Ottawa Citizen 23rd April 2018, What makes Canada stand out in the world is unlimited natural beauty: miles
of unspoiled forests, lakes, rivers, prairies and tundra. We are a green,
clean country. Or so we like to think.
So it may come as a surprise that we
plan to put 40 per cent of Canada’s radioactive waste in a gigantic dump
at Chalk River, next to the Ottawa River. The dump will hold
“low-level” waste that contains radioactive uranium, plutonium, cesium,
strontium, iodine and tritium (among others).
Rain and melting snow will leach radioactive elements from the dump. Every year, Canadian Nuclear
Laboratories estimates an average of 6.5 million litres of this water will
be treated and discharged into a nearby wetland and thence the Ottawa
River. An unforeseen event – earthquake, deluge or explosion – could
contaminate the Ottawa River and its riverbed from Chalk River to Montreal. http://ottawacitizen.com/opinion/columnists/shacherl
“I’m choked up. My heart is pounding right now,” said Chief April Adams-Phillips of the Mohawk Nation of Akwesasne through tears. “We give back thanks to our Mother Earth every day,” she said. But because of our disrespect and our destructive ways, she warned, Mother Earth is “going to get rid of us soon. She’s going to shake us.”
We are heading deeper into the “too late time” when it comes to climate change. “And that too late time is not far away,” said Chief Clinton Phillips of the Mohawk Nation. “Science is saying that. Animals are saying that. Animals who are living where they should not be living are saying that.”
Are we listening yet? “People are not listening,” Chief Clinton Phillips says. Global warming is upon us and yet we persist with nuclear power whose wastes poison the water, air, land, people and animals. The original guardians of those precious elements of our existence — indigenous peoples — are trying once again to be heard.
The chiefs and other indigenous and non-indigenous activists came together at the UN in New York on April 23 to hold a special event — “Radioactive Waste and Canada’s First Nations”. It took place on the same day as a press conference in Ottawa, Canada’s capital. There, the Anishinabek Nation, Ottawa Riverkeeper, the Concerned Citizens of Renfrew County and Area, and Ralliement Contre la Pollution Radioactive, called on the International Atomic Energy Agency “to investigate why radioactive waste abandonment plans in Canada are proceeding despite a policy vacuum at the federal level, and with scant attention to international obligations as laid out in the UN Joint Convention on radioactive waste.”
At the UN the tone was somber. Despite Canadian Prime Minister, Pierre Trudeau’s much publicized affirmation of the importance of Canada’s indigenous peoples and the necessity for “reconciliation,” First Nations feel left out, unheard and abused by Canada’s radioactive waste policy. Trudeau and his government are among those “not listening,” and they have been unresponsive to requests for hearings on radioactive waste policy with First Nations and other Canadians. You can watch their presentations here.
That policy currently includes a plan to site a five-to-seven-story high radioactive waste megadump on an Ontario hillside near marshes and swamps and above Perch Lake that empties into the Ottawa River less than one kilometer away. The river serves as the source of drinking water for millions of citizens and as the boundary between the provinces of Ontario and Québec.
The dump site is not far from the Chalk River Laboratories where the world’s first nuclear reactor meltdown took place in 1952. The debris from that accident, and a second one in 1958, was buried and remains on site. Chalk River produced plutonium for nuclear weapons during the Cold War.
The dump would store “low-level” radioactive waste, a misleading term as the wastes would include radioactive uranium, plutonium, cesium, strontium, iodine, tritium and other isotopes.
“It is lunacy putting a six-story mound of nuclear waste beside the Ottawa River near Chalk River,” said Chief Patrick Madahbee of the Anishinabek Nation at the UN event which was webcast live.
A recent one-hour program in French on the Chalk River megadump produced by Découverte, a French-language science-based program from Québec, recently aired and can be viewed in the video below. [on original]
The Canadian government calls this radioactive waste scheme “disposal,” a term long-time activist and mathematics and physics professor, Dr. Gordon Edwards, takes issue with. Speaking at the UN event, Edwards said: “Disposal is not even a scientific term. They have no intention of looking after it after a certain point. That’s abandonment not disposal.”
Edwards called on the Canadian government to “listen to indigenous people who know the land far better than us” and recommended “rolling stewardship.”
A second waste “disposal” plan, the Deep Underground Dump proposed by Ontario Power Generation at Kincardine Ontario on the shores of Lake Huron, is also strongly opposed by First Nations.
“Putting this stuff underground is insanity and total stupidity,” commented Chief Madahbee at the UN meeting. He flagged the dangers of transportation as well. “Why would anyone take the risk of moving this stuff around?,” he asked. “All you need is a serious accident that could devastate millions of people. There are other answers. We have the green energy sector. Nuclear power is no longer necessary.”
And what nuclear power “is really producing is toxic radioactive waste that will last for eternity,” Edwards said.” A lot of attention is paid to producing electricity. Very little attention is paid to people, the environment and the land. Radioactivity is a form of nuclear energy that cannot be shut off.”
But while the topic of the day was clearly radioactive waste, the context was the big picture: global climate change. To persist with nuclear power and its toxic, unsolved legacy of radioactive waste, is just another lunacy when time to address global warming is so short. The UN speakers were united in their horror at the irresponsible assault on Mother Earth.
“There are world powers who say global warming is a myth. People who think that are fools,” said Chief Clinton Phillips.
Chief Troy Thompson of the Mohawk Nation of Akwesasne concurred. “More than ever we need to come together and protect Mother Earth,” he said. “We need to make Canada more responsible and more respectful towards Mother Earth.”
Candace Neveau, a First Nations youth and mother representing the Bawating Water Protectors, called upon “all the warriors. The time is now to rise.” We must urgently recognize how we are “disrespecting Mother Earth and right those wrongs,” she said.
Otherwise, asked Chief April Phillips, “what’s going to happen? Imagine in 70 years what’s going to happen to your family and the next generation? What are they going to do?”
For more information, visit the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility website.
An interdisciplinary team of scientists explores Lake Hazen’s response to climate change, Science Daily April 6, 2018
Source:
University of Alberta
Summary:
An interdisciplinary team of scientists examining everything from glaciology to freshwater ecology discovered drastic changes over the past decade to the world’s largest High Arctic lake. And from glacial melt to the declining lake ice to changes in lake ecology, the results from Lake Hazen on Ellesmere Island in Canada are alarming……..https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/04/180406155402.htm
A relic of Canada’s atom age, the NRU reactor is shutting down for good, CBC 31st March 2018
On March 31, a little-known part of Canada’s nuclear history will go dark for the last time.
The National Research Universal Reactor — or NRU — at Chalk River, Ontario will be turned off for good Saturday evening. It first came online in 1957…….
When ZEEP went online in September 1945, it was the first operational nuclear reactor outside of the United States.
A small, prototype reactor, it was built to demonstrate that uranium and heavy water could be used for nuclear fission and that plutonium could be produced and extracted from the process for military applications……
The NRU was once responsible for producing about 40 per cent of the world’s supply of the medical isotopes used for diagnosis and cancer therapy — starting with cobalt-60 and later extending to other isotopes, such as molybdenum-99. …..
More than 60 years of nuclear research at Chalk River have left behind a legacy of low-level radioactive waste that now has to be contained at a near-surface facility.
Atomic Energy of Canada Limited estimates the cost of dealing with waste at all of its federally regulated sites, including Chalk River, could be as high as $7.6 billion.
Vancouver Sun 12th March 2018,A radioactive metal from the Fukushima nuclear plant disaster in Japan has
been discovered in the Fraser Valley, causing researchers to raise the
alarm about the long-term impact of radiation on B.C.’s west coast.
Examination of a soil sample from Kilby Provincial Park, near Agassiz, has
for the first time in this province found Cesium 134, further evidence of
Fukushima radioactivity being transported to Canada by air and water. http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Toxic+waters+Nuclear+radiation+found+pose+health+concerns/9606269/story.html
Reactor’s neighbours alarmed over radioactive toxins in river, Report details dumping water contaminated with tritium PCBs, other toxins from Rolphton, Ont., site By Julie Ireton, CBC NewsMar 21, 2018 Indigenous communities, environmental groups and other concerned citizens who monitor toxic waste are increasingly concerned about the dumping of radioactive matter and other contaminants into the Ottawa River from an inactive nuclear reactor northwest of the capital.
A scientific report released in February details the dumping of thousands of litres of water contaminated with radioactive tritium, PCBs and other toxins into the river from the inactive nuclear power demonstration (NPD) reactor in Rolphton. Ont., about 200 kilometres from Ottawa.
The contaminants are at levels above Ontario and Canadian surface water quality standards, according to the report.
It was written by geoscientist Wilf Ruland, who was retained by the Algonquin Anishinabeg Nation Tribal Council to review the proposed decommissioning of the demonstration reactor.
Radioactive tritium dumped
“The site is so close to the Ottawa River, only being 100 metres [away], and for us the environment and the water are two of our priorities,” said Norm Odjick, the tribal council’s director general.
In the report, Ruland notes releases of contaminated water into the river “appear to have been ongoing for decades and [continue] to the present day.”
“The regulatory guidelines for surface water quality were vastly exceeded in the contaminated water being dumped untreated into the Ottawa River from the NPD facility in 2015.”
Ottawa Riverkeeper Meredith Brown said radioactive tritium has been dumped into and diluted by the river, but cannot be filtered out or treated like other toxins.
……. Ole Hendrickson, a scientist and researcher for the group Concerned Citizens of Renfrew County and Area, questions the safety of the discharge limits for the facility.
Regulations vs. impact
“Aquatic organisms are being exposed to very high concentrations of toxic substances, and there’s nothing to stop boaters from drawing and filtering river water near the discharge point for drinking,” Hendrickson said.
Daniel Tencer, The Huffington Post CanadaCanadian construction and engineering giant SNC-Lavalin, already embroiled in corruption scandals in numerous countries around the world, can add one more black mark to its reputation: It has been named in the Panama Papers leak of offshore accounts, according to news reports.
Among the 11.5 million files in the Panama Papers were documents showing SNC-Lavalin paid a company in the Caribbean nearly $22 million to help secure contracts in Algeria, according to an investigation by the CBC and The Toronto Star.
The two news outlets are the Canadian partners of the consortium that has released the Panama Papers.
SNC landed $4 billion-worth of contracts in Algeria over the span of a decade.
The CBC reports that the setup described in the Panama Papers is similar to how SNC-Lavalin operated in Libya, where the company has been accused of bribery.
The RCMP laid charges against SNC-Lavalin last year, alleging the company offered some $47 million in bribes to Libyan officials in the hopes of securing work there between 2001 and 2011.
It also alleged the company committed fraud worth $130 million in its dealings in Libya for paying bribes so it could secure contracts for infrastructure projects there.
A former SNC vice-president, Riadh Ben Aissa, was convicted of bribery in a Swiss court in relation to the Libyan allegations.
SNC is now suing Aissa and ex-employee Sami Bebawi for $127 million. It alleges that both of them used offshore accounts, as well as the company’s Libyan commissions, to bribe people and funnel money to their families, the Star reports………
-Angela Bischoff,, 31 Jan 18,On the heels of signing an agreement to supply Massachusetts with enough power to meet the needs of one million homes at the barn burner price of 3 to 5.3 cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh), Hydro Quebec says it is still ready to make similar deals with Ontario and New York.
Meanwhile, Ontario muddles forward with plans to rebuild aging nuclear reactors at tremendous expense and is about to hold hearings on the safety of keeping the 47-year-old Pickering Nuclear Station (surrounded by 2.2 million people) running for up to another 10 years. As a result, Ontario Power Generation has told the Ontario Energy Board that it will need to raise its price of nuclear power to 16.5 cents per kWh.
Hydro Quebec has already offered Ontario power at a great price (5 cents kWh) only to have this province respond with the bizarre claim that the offer wasn’t competitive enough — despite it being less than one third the cost of rebuilding and extending our aging nuclear fleet.
Now Quebec is making it clear it won’t wait forever for Ontario to come to its senses and will prioritize deals with those jurisdictions that are ready to reap the benefits of its low-cost, renewable power right now.
With five months until the next provincial election, could this be the moment when our opposition parties finally get serious about offering real solutions to dealing with rising electricity costs and begin to champion making a deal with Quebec? Are there any candidates for the PC leadership ready to offer real help to Ontario power users by promising to quickly ink a deal with Quebec? Will the NDP make a money-saving Quebec deal part of its “pocketbook” promises to help average Ontarians? The next few months should be very interesting.
Tribunal rules in favour of man who claims he developed cancer from radiation at work CTVNews.ca Staff , January 26, 2018The labour tribunal in Quebec has ruled in favour of a Trois Rivieres man who says he developed “aggressive” cancer from radiation exposure at work.
As the director of quality control at a sugar refinery previously known as Sucre BBR, Michel Plante used an X-ray machine to ensure the sugar was free of metal. He was diagnosed with bladder cancer in 2014, and underwent surgery. Less than a year later, he was also diagnosed with prostate cancer.
Plante is now taking legal action because he claims his workplace made him sick. His claim is backed by the labour tribunal, which recently ruled that there’s reason to believe the X-ray machine exposed Plante to unsafe amounts of radiation.
After the X-ray machine Plante used at work was sold to a company in Ontario, it was tested and determined to be emitting higher levels of radiation than permitted. Plante’s lawyer, Sophie Mongeon, said the objective of the legal action is “not financial.” “Our objective is purely for the workers,” she told CTV Montreal.
Radiation oncologist Dr. Bernard Fortin, who studied the files related to Plante’s case, said he agrees that the workplace radiation exposure was unsafe.
‘Insanity’ to allow nuclear waste disposal near Ottawa River, Indigenous groups say http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/chalk-river-nuclear-waste-indigenous-1.4492937 Canadian Nuclear Laboratories facility in Chalk River, Ont., could be up and running in 2020, CBC NewsJan 18, 2018Indigenous groups say a plan to dispose of nuclear waste near the Ottawa River in eastern Ontario is “insanity” and want the federal government to intervene.
Canadian Nuclear Laboratories, a private company, wants a 10-year licence to keep running the Chalk River nuclear labs in eastern Ontario.
In 2014, the federal government gave Canadian Nuclear Laboratories (CNL) control over nuclear operations at Chalk River. The government continues to own the nuclear assets.
CNL has plans for a permanent nuclear waste disposal site at Chalk River, plans that have been criticized by a concerned citizen’s group as being “cheap, dirty, unsafe and out of alignment with International Atomic Energy Agency guidance.”
Nuclear waste in Chalk River will cost billions to deal with and leave a legacy that will last centuries, opponents say.
“Trying to build this giant mound of radioactive waste … is insanity,” said Patrick Madahbee, grand council chief of the Anishinabek Nation, which advocates for around 40 communities representing around 65,000 people across Ontario.
He said CNL has an obligation under the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples to consult Indigenous people about storing hazardous materials in their territory, but CNL hasn’t talked to them about it.
The waste facility could be operational by 2020.
“We understand this is a complex file, but clearly the risks here are to people’s drinking waters and traditional territories,” said Patrick Nadeau, executive director of the Ottawa Riverkeeper.
CNL’s licence to run the Chalk River labs expires on March 31 and the consortium has asked the regulator, Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, for a 10-year licence agreement, rather than the usual five-year term.
The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission will hold public hearings in Pembroke, Ont., from Jan. 23 to 25 to consider CNL’s licence.
Dozens of delegations have registered to comment at the hearings. But Mark Lesinski, president of Canadian Nuclear Laboratories said among those posed to present submissions at the hearings, there are a number of “misunderstandings.”
,Opposition groups say private consortium lacks proper oversight for nuclear labs,By Julie Ireton, CBC News Jan 18, 2018 Ole Hendrickson, a former government research scientist, worries that if Canadian Nuclear Laboratories gets the 10-year licence the private consortium wants to keep running the Chalk River nuclear labs in eastern Ontario, approval of a proposed nuclear waste site won’t be far behind.
Hendrickson will be among the concerned citizens, Indigenous leaders, environmentalists and former nuclear scientists marching through downtown Ottawa on Thursday, as they deliver their objection to the licence proposal to municipal and federal politicians.
Nuclear waste in Chalk River will cost billions to deal with and leave a legacy that will last centuries, notes Hendrickson.
In 2014, the federal government gave Canadian Nuclear Laboratories (CNL) control over nuclear operations at Chalk River. The government continues to own the nuclear assets.
The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission will hold public hearings in Pembroke, Ont., from Jan. 23 to 25 to consider CNL’s licence.
Dozens of delegations have registered to comment at the hearings.
Lynn Jones, who worked in public health for years and now represents a coalition of concerned citizens, will be among those speaking out at the Pembroke hearings next week.
“Personally I have a big problem with profit being part of dealing with nuclear waste. I’m not alone in that,” Jones said.
She noted that two-thirds of the 88 interventions take issue with the 10-year licence and what they perceive as “reduced oversight”.
Lack of stability, oversight: scientists
In submissions already published, former Atomic Energy of Canada scientists write that “a decision by the Commission to grant a 10 year licence to CNL would be an unsafe and unsound decision.”
The scientists allege “instability in CNL management, lack of knowledge of key regulations and international obligations, and lack of open and transparent public engagement.”
Canadian firm, SNC Lavalin is one of the members of the CNL consortium.
In a decision released Friday, the Ontario Energy Board orders the province’s largest electricity generator to cut “excessive” costs associated with pensions and benefits from its nuclear business’ administration, operations and maintenance budget by $100 million a year until 2021.
The decision comes after OPG, in May 2016, asked for $16.8 billion from the board for a period between 2017 and 2021 — a request that would ultimately lead to an increase in rates. OPG says the request is intended to, in part, help offset the cost of a major nuclear refurbishment project at the Darlington Nuclear Station and the continued operation of the Pickering Nuclear Station past 2020.
The OEB’s decision approves a request for $4.8 billion in costs related to the Darlington refurbishments and $292 million in fees associated with Pickering and says rate increase associated with the request will be retroactively effective from June 1, 2017.
While the final impact will be determined in early 2018, OPG estimated that its application would cost the average ratepayer an additional 65 cents a month over the five-year-period.
Ontario’s long-awaited new nuclear emergency plan falls short, Greenpeace says Ontario has updated its plan for dealing with nuclear emergencies for the first time since the 2011 Fukushima disaster, The Star.com, By ROB FERGUSON Queen’s Park Bureau, Dec. 28, 2017 Ontario has updated its plan for dealing with potentially deadly emergencies at nuclear power plants for the first time since the 2011 Fukushima disaster forced the evacuation of 70,000 people in Japan.
The 173-page effort follows criticisms from provincial auditor general Bonnie Lysyk earlier this month that the nuclear response blueprint has not been changed since 2009 to reflect lessons learned elsewhere.
“Ontario has three nuclear power facilities and 18 operating reactors, which makes it the largest nuclear jurisdiction in North America and one of the largest in the world,” she wrote in her annual report.
“Plans need to be regularly updated with current information and to reflect the best approach to respond to emergencies so they can be used as a step-by-step guide during a response,” Lysyk added.
The new plan takes into account radiation emergencies that could stem from reactor accidents, leaks during the transportation of radioactive material, explosions and even a satellite crashing on nuclear plants at Pickering and Darlington east of the heavily populated Greater Toronto Area or at the Bruce reactors near Kincardine on Lake Huron…….
The plan was released a week after the government put out a request for experts to conduct a technical study of it, making a mockery of the process, said the anti-nuclear group, Greenpeace.
“It’s ass backward and incompetent,” said Shawn-Patrick Stensil, senior energy analyst for Greenpeace, a vocal critic of the government’s nuclear energy program.
There is little in the updated nuclear response plan to prepare for a major disaster, he added, such as emergency zones that are too small given the potentially large scale of nuclear disasters.
“While other countries have strengthened public safety since Fukushima, it’s taken the Ontario government six years to maintain the status quo,” said Stensil.
“Other countries are preparing for bigger accidents.”……….
Toronto city council passed a motion in November calling on the province to prepare for more severe accidents and expand delivery of anti-radiation potassium iodide pills beyond the current 10-kilometre zone around nuclear power plants.
IFPress 7th Dec 2017,Ontario’s lack of readiness for nuclear emergencies is a frightening
situation that should alarm every resident, especially those in
Southwestern Ontario, says Sarnia Mayor Mike Bradley. “The province
preaches to municipalities about emergency plans. It turns out the preacher
isn’t following his own gospel,” Bradley said Thursday. Bradley joined
a chorus of critics slamming the Liberal government a day after Ontario’s
auditor general revealed shortcomings in provincial emergency and nuclear
response plans, concluding it’s not ready for a large-scale emergency.
Southwestern Ontario is home to the world’s largest operating nuclear
plant, the Bruce nuclear complex near Kincardine. http://www.lfpress.com/2017/12/07/sarnia-mayor-weighs-in-after-auditors-less-than–glowing-review-of-provincial-preparedness
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