused on the health of the river and its tributaries. Hydrologist Wilf Ruland reviewed the NSDF proposal for Ottawa Riverkeeper and noted the location has “unfavourable geology” and will rely entirely on the NSDF’s engineered features to contain, collect and treat contaminated water leaching from the mound and prevent it from contaminating groundwater and surface water flow systems. The Ottawa Riverkeeper is also concerned about the presence of chemical contaminants and heavy metals, not just radioactivity.

………………………………. Edwards doesn’t think the waste would cause “a huge kill-off,” after all, “the Ottawa River is huge and the stuff does get diluted,” he told Canada’s National Observer in an interview.

“But we’ve learned over the years that dilution is not a solution to pollution. It just means that millions of people are going to be exposed to much smaller doses.” When it comes to cancer-causing materials, the number of people exposed “is very important” because when even a small dose of tritium or any other radioactive material is allowed to enter the drinking water for millions of people, the number of expected cancers and genetic mutations is magnified by the size of the population, added Edwards.

Pontiac County, Que., made up of 18 municipalities, is right across the river from the facility. Unlike Deep River, which calls itself the “proud home of Canadian Nuclear Laboratories,” Pontiac has opposed the project location from the get-go, said Jane Toller, head of the county council, in an interview with Canada’s National Observer………………………………………………………………………………………….

Toller supports Kitigan Zibi and Kebaowek First Nations, which are currently pressuring the federal government to deny CNL permits required under the Species at Risk Act. Toller says the CNSC’s decision is a “cut-and-dry” violation of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which says no hazardous material can be stored on Indigenous land without prior, free and informed consent. While Pikwakanagan First Nation — the Algonquin nation closest to the facility — signed an agreement with CNL, Kitigan Zibi and Kebaowek say they were not adequately consulted and do not consent to the facility.

“I just don’t know why our federal government has not paid attention to that,” said Toller.

The CNSC’s recent decision only granted CNL a licence to construct the facility. The company still must apply for an operating licence.

Natasha Bulowski / Local Journalism Initiative / Canada’s National Observer 

https://www.nationalobserver.com/2024/02/06/news/all-we-can-do-hope-best-concerns-persist-about-radioactive-waste-site—

February 8, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Canada, wastes | Leave a comment

Nuclear industry veterans warn some radioactive waste destined for Ontario disposal facility should not be accepted 

Observer, Natasha Bulowski  •   Feb 16, 2024  •

Approval of a nuclear waste disposal site near the Ottawa River hinged on a promise that only low-level radioactive waste would be accepted. But former nuclear industry employees and experts warn some waste slated for disposal contains unacceptably high levels of long-lived radioactive material. 

The “near-surface disposal facility” at Chalk River Laboratories (CRL) will store up to one million cubic metres of current and future low-level radioactive waste inside a shallow mound about one kilometre from the river, which provides drinking water to millions of people in the region. But former employees who spent decades working at the labs in waste management and analysis say previous waste-handling practices were inadequate, imprecise and not up to modern standards. Different levels of radioactive material were mixed together, making it unacceptable to bury in the mound. 

“Anything pre-2000 is anybody’s guess what the hell they have on their hands,” said Gregory Csullog, a retired waste inventory specialist and former longtime employee of Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL), the Crown corporation that ran the federal government’s nuclear facilities before the Harper government privatized it in 2015. 

 Csullog described the waste during this earlier time as an unidentifiable “mishmash” of intermediate- and low-level radioactivity because there were inadequate systems to properly label, characterize, store and track what was produced at Chalk River or shipped there from other labs. “Literally, there were no rules,” said Csullog, who was hired in 1982 to develop waste identification and tracking systems. 

International safety standards state low-level radioactive waste is suitable for disposal in various facilities, ranging from near the surface to 30 metres underground, depending primarily on how long it remains radioactive. High-level waste, like used fuel rods, must be buried hundreds to thousands of metres underground in stable rock formations and remain there, effectively forever. Intermediate-level waste is somewhere in the middle and should be buried tens to hundreds of metres underground, not in near-surface disposal facilities, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). 

Radioactive waste is recognized by many health authorities as cancer-causing and its longevity makes disposal a thorny issue. Even short-lived radioactive waste typically takes hundreds of years to decay to extremely low levels and some radioactive isotopes like tritium found in the waste — a byproduct of nuclear reactors — are especially hard to remove from water. 

Canadian Nuclear Laboratories (CNL) originally wanted its near-surface disposal facility to take intermediate- and low-level waste when it first proposed the project in 2016. Backlash was swift and concerned groups, including Deep River town council and multiple experts, argued it would transgress international standards to put intermediate-level waste in that type of facility. In 2017, CNL changed its proposal and promised to only accept low-level waste. The announcement quelled the Deep River town council’s concern, but some citizen groups, scientists, former employees and many Algonquin Nations aren’t buying it. 

CNL says its waste acceptance criteria will ensure all the waste will be low-level and comply with international and Canadian standards. Eighty seven per cent of the waste will be loose soil and debris from environmental remediation and decommissioned buildings. The other 13 per cent “will have sufficiently high radionuclide content to require use of packaging” in containers, drums or steel boxes in the disposal facility, according to CNL. 

However, project opponents note that between 2016 and 2019, about 90 per cent of the intermediate-level waste inventory at federal sites was reclassified as low-level, according to data from AECL and a statement from CNL. The timing of the reclassification raised the alarm for critics, who took it to mean intermediate-level waste was inappropriately categorized as low-level so it could be stored in the Chalk River disposal facility. CNL said the 2016 estimate was based on overly “conservative assumptions” and the waste was reclassified after some legacy waste was retrieved, examined and found to be low-level. 

The disposal facility will also accept waste generated over the next two decades and some shipments from hospitals and universities. 

The history of Chalk River Laboratories 

To fully understand the nuclear waste problem, you first have to know the history of Chalk River Lab’s operations and accidents,…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… more https://www.pembrokeobserver.com/news/local-news/nuclear-industry-veterans-warn-some-radioactive-waste-destined-for-ontario-disposal-facility-should-not-be-accepted Natasha Bulowski is a Local Journalism Initiative reporter working out of Canada’s National Observer. LJI is funded by the Government of Canada. 

February 6, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Canada, wastes | Leave a comment

Radioactive waste beside Ottawa River will remain hazardous for thousands of years: Citizens’ groups

Toula Mazloum, CTV News Ottawa Digital Multi-Skilled Journalist, Feb. 5, 2024

Citizens’ groups from Ontario and Quebec have issued a warning saying that the radioactive waste destined for a planned nuclear waste disposal facility in Deep River, Ont., one kilometre from the Ottawa River, will remain hazardous for thousands of years.

The disposal project — a seven-storey radioactive mound known as the “Near Surface Disposal Facility” (NSDF) – was licensed by the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) last month.

The CNSC said it determined the project is not likely to cause significant adverse effect, “provided that [Canadian Nuclear Laboratories] implements all proposed mitigation and follow-up monitoring measures, including continued engagement with Indigenous Nations and communities and environmental monitoring to verify the predictions of the environmental assessment.”

The groups sent a letter Sunday to the federal government, asking to stop all funding for the project and to look for alternate ways to dump the waste underground.

In the letter, the groups warned that waste destined for the mound is “heavily contaminated with very long-lived radioactive materials” that puts the public at risk of developing cancer, birth defects and genetic mutations.

“We believe Cabinet or Parliament has the power to reverse this decision and they need to do so as soon as possible,” said Lynn Jones of Concerned Citizens of Renfrew County and Area.

“It’s clear that the only benefit from the NSDF would go to shareholders of the three multinational corporations involved, AtkinsRéalis (formerly SNC-Lavalin), Fluor and Jacobs. Everyone else would get only harm—a polluted Ottawa River, plummeting property values, increased health risks, never-ending costs to remediate the mess and a big black mark on Canada’s international reputation.”

One million tons of radioactive and other hazardous waste from eight decades of operations of the Chalk River Laboratories (CRL) will be held if the project is completed, according to the group.

The groups say that according to scientists and after a few hundred years, “the mound would leak during operation and break down due to erosion,” contaminating drinking water in the Ottawa River.

The controversial project has been concerning for many residents and organizations since 2016, including residents of Renfrew County and Area, the Old Fort William (Quebec) Cottagers’ Association, Ralliement contre la pollution radioactive and the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility, the groups say.

“People need to wake up and realize the truth that this waste is full of deadly long-lived, man-made radioactive poisons such as plutonium that will be hazardous for many thousands of years,” said Johanna Echlin of the Old Fort William (Quebec) Cottagers’ Association.

Waste from CRL is classified as an “Intermediate-level” waste class, which means it must be kept tens of metres underground, says the International Atomic Energy Agency

“A former senior manager in charge of ‘legacy’ radioactive waste at Chalk River told the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission that, in reality, the waste proposed for emplacement in the NSDF is ‘intermediate level waste’ that requires a greater degree of containment and isolation than that provided by a near surface facility.’ He pointed out the mound would be hazardous and radioactive for many thousands of years, and that radiation doses from the facility will, in the future, exceed regulatory limits,” the groups noted.

Citizens’ groups want Canada to commit to building world class facilities not only for managing radioactive waste that would keep Canadians safe, but also for safely managing the waste for generations to come.

CTV News has reached out to Canadian Nuclear Laboratories (CNL) for comments.

In a statement to CTV News Ottawa, the CNSC said it will ensure that CNL meets all legal and regulatory requirements as well as licence conditions, through regular inspections and evaluations.

“The purpose of the NSDF Project is to provide a permanent disposal solution for up to 1 million cubic metres of solid low-level radioactive waste, such as contaminated personal protective clothing and building materials,” the statement said. “The majority of the waste to be placed in the NSDF is currently in storage at the Chalk River Laboratories site or will be generated from environmental remediation, decommissioning, and operational activities at the Chalk River Laboratories site. Approximately 10% of the waste volume will come from other AECL-owned sites or from commercial sources such as Canadian hospitals and universities.”

CNSC says its Jan. 10 decision applies to the construction of the NSDF project only. 

“Authorization to operate the NSDF would be subject to a future Commission licensing hearing and decision, should CNL come forward with a licence application to do so. No waste may be placed in the NSDF during the construction phase of the project,” the regulator said.

The site for the NSDF is on the CRL property, 180 km northwest of Canada’s capital, on the Ottawa River directly across from the Province of Quebec.

February 6, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Canada, wastes | Leave a comment