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The Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) Siting Process Fails to Achieve its Goal.

Nuclear Company Announces Site Selection Despite Major Missing Piece: a Willing Host

WE THE NUCLEAR FREE NORTH. November 29, 2024

Wabigoon, Ontario – First Nations and opposition groups are denouncing the Nuclear Waste Management Organization’s announcement that they have selected the Revell site in northwestern Ontario as their preferred location for a deep geological repository for all of Canada’s high-level nuclear fuel waste.

“The NWMO announcement demonstrates the fickleness of the NWMO’s site selection process. It has allowed the NWMO to manufacture something they are calling consent, without actually gaining consent”, commented Charles Faust, a volunteer with We the Nuclear Free North and spokesperson for Nuclear Free Thunder Bay.

“They were looking for consent for their project – the transportation, processing and burial of all of Canada’s high-level waste in the heart of Treaty 3 Territory. The closest they could get from Wabigoon Lake Ojibway Nation was consent to continue in the site characterization process. It’s a small victory which they are going to play big.”

NWMO announced Thursday that they had selected Wabigoon Lake Ojibway Nation (WLON) and the Township of Ignace as the host communities for the future site for Canada’s deep geological repository for used nuclear fuel.

The two communities had been courted by the NWMO for over a decade as the nuclear waste company sought a declaration of “willingness” to have the Revell site used as a processing and burial site for the highly radioactive waste generated by nuclear power reactors. The Revell site is approximately equidistant between Ignace and Dryden and 20 km upstream from Wabigoon Lake Ojibway Nation, in the headwaters of both the Wabigoon and the Turtle-Rainy River watersheds.

NWMO has repeatedly said they would only proceed with an “informed and willing host”, which would have to make a “compelling demonstration of willingness”. In a statement released by Wabigoon Lake Ojibway Nation on November 18th following a community vote, WLON stated clearly that the referendum was to determine if WLON would progress into a site characterization process for NWMO’s project, and that “the yes vote does not signify approval of the project”.

Broad opposition to the project has been expressed by First Nations, municipalities and community organizations, including in a resolution passed by Grand Council Treaty #3 in October which affirmed an earlier declaration that made clear that a deep geological repository for nuclear waste would not be developed at any point in Treaty #3 Territory.

Opposition is expected to continue to grow following yesterday’s announcement, leading up to the start of a federal impact assessment process, which the NWMO says will get underway in 2028.

December 1, 2024 Posted by | Canada, wastes | Leave a comment

Indigenous views on nuclear energy and radioactive waste

 https://cedar-project.org/indigenous/ 25 Nov 24

The Point Lepreau nuclear reactor is the only power reactor in Atlantic Canada. The nuclear plant, in New Brunswick on the Bay of Fundy, opened in 1983. The plant’s owner, the public utility NB Power, is also proposing to build two smaller, experimental, reactors on the nuclear site.

The affected Indigenous nations did not consent to the existing reactor, or the proposed new reactors, or the storage of radioactive waste on their homelands.

Since the Point Lepreau reactor started up 40 years ago, it has produced hundreds of tons of intensely radioactive high-level nuclear waste (used nuclear fuel) that NB Power is storing at the site in aging concrete silos less than a kilometre from the Bay of Fundy.

The CEDAR project’s Indigenous partners – Chief Hugh Akagi of the Passamaquoddy Recognition Group (PRGI) and Chief Ron Tremblay of the Wolastoq Grand Council– are concerned about the existing radioactive waste, that the reactor is continuing to produce more of it, and that the proposed experimental reactors, if built, will produce new forms of radioactive waste at the site.

Radioactivity cannot be turned off – that’s what makes it so dangerous. The radioactivity from high-level waste can take millennia to decay. If exposed, radioactivity can damage living tissue in a range of ways and can alter gene structure. For this reason, high-level waste must be kept isolated from living things for millennia.

The plan to manage the the new forms of waste from the proposed experimental reactors is unknown. NB Power plans to transport the high-level radioactive waste from the existing reactor by public roads through New Brunswick, Quebec and Ontario to a proposed nuclear waste dump, a deep geological repository. Our project focused on the perspectives of Indigenous nations and communities in these three provinces on nuclear energy and radioactive waste.

In collaboration with CEDAR, the Passamaquoddy Recognition Group (PRGI) organized a meeting in Ottawa at the end of April 2024, inviting Indigenous leaders from communities in New Brunswick, Ontario and Quebec and representatives from NGOs across Canada involved in nuclear issues.

The purpose of the meeting was to share information and common concerns about: uranium mining and processing; nuclear energy and radioactive waste; the nuclear industry’s plans to transport radioactive waste through Indigenous homelands; industry proposals to develop radioactive waste dumps on Indigenous territories; plans to develop more nuclear reactors on Indigenous homelands that would produce even more, and new forms, of nuclear waste; and concerns about the close ties between the nuclear industry and the regulator, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission.

A press conference was held at the National Press Theatre in Ottawa. Participants were Chief Hugh Akagi and Kim Reeder of PRGI, Chief Ron Tremblay of the Wolastoq Grand Council, Councillor Peyton Pitawanakwat of Missisauga First Nation, and Elizabeth May, leader of the Green Party of Canada. To watch the video of the press conference, click HERE. To read the media release, click HERE.

A team from Eleven North Visuals filmed interviews in Ottawa with Chief Akagi, Chief Tremblay and Councillor Pitawanakwat. Later they produced the video, Askomiw Ksanaqak (Forever Dangerous) – Indigenous Nations Resist Nuclear Colonialism, available for viewing on this page.

Following the Ottawa events, in the summer of 2024, a PRGI-CEDAR team in New Brunswick–including research assistants Abby Bartlett with the CEDAR project and Robbie Atwin with PRGI, supervised by CEDAR primary investigator Susan O’Donnell – worked on a report, Indigenous Views on Nuclear Energy and Radioactive Waste, available for download from this page. A French version is currently in development.

For the report, we analyzed 30 public statements about nuclear energy and radioactive waste by Indigenous communities in New Brunswick, Quebec and Ontario. We also gathered more than 125 documents submitted to the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) by Indigenous organizations in these three provinces.

The report – featuring photos of the Bay of Fundy by William (Eric) Altvater, a member of Passamaquoddy Nation in Maine – was co-published in November 2024 by PRGI and the CEDAR project. We are currently organizing an event at St. Thomas University to launch the report and the video.

The CEDAR-PRGI team and collaborators across Canada are now discussing the next steps for this work.

For more information, feedback on the report or the video, or to get in touch for any reason, contact the CEDAR team.

The CEDAR project is supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Canada (SSHRC).

November 26, 2024 Posted by | Canada, indigenous issues | Leave a comment

Will New Brunswick choose a “small, modular” nuclear reactor – that’s not small at all (among other problems)?

There is nothing modular about this reactor. The idea that such an elaborate structure can just be trucked in, off-loaded, and ready to go, is a fantasy cultivated by the nuclear industry as a public relations gimmick.

by Gordon Edwards, November 23, 2024, https://nbmediacoop.org/2024/11/23/will-new-brunswick-choose-a-small-modular-nuclear-reactor-thats-not-small-at-all-among-other-problems/

NB Power seems determined to build at least two experimental reactors at the Point Lepreau nuclear site, but their chosen designs are running into big problems.

One possible alternative is the reactor design Ontario Power Generation (OPG) hopes to build at the Darlington nuclear site on Lake Ontario. OPG is promoting it as a “small, modular” nuclear reactor.

Consider a building that soars 35 metres upwards and extends 38 metres below ground. That’s 10 stories up, 11 stories down. At 73 metres, that’s almost as tall as Brunswick Square in Saint John, or Assumption Place in Moncton, the tallest buildings in New Brunswick. Would you call such a structure small?

That’s the size of the new reactor design, the first so-called “Small Modular Nuclear Reactor” (SMNR) to be built in Canada, if the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission gives OPG the go-ahead in January. It’s an American design by GE Hitachi that requires enriched uranium fuel – something Canada does not produce. If the reactor works, it will be the first time Canada will have to buy its uranium fuel from non-Canadian sources.


The new project, called the BWRX-300, is a “Boiling Water Reactor” (BWR), completely different from any reactor that has successfully operated in Canada before. Quebec tried a boiling water CANDU reactor several decades ago, but it flopped, running for only 180 days before it was shut down in 1986.

The Darlington BWR design is not yet complete. Its immediate predecessor was a BWR four times more powerful and ten times larger in volume, called the ESBWR. It was licensed for construction in the U.S. in 2011, the same year as the triple meltdown at Fukushima in Japan. The ESBWR design was withdrawn by the vendor and never built.

The BWRX-300 is a stripped-down version of ESBWR, which in turn was a simplified version of the first reactor that melted down in Japan in 2011. To shrink the size and cut the cost, the BWRX-300 eliminates several safety systems that were considered essential in its predecessors.

For example, BWRX-300 has no overpressure relief valves, no emergency core cooling system, no “core catcher” to prevent a molten core from melting through the floor of the building. Instead, it depends on a closed-loop “isolation condenser” system (ICS) to substitute for those missing features.

But is the ICS up to the job? During a 1970 nuclear accident, the ICS failed in a BWR at Humboldt Bay in California. At Fukushima, the ICS system failed after a few hours of on-and-off functioning.

Because CNSC, the Canadian nuclear regulator, has no experience with Boiling Water Reactors, it has partnered with the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). They both met with the vendor GE-Hitachi several times.

The regulatory approach of the two countries has been very different: in February 2024, the U.S. NRC staff told GE-Hitachi that a complete design is needed before safety can be certified or any licence can be considered. But In Canada, the lack of a complete design seems no obstacle.

CNSC public hearings in November 2024 and January 2025 are aimed at giving OPG a “licence to construct” the BWRX-300 – before the design is even complete, and before the detailed questions from U.S. NRC staff have been addressed.

Building the BWRX-300 will require a work force of 1,000 or more. The entire reactor core, containing the reactor fuel and control mechanisms, will be in a subterranean cylindrical building immersed in water, not far from the shore of Lake Ontario.

There is nothing modular about this reactor. The idea that such an elaborate structure can just be trucked in, off-loaded, and ready to go, is a fantasy cultivated by the nuclear industry as a public relations gimmick.

The BWRX-300 will not be small. It will not be modular. And so far, its design is incomplete. An initial analysis of the design has identified unanswered safety questions.

If CNSC is prudent, it will not grant OPG a licence to construct the reactor next year. There are too many unanswered safety-related questions.

And if OPG is prudent, It will count on a doubling or tripling of the estimated cost. Already we have seen SMR projects in Idaho and Chalk River in Ontario run into crippling financial roadblocks.

The financial problems of the current SMNR designs in New Brunswick are the latest examples of private capital shunning nuclear investments. If New Brunswick is prudent, it will think very hard before diving into another nuclear boondoggle. The potential fallout will not be small at all.

Dr. Gordon Edwards is the president of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility based in Montreal.

November 25, 2024 Posted by | Canada, Small Modular Nuclear Reactors | Leave a comment

Future of Point Lepreau Nuclear Power Plant: “All options must be considered,” including its closure.

Ici New Brunswick, Pascal Raiche-Nogue, 14 Nov 24

It’s time to reassess the future of the Point Lepreau nuclear power plant, according to New Brunswick’s public energy advocate. Closing it permanently should be one of the options under consideration, he said.

The plant, located about 50 kilometres from Saint-Jean, was taken out of service for 100 days last April to carry out maintenance work. However, additional problems have delayed its return to service.

NB Power now expects it will start generating electricity again in December , at least four months later than planned.

“It’s certainly worrying ,” said the public defender for the energy sector, Alain Chiasson, in an interview……………………..

Is Point Lepreau on its way to becoming a white elephant?

He said the time has come to take stock of the current situation and the future of the plant. He believes that difficult questions need to be asked.

The question is: are we putting money into a white elephant that will cost us more than the energy we will be able to get out and the profits? We should do a cost-benefit study to see if Point Lepreau is still profitable for New Brunswickers , he said.

Mr. Chiasson does not go so far as to make a statement, but he argues that it is better to start thinking about it sooner rather than later, given the complexity of the issue.

“NB Power should start looking at what can be done with Lepreau in the future and consider all options, possibly including closure, if it is for the benefit of New Brunswickers.“

Will Susan Holt’s government have the political courage to launch this reflection? 
“I have no idea and I will let the new government make its decisions” , replies Alain Chiasson. https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/2119748/centrale-nucleaire-futur-energie-nb?

November 17, 2024 Posted by | Canada | Leave a comment

Saugeen Ojibway Nation stands firm on nuclear waste decision despite South Bruce vote

By Adam Bell, November 2, 2024 ,  https://cknxnewstoday.ca/news/2024/11/01/saugeen-ojibway-nation-stands-firm-on-nuclear-waste-decision-despite-south-bruce-vote—

The Saugeen Ojibway Nation (SON) Joint Chiefs and Councils have issued a statement responding to the Municipality of South Bruce’s narrow referendum approval to host a Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) Deep Geological Repository (DGR) for nuclear waste.

While South Bruce residents voted in favour, SON’s leadership underscored that the referendum outcome does not affect SON’s separate decision-making process regarding the DGR’s placement within its territory near Teeswater.

SON’s statement emphasized the Nation’s independent authority in determining if the proposed DGR would be allowed within its lands. Chiefs Greg Nadjiwon of the Chippewas of Nawash Unceded First Nation and Conrad Ritchie of the Chippewas of Saugeen First Nation clarified that any decision regarding hosting the facility would be based solely on SON’s evaluations and community input.

“We continue to thoroughly examine the potential impacts and benefits of this project through our own process, as the rights holders and authority within our Territory,” the Chiefs stated, reaffirming that SON’s community members will make the final decision.

SON leadership says key principles guiding their approach include its members’ exclusive authority to determine if the Nation consents to hosting a DGR, a community-driven decision-making process, and a commitment to engagement with members before seeking their input on whether to proceed.

The chiefs extended gratitude to the SON community for its commitment to protecting the lands and resources, with SON’s future decisions guided by member perspectives and environmental stewardship. They underscored a cautious approach that places SON interests, cultural responsibilities, and long-term impacts at the forefront.

While South Bruce Mayor Mark Goetz celebrated the high turnout and democratic process, he noted that SON and the Wabigoon Lake Ojibway Nation still hold critical voices in the DGR site selection. Both First Nations must grant consent for the project to move forward.

In 2020, SON members voted to reject a DGR by a vote of 1,058 against and just 170 in favour.

November 4, 2024 Posted by | Canada, indigenous issues | Leave a comment

Will Susan Holt’s new government continue New Brunswick’s nuclear fantasies?

despite the governments’ support, after more than six years of trying, the companies have been unable to entice private investors.

Keeping the Point Lepreau and SMR fantasies alive will require considerable effort from the new government. Susan Holt’s handling of the nuclear file will be an early test—both of her leadership and her commitment to wishful thinking.

BY SUSAN O’DONNELL | October 31, 2024, The Hill Times https://www.hilltimes.com/story/2024/10/31/will-susan-holts-new-government-continue-new-brunswicks-nuclear-fantasies/439671/

Successive New Brunswick governments have been bewitched by two nuclear fantasies: first, that its beleaguered public utility NB Power can connect two experimental reactors to the electricity grid, and second, that the small province can successfully run a nuclear power reactor.

Both fantasies will confront Susan Holt early in her new Liberal government’s tenure. Will she break the spell and end the province’s nuclear delusions? Nuclear energy was not raised during the recent election campaign, but a 2023 CBC interview with Holt offers clues.

The biggest fantasy is connecting two experimental “small modular nuclear reactors” (SMRs) to New Brunswick’s electricity grid. In 2018, Holt was a business adviser to then-premier Brian Gallant when his Liberal government invited two nuclear start-up companies from the U.K. and the U.S. to set up shop in the province and promote their SMR designs, although it’s unknown if she was involved in that decision. 

The Gallant government had chosen two “advanced” reactor designs—molten salt and sodium-cooled— that have never operated successfully in a commercial setting. The government gave each company a $5-million incentive and support to apply for federal funding to develop their designs. A recent expert report from the U.S. Academies of Sciences predicted that such designs would have difficulty reaching commercial viability by 2050.

During the subsequent reign of PC premier Blaine Higgs, the province gave $25-million more to the start-ups and the federal government added grants totalling $57.5-million. Both governments also invested in building an SMR business supply chain in New Brunswick and encouraged some First Nations to support the projects.

The Higgs government further supported its plan to have the experimental designs built and connected to the grid by 2035 by passing legislation forcing NB Power to buy electricity, at any price, from SMRs if they are ever built and actually work.

However, despite the governments’ support, after more than six years of trying, the companies have been unable to entice private investors. Each company claims to need $500-million to develop its reactor design to the point of applying for a licence to build one. Where this money will come from is an open question. 

This summer, the CEO of one SMR company, ARC Clean Technology, left suddenly and some staff at the Saint John office received layoff notices. The second company, Moltex, was notably absent from an Atlantic energy symposium in Fredericton this September. Until Moltex secures matching funds for its three-year-old $50.5-million federal grant, further federal funding is unlikely. 

In her CBC interview last year, Holt said SMRs must be part of the energy transition, but: “I don’t think it needs the province to subsidize the businesses … buying power produced by an SMR is different than putting money into a company building SMR technology.”

The second fantasy—the Point Lepreau nuclear reactor on the Bay of Fundy—has been offline for repairs since April. Cost overruns for its original build and refurbishment represent two-thirds of NB Power’s $5.4-billion debt and crippling (94 per cent) debt-to-equity ratio. The reactor’s poor performance is the main reason the utility loses money almost every year.

Around the globe, it is hard to find an electrical grid as small as NB Power’s with a nuclear reactor. The province’s oversize nuclear ambitions were identified early. In 1972, a federal Department of Finance official warned against subsidizing a power reactor for a utility with “barely enough cash flow to finance its present debt,” calling New Brunswick’s nuclear plans “the equivalent of a Volkswagen family acquiring a Cadillac as a second car.”

New Brunswick lacks even the internal capacity to operate its reactor. When the plant re-opened in 2012 after refurbishment, NB Power first contracted a management team from Ontario Power Generation (OPG) and later hired a manager living in Maine who billed the utility for travel expenses in addition to his salary which reached $1.3-million despite no improvement in the reactor’s performance. In 2023, NB Power ditched the American, and contracted OPG management again.

In her 2023 CBC interview, Holt’s statement that the province’s energy strategy needs to include “wind energy, solar energy, SMR energy, hydro energy, nuclear energy” suggests that her government will continue to support the Point Lepreau plant. However, new developments may give her pause to reconsider.

A recent expert report linked the poor performance of NB Power’s nuclear reactor to the utility’s failure since refurbishment to spend enough on maintenance. If this trend continues, “It is likely that performance could drop even further in the late 2030s into the 2040s.”

The plant’s shutdown for maintenance and upgrades on April 6 this year was originally planned for three months, but the work uncovered serious problems with the main generator. In July, NB Power suggested the plant would re-open in early September and then in August, pushed that date to mid-November.

Energy watchdogs expect the Lepreau plant to remain off-line longer than November due to the serious nature of the generator malfunction. NB Power will be looking to the new government to reassure the public that the utility has its nuclear operations under control. New Brunswickers are facing a 19.4 per cent increase in electricity rates, due in large part to the poor performance of its nuclear reactor, although Holt has already promised to eliminate the 10 per cent PST on NB Power bills to ease the pain.

Holt plans to re-convene the New Brunswick Legislature before the end of November. At that point the Point Lepreau reactor will likely still be mothballed, and the two SMR start-ups will be on life support.

Keeping the Point Lepreau and SMR fantasies alive will require considerable effort from the new government. Holt’s handling of the nuclear file will be an early test—both of her leadership and her commitment to wishful thinking.

Dr. Susan O’Donnell is adjunct research professor and primary investigator of the CEDAR project in the Environment and Society program at St. Thomas University in Fredericton.

November 3, 2024 Posted by | business and costs, Canada, politics | Leave a comment

TODAY. Canadians are waking up to the nuclear scam. Why are the media and other nations pretending that nuclear is just dandy?

I do read quite a few criticisms of the nuclear industry, from various non-profit groups. But lately, there’s a whole heap of them from Canada. And the unnerving thing is that these pesky Canadians are giving “chapter and verse” – facts and figures on how bad things really are, for the nuclear industry.

Of course, the Canadian, and indeed, the global nuclear lobby too, are pretending not to notice this. (But they must be a tad worried, lest too many intelligent people in other countries catch on to this annoying attention to detail)

Susan O’Donnell writes about New Brunswick’s nuclear fantasies – the history of successive governments pouring tax-payers’ money into “advanced” reactor designs that are known by reputable scientists to be commercially unviable. -The Higgs government passing legislation forcing NB Power to buy electricity, at any price, from SMRs if they are ever built and actually work.

The companies involved have been unable to entice private investors, and are unlikely to get federal funding. NB Power’s $5.4-billion debt is mainly due to the poor performance of its Point Lepreau nuclear reactor. New Brunswickers are facing a 19.4 per cent increase in electricity rates. “Keeping the Point Lepreau and SMR fantasies alive will require considerable effort from the new government. “

Another recent example – from the Seniors for Climate Action Now! (SCAN):

They point out :

  • the scandal-ridden nuclear history. 
  • the revolving door between government officials and nuclear industry well-paid jobs.  
  • the government/industry nuclear pitch to NATO-  “Ontario is selling itself as the nuclear North Star to guide the direction of American power”. 
  • the failure of theNuScale SMR project.  
  • OPG’s lengthy submission on small nuclear reactors is full of the things that could go wrong.
  •  the over $40billion cost of refurbishing old end-of-life reactors. 
  • New nuclear reactors at over $60billion

They raise such awkward questions about “Ontario’s journey to becoming an energy superpower”

But then, I forgot that this comes from Seniors. And I’ve just remembered that the nuclear industry is all about the young cool and trendy.

There are so many views from Canadians exploding the nuclear propaganda. And they’re not all old fogeys.

November 2, 2024 Posted by | business and costs, Canada, Christina's notes, politics | Leave a comment

Atomic Reaction – a highly recommended feature-length documentary film.

Atomic Reaction (90 minute documentary film)

Gordon Edwards. 30 Oct 24

This feature-length documentary film tells the story of how Canada supplied uranium for the World War II Atomic Bomb Project by using the leftovers from a radium mine on the shore of Great Bear Lake, just south of the arctic circle, and – of central importance – the radium refinery in Port Hope Ontario several thousand miles away. When uranium from the Congo entered the picture in December 1942, it too was refined at Port Hope for the Bomb program.  

The film also tells the story of the most expensive and extensive environmental cleanup of any municipality in Canadian history, a cleanup of 1000 radioactively contaminated buildings (including homes and schools) in Port Hope that is costing 2 and a half billion dollars. The “cleanup” has been going on for forty years and just got a 10-year extension in 2023. The result of the cleanup will be an enormous engineered earthen mound of about one million tonnes of radioactive waste material that will remain dangerous for many thousands of years. 

The gigantic “engineered mound” for Port Hope waste is situated in a marshy area just north of the town, on land that slopes down through the town to Lake Ontario. Incidentally, this small mountain of radioactive waste is not intended to be permanent but only good for the first 500 years, after which further decisions will have to be made. On the other hand the Chalk River mound (the so-called “Near Surface Disposal Facility”, which I call “the megadump”), although inspired by the Port Hope mound, is intended to be permanent. While the Port Hope mound is primarily built to hold highly dangerous naturally-occurring radioactive materials, associated with uranium ore processing, the Chalk River mound is designed to hold mainly human-made post-fission radioactive materials that were not found in nature before 1939. There are three court challenges to the CNSC 2022 approval of this “megadump” that are currently underway.

Atomic Reaction has been shown at the Uranium Film Festival in Rio de Janeiro, where it was given honourable mention, and more recently at the Durham Region International Film Festival in Ontario. On October 27 and 29 it was aired on the CBC Documentary TV Channel, where I saw it for the first time and was favourably impressed by how well the film-makers tell a complicated story in a clear and understandable way, with powerful visuals. The film will be available on GEM TV (streaming online) starting in January.
Look for it early in the New Year. It is well worth watching, once or even twice or more.

November 1, 2024 Posted by | Canada, media | Leave a comment

Ontario’s huge nuclear debt and other things Dutton doesn’t understand about cost of electricity

Unfortunately for us, Dutton and O’Brien are also in a hurry. They think they can deliver nuclear power plants far faster than what many experts believe is sensible and what many countries with far more nuclear experience than ourselves have been able to achieve. 

 Dutton and O’Brien also want to do this via a government-owned utility, instead of via a competitive market.

ReNewEconomy, Tristan Edis, Oct 30, 2024

All of this has left taxpayers with a massive budget and timeframe blow-out. This is what happens when we leave it to politicians in a hurry to hand pick power projects.

It seems our alternative Prime Minister Peter Dutton’s favourite topic is your electricity bill.  Given how much he talks about electricity prices, you’d think he might know a fair bit about what makes up your electricity bill, wouldn’t you?

According to Dutton and his Shadow Energy Minister Ted O’Brien, the problem is all about too much renewable energy in the mix. And their answer to the problem is nuclear power, as well as more gas.

According to Peter Dutton, “We can’t continue a situation that Labor has us on of a renewables only policy because, as we know, your power prices are just going to keep going up under this Prime Minister.”

Instead, according to Dutton, “we could be like Ontario, where they’ve got 60 or 70 per cent nuclear in the mix, and they’re paying about a quarter of the price for electricity that we are here in Australia.”

O’Brien, elaborated on this point by saying:

“We will have plenty of time in due course to talk about the costings [for their nuclear plan] once we release them here in the Australian context. But I point to Ontario in Canada, there you have up to 60 per cent of their energy mix in the grid, coming from zero emissions, nuclear energy. Their households pay around about 14 cents kilowatt hour. There are parts in Australia that will be paying up to 56 cents a kilowatt hour from July 1 this year.”

Once you actually delve into these numbers it becomes apparent that O’Brien and Dutton don’t seem know much about electricity costs and pricing.

But even worse, they don’t know how badly Ontario’s taxpayers and electricity consumers were burnt by their utility racking up huge debt building nuclear power plants equal to $70 billion in current day Australian dollars.

Do Dutton and O’Brien understand your electricity bill?

You can actually look up what Ontario households pay for electricity via the Ontario Energy Board’s bill calculator website.

This provides you with a break down on the charges a typical household faces depending on the utility you choose…………………………………………………

But notice there’s also other very significant items in this bill separate to the kilowatt-hour charge? There’s a “delivery” charge which is the cost of paying for the  distribution and transmission poles and wires. There’s also regulatory charges and also their sales tax is known as “HST” rather than GST for us.

So the Ontario 14 cents per kilowatt-hour charge that O’Brien and Dutton are referring to covers only the wholesale energy portion of their bill.

In Australia, we pay a majority of the costs of distribution and transmission in our cents per kilowatt-hour charge, in addition to wholesale energy costs, and then we get GST added on top. O’Brien and Dutton don’t seem to have appreciated this important aspect of electricity pricing in this country, which is different to Ontario.

But it actually gets worse.

I went digging on the official government energy retailer comparison sites- www.energymadeeasy.gov.au and www.energycompare.vic.gov.au and I initially couldn’t find a single Australian retailer selling electricity at 56 cents per kilowatt-hour. 

This was based on looking at offers based on a single rate tariff. Then I had a brainwave and looked at time-of-use rates. In Queensland and Victoria I still couldn’t find anyone wanting to charge me 56 cents for the peak period. 

But eventually I succeeded. Right at the bottom of the EnergyMadeEasy list of retailer offers – which were ordered from best to worst – sat EnergyAustralia as the worst offer, charging 57 cents for the peak period in South Australia (although with a compensating high solar feed-in tariff of 8.5 cents)…………………………………

To help out O’Brien and Dutton, I’ve prepared the table below which provides a proper apples versus apples comparison (as opposed to apples vs peak rate bananas) –[on original ]

…………………………………………….. Ontario’s nuclear debt debacle

Yet this comparison between Ontario and Australia misses a far more important part of the story that O’Brien and Dutton seem to be blissfully ignorant of. 

That is the history of the Ontario’s state owned utility – Ontario Hydro – and the unsustainable level of debt that it racked up over the 1980’s and 1990’s as a result of an ambitious nuclear plant construction program that went wrong. 

While this cost is no longer apparent in current electricity prices, Ontario businesses and households were stuck with paying back CAD$38.1 billion in debt (over $70 billion in Australian current day dollars) for more than 35 years after their public utility committed its last nuclear reactor to construction in 1981. 

So what went wrong?

In anticipation of large growth in electricity demand, over the 1970’s and 1980’s Ontario Hydro committed to construction 12 nuclear reactors with 9,000 MW of generating capacity. To fund the projects the public utility accessed commercial debt markets anticipating that it could comfortably repay this debt from the increased electricity demand it forecast. However, several things went wrong.

 The nuclear power stations took far longer to build and were around twice as expensive to build than had been planned

– Interest rates on debt rose to very high levels by historical standards over the 1980’s in order to contain the high levels of inflation that unfolded over the 1970’s and early 1980’s. With the nuclear power stations taking longer than expected to build, interest was accumulating on this debt with far less output from the plants to offset it.

– Lastly, Ontario Hydro’s estimate of large growth in electricity demand didn’t eventuate. A 1977 forecast projected a system peak of 57,000 MW by 1997. Actual peak demand in 1997 was 22,000 MW. This meant that the very large cost and associated debt of the large nuclear expansion had to be recovered from a much smaller volume of electricity sales than it had anticipated, making it much harder to pay off the debt without substantial increases in electricity prices.

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………… “On April 1, 1999, the Ministry of Finance determined that Ontario Hydro’s total debt and other liabilities stood at $38.1 billion, which greatly exceeded the estimated $17.2-billion market value of the assets being transferred to the new entities. The resulting shortfall of $20.9 billion was determined to be “stranded debt,” representing the total debt and other liabilities of Ontario Hydro that could not be serviced in a competitive environment.”

So the CAD$38.1 billion in debt was transferred out of the electricity companies and into a special purpose government entity called the Ontario Electricity Financial Corporation (OEFC). This debt management corporation was given the following revenues to service the debt:

– Both residential and business consumers were required to pay a special “Debt Retirement Charge”. This charge was introduced in 2002 and lasted until 2016 for residential consumers and 2018 for business customers.

– The Ontario government would forgo any corporate income and other taxes owed by the offshoot electricity companies from Ontario Hydro so they could be diverted to the OEFC to pay down debt.

– If the cumulative profits of two of the new state power companies exceeded the $520m annual interest cost on their debts, then this would go towards paying stranded debt rather than dividends to the Ontario government.

None of this is apparent on current bills, but the burden of repaying the nuclear debt left the Ontario government and its taxpayers far poorer than Dutton and O’Brien seem to appreciate.

More things O’Brien doesn’t want to understand about Ontario’s nuclear power program

Dutton and O’Brien like to claim that nuclear power plants last a very long time and so therefore the large upfront cost of these plants isn’t something we should be too worried about………………………..

It’s not as simple as this. Nuclear power plants involve a range of components which are exposed to severe heat and mechanical stress. These all need to be replaced well before you get to 60 years, and such refurbishment comes at a cost.

Ontario’s experience is that refurbishment comes at a very significant cost. Less than 25 years after the Darlington Nuclear Power Plant construction was completed, it needed to commence refurbishment. The total cost? $12.8 billion in Canadian dollars or $14 billion Australian dollars. 

This is partly why, even though the original nuclear construction cost debt had been largely paid down and nuclear operating costs are lower than coal or gas plant, Ontario still pays more for its electricity than we do.

This is because the current owner of the nuclear power plants – Ontario Power Generation – operates under regulated return model where the regulator grants them the right to recover these refurbishment costs from electricity consumers.

Are O’Brien and Dutton about to commit to another Snowy 2.0 budget blow-out, but on steroids?

………………………………The problem here is that when you don’t know very much and you’re spending other people’s money, ego can easily cloud your judgement.  Don’t get me wrong, ego will often cloud business leaders’ judgement too. But their ability to spend money to feed their ego can only so far before either competitors or shareholders intervene.

Ontario taxpayers on the other hand realised far too late that their public utility, in cahoots with their politicians, were pursuing a nuclear vanity project built upon a poor understanding of the future, and without any competitor to discipline their ego. 

Australian taxpayers have seen a similar mistake unfold with the Snowy 2.0 pumped hydro plant whose cost now stands at five times greater than the original expectation, and double what was meant to be a fixed price construction contract.

Snowy 2.0 is a parable of what goes wrong when:

– Politicians rush things leading to inadequate planning and preparation;

– Politicians fail to objectively and thoroughly evaluate alternatives; and

– Politicians fail to employ open and competitive markets to deliver end consumer outcomes.

All of this has left taxpayers with a massive budget and timeframe blow-out. This is what happens when we leave it to politicians in a hurry to hand pick power projects.

Unfortunately for us, Dutton and O’Brien are also in a hurry. They think they can deliver nuclear power plants far faster than what many experts believe is sensible and what many countries with far more nuclear experience than ourselves have been able to achieve. Dutton and O’Brien also want to do this via a government-owned utility, instead of via a competitive market.

While the budget blowout of Snowy 2.0 is bad enough, it pales into comparison with the kind of cost blow-outs that can unfold with nuclear power projects. As an example, the budget for completion of UK’s Hinkley Point C nuclear project now stands at $89.7 billion which is three times higher than what was originally budgeted.

We’ve all seen this movie before, including in Ontario, and it doesn’t end well……………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. more https://reneweconomy.com.au/ontarios-huge-nuclear-debt-and-other-things-dutton-doesnt-understand-about-cost-of-electricity/

October 31, 2024 Posted by | AUSTRALIA, business and costs, Canada | 2 Comments

South Bruce Deep Geological Repositary (DGR) opposition promises to keep fighting

Scott Dunn, Oct 29, 2024  Owen Sounds Sun Times

A group opposed to burying high-level nuclear waste in South Bruce says it will keep fighting because having just 78 more votes in favour than against the project in Monday’s referendum isn’t a “compelling” demonstration of community support. 

Bill Noll, the co-chair of Protect Our Waterways – No Nuclear Waste, said in an interview that that’s part of what will be argued at regulatory hearings if Nuclear Waste Management Organization selects South Bruce as its preferred site. 

Council for Ignace Township in Northern Ontario, the other site remaining in the running, has already voted in favour of being a willing host, after residents voted in favour of the proposal. First Nations in both locations must still decide if they’re in favour too. 

“People are still concerned, a large group of people in South Bruce who are saying no to this project,” said Noll, a retired electrical engineer who lived in South Bruce for 15 years before moving to near Ottawa to be near family.  

There were 51.2 per cent, or 1,604 voters saying yes, and 48.8 per cent, or 1,526, who voted no, according to unofficial results posted by the municipality Monday night. Eight electors declined their ballot. 

The vote result “doesn’t really give the council a mandate to say we won this,” Noll said. 

But council is expected to ratify the result which Mayor Mark Goetz said is binding on council, even as he acknowledged it was a close vote, at a special council meeting Nov. 12.  ………………………….

Now it will be up to Saugeen Ojibway Nation to decide if it would be a willing host, he said. 

…………………………………………Both Ignace and South Bruce have signed agreements with NWMO that would see them receive millions of dollars over the lifespan of the project — $418 million over 138 years in South Bruce and $170 million over 80 years in Ignace.   

………………………………………………………..Noll credited Protect Our Waterways for obtaining a referendum vote by insisting on a study of the community’s willingness because otherwise, it was going to be done by council vote.  

“NWMO said in their early stages that the community needed to have two things: one, they needed to demonstrate a compelling willingness and the other thing was they needed to be informed,” Noll said. 

“Well, I don’t think either of those conditions have been met at this stage. So that will be our agenda when we get into the regulatory process.”  https://www.owensoundsuntimes.com/news/local-news/south-bruce-dgr-opposition-promises-to-keep-fighting

October 31, 2024 Posted by | Canada, opposition to nuclear | Leave a comment

South Bruce voters narrowly approve being host to nuclear waste

Scott Dunn Oct 29, 2024 , Horeline Beacon

Teeswater is near one of the two proposed sites for an underground storage facility for the country’s highly radioactive nuclear fuel.

By a thin majority, the answer in South Bruce was yes. Bruce declaring South Bruce to be a willing host for the Nuclear Waste Management Organization’s proposed Deep Geological Repository (DGR)? resulted in 51.2 per cent, or 1,604, of voters saying yes, and 48.8 per cent, or 1,526, saying no, according to unofficial results posted by the municipality Monday night. Eight electors declined their ballot.

Voter turnout was 3,138 of 4,525 electors, or 69.3 per cent. Since turnout was above 50 per cent, the results are binding on municipal council…………………

Teeswater’s residents were divided by the prospect of burying spent nuclear fuel in a deep, underground vault, people said in interviews outside the community’s post office earlier Monday.

 Nuclear Waste Management Organization has secured  land for a possible DGR site northwest of Teeswater, part of South Bruce. If the area is selected, the NWMO would build and manage the bunker to be some 650 metres underground.

 But first NWMO needed to confirm if the community was a willing host. A referendum was chosen as the way to do that, and voting is to end at 8 p.m. today. It would take 50 per cent plus one of eligible voters to signal willingness, as long as at least 50 per cent of South Bruce voters cast ballots. Otherwise the decision was council’s to make.

……………………………….. there’s the risk of a leak, and the implicit requirement to trust officials who say the job can be done safely. Still others said they think government has already decided it will build the nuclear storage facility in South Bruce……………………………………………………………………………… more https://www.shorelinebeacon.com/news/local-news/update-south-bruce-voters-narrowly-approve-being-host-to-nuclear-waste

October 31, 2024 Posted by | Canada, politics, wastes | Leave a comment

South Bruce Municipality narrowly votes to host underground nuclear waste disposal site

Matthew McClearn, October 28, 2024, Globe and Mail,

Residents in Ontario’s Municipality of South Bruce narrowly voted in favor of hosting a nuclear waste disposal site in a referendum completed on Monday.

Unofficial results published Monday evening by Simply Voting, an online voting platform, reported that of the 3,130 votes case, 51.2% voted in favor, while 48.8% were opposed.

The Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO), a non-profit organization representing major nuclear power generation utilities, has been hunting since 2010 for a site to store spent fuel from nuclear power reactors. Known as a deep geological repository, or DGR, the facility would be built more than half a kilometer underground, at an estimated cost of $26 billion.

South Bruce, located more than 120 kilometres north of London and home to about 6,200 residents, is a rural, largely agricultural area of less than 500 square kilometers. It includes a few small communities including Mildmay, Formosa, Culross and Teeswater. The NWMO has secured more than 1,500 acres of land north of Teeswater for the project.

From the outset, the NWMO said it would build the facility only “in an area with informed and willing hosts,” which meant one municipality and one Indigenous group. South Bruce is one of two finalists to host the DGR, down from an original list of 22 communities that expressed interest. The NWMO said it will announce its final selection by Dec. 31st.

Under a hosting agreement the municipality signed earlier this year, South Bruce stands to receive $418-million over nearly a century and a half if selected. The municipality agreed not to do anything to oppose or halt the project, and at the NWMO’s request will communicate its support. The NWMO can modify the project in several respects, including changing the sorts of waste it will store there. The facility would be constructed between 2036 and 2042, ns would then receive, process and store nuclear waste for another half-century.

South Bruce’s byelection, which began last week, asked residents to vote by phone or Internet on whether they were in favor of hosting the DGR. Simply Voting reported turnout of 69.3%, substantially above the 50% minimum required to make the outcome binding under Ontario’s Municipal Elections Act.

The other community in the running is Ignace, Ont., a town of 1,200 more than 200 kilometres northwest of Thunder Bay. Its council voted to accept the DGR in July, and would receive $170-million under its own hosting agreement. (The move was supported by 77% of registered voters who participated in a non-binding online poll.) That location, known as the Revell site, is about 40 km west of the town.

The NWMO also seeks approval from two Indigenous communities: The Saugeen Ojibway Nation for the South Bruce site, and the Wabigoon Lake Ojibway Nation for the Revell site. Neither First Nation has yet signaled consent, but the NWMO spokesperson Craig MacBride said the organization is “in active discussions” with both.

“The NWMO still anticipates selecting a site by the end of this year,” he wrote in an e-mailed response to questions.

As of June 2023, Canada had accumulated 3.3 million spent fuel bundles, each the size of a fire log. They’re currently stored at nuclear power plants in Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick, and roughly 90,000 new ones are added each year. Upon removal from a reactor, they’re highly radioactive and must be stored in pools of water for about a decade; afterward, they’re moved to storage containers made from reinforced concrete and lined with half-inch steel plate.

The South Bruce referendum follows a campaign that lasted a dozen years and produced rifts within the community.

Protect Our Waterways, a local group opposed to the DGR from the outset, had demanded a referendum. Some DGR supporters opposed putting the matter to a public vote, preferring to leave the decision to elected officials. Municipal officials pointed to the area’s declining economy and population, and emphasized the benefits brought by the NWMO’s spending. Supporters and opponents often accused each other of producing misinformation………………………………………………………….. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-south-bruce-municipality-narrowly-votes-to-host-underground-nuclear/#:~:text=Its%20council%20voted%20to%20accept,km%20west%20of%20the%20town.

October 30, 2024 Posted by | Canada, politics | Leave a comment

‘You couldn’t make this up’: Expert pans Ontario nuclear option

SMH, By Bianca Hall and Nick O’Malley, October 28, 2024

Ontario subsidises its citizens’ electricity power bills by $7.3 billion a year from general revenue, an international energy expert has said, contradicting the Coalition’s claim that nuclear reactors would drive power prices down in Australia.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has repeatedly cited the Canadian province as a model for cheaper power prices from nuclear.

“In Ontario, that family is paying half of what the family is paying here in Perth for their electricity because of nuclear power,” Dutton said in March. “Why wouldn’t we consider it as a country?”

In July, Dutton said Canadian consumers paid about one-quarter of Australian prices for electricity.

Professor Mark Winfield, an academic from York University in Canada who specialises in energy and environment, on Monday said the reaction among people in Ontario to the comparison had ranged from disbelief to “you couldn’t make this up”.

Ontario embarked on a massive building spree between the 1960s and the 1990s, Winfield told a briefing hosted by the Climate Council and the Smart Energy Council.

In the process, he said, the provincial-owned utility building the generators “effectively bankrupted itself”. About $21 billion in debt had to be stranded to render the successor organisation Ontario Power Generation economically viable.

In 2015, the Canadian government approved a plan to refurbish 10 ageing reactors, but Winfield said the refurbishment program had also been beset by cost blowouts.

“The last one, [in] Darlington, east of Toronto, was supposed to cost $C4 billion and ended up costing $C14 [billion],” Winfield said.

“And that was fairly typical of what we saw, of a cost overrun in the range of about 2.5 times over estimate.”

In Melbourne, Dutton said while he respected new Queensland Premier David Crisafulli’s opposition to nuclear, he would work with “sensible” premiers in Queensland, South Australia and NSW on his plan, if he was elected………………………………………………..

Winfield said household bills were kept artificially low under the Ontario model, despite the high cost of refurbishing ageing nuclear facilities.

“There’s a legacy of that still in the system that we are effectively subsidising electricity bills to the tune of about $C7.3 billion a year out of general revenues. That constitutes most of the provincial deficit; that’s money that otherwise could be going on schools and hospitals.”

Dutton’s comments came as a parliamentary inquiry into the suitability of nuclear power for Australia continued in Canberra. Experts provided evidence on how long it would take to build a nuclear fleet, and the potential cost and impact on energy prices compared with the government’s plan to replace the ageing coal fleet with a system of renewables backed by storage and gas peakers.

……………………………………………………….. In its annual GenCost, CSIRO estimated earlier this year that a single large-scale nuclear reactor in Australia would cost $16 billion and take nearly two decades to build, too late for it to help meet Australia’s international climate change commitments, which requires it to cut emissions 43 per cent by 2030. It found renewables to be the cheapest option for Australia.

Dutton has so far refused to be drawn on the costs of his nuclear policy. Opposition energy spokesman Ted O’Brien said the Coalition would release costings before the next federal election, which must be held by May.

O’Brien told this masthead “expert after expert” had provided evidence that nuclear energy placed downward pressure on power prices around the world. ……………. https://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/you-couldn-t-make-this-up-expert-pans-ontario-nuclear-option-20241028-p5klx1.html

October 29, 2024 Posted by | AUSTRALIA, Canada, spinbuster | Leave a comment

Letter laments the unscientific assurances of safety by spokesmen from the nuclear industry.

Dr. Paul Moroz, 25 Oct 24

I am writing about the Deep Geological Registry (DGR) proposed for Teeswater by the NWMO as a way of managing all of Canada’s high-energy nuclear waste. I can no longer remain silent as I have witnessed the reckless way that the NWMO has misinformed the public and municipal leaders on the real potential risks of DGR technology.

I am a Professor of Medicine having taught in Canadian and US medical schools for more than three decades. I have served as an independent reviewer for many, many research proposals for new medications, new surgical procedures, new technologies with the obvious focus being on the evidence-based demonstration of human safety for the proposed intervention.

Having observed for the last two years the public disclosures by the NWMO, I am appalled at their claims of DGR technology as a “settled science” and “best practice” for the management of high-level nuclear waste near human settlements and water-sources. There are currently no functioning DGRs anywhere in the world. One currently being built in Finland is years away from starting up. Also, three test-DGRs done in the last two decades (one in the US and two in Germany) all reportedly leaked or had major problems. The NWMO are simply in no position to call this a “settled science” or “best practice”.

The NWMO may think it is a “settled science” from a geological point of view, but they cannot claim this from a medical or population health perspective at this time. No one can. Yet, NWMO nuclear engineers and physicists claim it is safe for humans; but, where are NWMO’s doctors, professors, population health experts and epidemiologists? They do not have any, as far as I can see.

I contacted Health Canada to ask about DGR safety and they told me they have left this all to the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC), an offshoot of the nuclear industry. I cannot trust this relationship as a truly independent assessment of something so crucial as the possibility of thousands of years of leaking radiation into our environment. This is just so wrong.

No Canadian or US medical school or medical regulatory board would accept this kind of non-evidence-based, non-independent claim of safety of an unproven technology, I believe. If a surgeon tried to perform a never-done-before surgical procedure without first extensive study, testing and reliable confirmation of testing over time, that surgeon would very quickly lose [his or her] medical license. 

Yet, it seems OK for the NWMO to so openly mislead the public and council members with claims of safety when they simply do not know how safe a DGR really is. No one does, since there are no working DGRs anywhere in the World. “Taking a chance” with a million years of decaying high-level nuclear waste in populated farmland and watershed is simply just unacceptable if it can first be tested remotely.


Canada’s first DGR should be done in an area far away from populated farmland and waterways and certainly away from the Great Lakes, the source of water for 40 million people in both Canada and the US. Such a DGR could then be tested for a reasonable period of time before it can be labeled “safe”. I would suggest testing a DGR for at least 100 years. Yes, 100 years is not unreasonable given that DGR radioactivity will be active for an estimated one million years. Only then might we call a DGR “reasonably safe” to nearby humans.

I went to NWMO sponsored DGR public meetings twice, once in Teeswater in 2023 and once in Mildmay in 2024. Opposition voices were not allowed a platform – so much for an open public meeting. No open microphone for questions were allowed and written submitted questions were hand-picked. I submitted questions that were not read out or answered.

On Oct 5, 2024 Protect Our Waterways featured presentations in Teeswater by physicians, nuclear physicists, scientist/broadcaster David Suzuki and a legal scholar, all of whom were never invited to speak at NWMO public meetings. Open minded people should be asking themselves why? All these speakers were against the unproven DGR claims made by NWMO.

I am not anti-nuclear, and I am not even anti DGR technology. But the fashion in which this has been presented by the NWMO is irresponsible and misleading, I believe. No one should accept placing never-before tested DGR technology into populated farmland and cattle country near the Great Lakes, the biggest collection of fresh water in the world. The risks over the course of thousands of years of possible radiation leakage, even a small one, is simply too much for a never tested technology.

Dr. Paul Moroz, MD, MSc, FRCSC, FAAOS,

Southampton, Ontario

Prof of Surgery (part-time), McMaster University,

Faculty of Health Sciences.

Former Prof of Surgery,

University of Hawaii,

John A. Burns School of Medicine.

October 27, 2024 Posted by | Canada, safety | Leave a comment

Has Canada’s Nuclear Waste Management Organization earned the public’s trust?

by Gordon Edwards, Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility, October 24 2024.

http://www.ccnr.org/NWMO_and_Public_Trust_2024.pdf

The Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) represents Canada’s nuclear waste producers. For 14 years, NWMO has been searching for a “willing host community” to accept all of Canada’s high-level radioactive waste (used nuclear fuel) for burial in a Deep Geological Repository (DGR). In 2010, NWMO promised “the industry’s plan will only proceed in an area with informed and willing hosts.”

The residents of South Bruce are now voting on whether or not to lock themselves into the NWMO plan. I am deeply disappointed to find that, for more than a dozen years, NWMO has been consistently misleading these residents about the true nature of the hazards from used nuclear fuel. In fact, NWMO has systematically withheld the most relevant scientific information from candidate host communities.

Each candidate community has a Community Liaison Committee (CLC) that meets with NWMO 10 times a year under a program called “Learn More”. Despite more than a hundred meetings over a dozen years, NWMO has never called attention to the dozens of varieties of human-made radioactive materials – the very thing that makes used fuel so dangerous. These toxic materials include radioactive varieties of commonly occurring non-radioactive elements like iodine, cesium , and strontium.

All reactor-created radioactive waste materials are known carcinogens. Most of them are not found in nature. They are particularly dangerous when ingested, inhaled or otherwise absorbed into the body. To get into the environment, they must leak out of the used fuel – something that happens regularly in reactor cooling systems, including the used fuel storage pools.

Does NWMO think that Canadians are not entitled to know about these  materials and their dangers to humans and the environment?

When I spoke to the South Bruce Community Liaison Committee (CLC) in 2020, one man who had already served for seven years on the CLC for South Bruce was caught completely off-guard when I spoke about these things.

He said, “You mentioned about radioactive materials. I guess that’s the first I’ve heard of them. There are names I have not heard of before – strontium [radioactive strontium], iodine [radioactive iodine]. That’s the first I’ve heard of it. How are they created, or generated? How do they come about?”

from a South Bruce CLC member, November 4 2020

I was stunned. This man had met with NWMO at least 60 or 70 times to “Learn More”, yet he knew nothing about the nature of these radioactive waste materials that will almost certainly be released into the local environment when six million individual fuel bundles are repackaged for burial.  Even tiny cracks or pinholes in the metallic fuel cladding will allow radioactive iodine and cesium to be released in the form of a gaseous vapour that is difficult to contain completely. These gases turn back into a solid on contact with any cool surface.

In particular, radioactive iodine contaminates cattle feed such as hay or alfalfa, and then re-concentrates in the cow’s milk. When children drink that milk, the radioactive iodine concentrates even further in the thyroid gland. The iodine in the thyroid is typically 10,000 times more concentrated than the iodine released in the air. In Belarus, 5000 children had to have their thyroid glands surgically removed as a result of radioactive iodine from the 1986 Chernobyl accident. Do the dairy farmers in the South Bruce area not deserve to be informed of such facts?

Radioactive cesium released from Chernobyl contaminated sheep meat in Northern England and Wales for twenty years after the accident. Even today, when hunters kill a wild boar in Germany or Eastern Europe, the meat is unfit for human consumption due to radioactive cesium contamination from Chernobyl. Radioactive cesium concentrates in the soft tissues, hence the meat of farm animals. On the other hand, radioactive strontium goes to the bones, where it can cause bone cancer and/or leukemia.

NWMO has insisted that the used fuel is completely solid, implying that there can be no leakage. On the NWMO web site we are told that, in order to prevent leakage, “the first barrier in the multiple-barrier system is the fuel pellet … a ceramic material, which is baked in a furnace to produce a hard, high-density pellet.”

But NWMO does not reveal that used fuel pellets are always badly cracked and fractured. About 2 percent of the radioactive iodine and cesium vapours have already escaped from the used pellet and are available for immediate release as soon as there is the slightest penetration of the cladding. 

Iodine-129 has a half-life of 16 million years, so when it is released into the environment it is there to stay.  Cesium-135 has a half-life of 3.5 million years, so it too will be a permanent threat. Cesium-137 has a half-life of only 30 years, so half of it is already gone by the time the used fuel arrives at its final destination, but the amount released into the local environment will stick around for several centuries. 

As a science educator, I find NWMO’s failure to highlight these facts unforgivable. They are asking the public to trust them for countless generations to come. I do not believe they have earned that trust.

P.S. Here is a video of my presentation to the residents of Teeswater and South Bruce on October 5, 2024. Other speakers included David Suzuki, Brennain Lloyd of Northwatch, Dale Dewar of IPPNW-Canada, and Theresa McClenaghan of the Canadian Environmental Law Association.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sM1kfDsS9Uc  -a video of the entire event:

October 26, 2024 Posted by | Canada, wastes | Leave a comment

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