Lake Huron Nuclear Dump: 'political posturing' says MP Masse

[Oscar]

EDWARDS: Lake Huron Nuclear Dump: Extended deadline called ‘political posturing’ by NDP MP Brian Masse

Background: June 12 2015

Under Canadian Law, the Environment Minister is supposed to announce the government's decision within 120 days after receiving the recommendations of an Environmental Assessment Panel. But there is an election coming up in the fall, and the government would rather not be "cornered" into making a decision on this contentious Lake Huron Nuclear Dump.

So the Minister has asked the CEAA (Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency) to invite public comments on what kind of "conditions" to impose on OPG before giving them permission to go ahead. That will buy the Minister time to decide until December, instead of September.

Comments can be sent to [ ceaa.conditions.acee@ceaa-acee.gc.ca ] or call the National Programs Directorate at 1-866-582-1884.

The nuclear industry often uses language to deceive. A good example of this is the use of the terms "low-level" and "medium-level" nuclear wastes to imply that these wastes are of little concern. In fact, the industry has decreed that the only wastes that are allowed to be called "high-level" nuclear wastes are the irradiated fuel elements, whether in solid or liquid form.

High-level radioactive waste is by far the most dangerous material on Earth. The Ontario Royal Commission on Electric Power Planning noted in 1978 that a single irradiated CANDU fuel bundle, freshly discharged from the reactor, is so intensely radioactive that it would kill any unprotected human being at a distance of one metre in about 20 seconds. The same report notes that the irradiated fuel discharged in one year from one CANDU reactor is initially so radiotoxic that it would require a volume of water approximately equal to Lake Superior just to dilute the waste down to the maximum legally allowed limit of radioactive contamination. Even after a hundred years, the volume of water needed would be about 1/10 of Lake Superior.

But anything that is not irradiated nuclear fuel cannot be called high-level waste, no matter how radioactive it may be. At Fukushima, over 1,500 huge tanks contain 280,000 tonnes of radioactively contaminated water that is considered, at worst, medium-level wastes. Yet a single puddle spilled from one of these tanks was found to be so radioactive that a man standing two feet away for an hour would receive a dose of radiation equivalent to the maximum permitted exposure of an atomic worker for five years.

Even after the irradiated fuel has been removed from a nuclear reactor, the inner structures have become so radioactive that the dismantlement of the core area, resulting in thousands of truckloads of radioactive rubble, is typically delayed for 40 years in order to reduce the radiation exposure of the workers assigned to carry out this odious task. Yet for each of OPG's 20 power reactors, all of this "decommissioning waste" is intended to go into the Lake Huron underground dump.

Some of the less radioactive components in the primary cooling system of a CANDU reactor are the 8 huge steam generators, each containing about 5000 narrow tubes that become permanently contaminated with radioactive deposits from the core of the reactor. Many of these deposits have radioactive half-lives measured in the tens of thousands or even millions of years, and about 90 percent of them are isotopes of plutonium.

OPG plans to "segment" over 300 of these steam generators, each weighing about 100 tonnes -- that's 30,000 tonnes -- before emplacing them in the underground repository. Each decommissioned CANDU reactor also yields thousands of highly radioactive pressure tubes, calandria tubes, and feeder pipes. At Bruce, while taking these pipes apart, over 500 workers were exposed to breathing plutonium-laden dust for a period of almost four weeks without benefit of a respirator. At one point the workers refused to work because a radiation alarm went off, but they were told by a radiation safety authority to return to work because it was perfectly safe. No one has accepted responsibility for this episode although it is clear that the radiation exposure of these workers was irresponsible. They will carry a body burden of plutonium for years, perhaps for the rest of their lives.

The CNSC boasts that "We will never compromise safety". It appears that when they do, they just don't admit it.

Gordon Edwards, President
Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility
http://www.ccnr.org

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Extended deadline called 'political posturing' by NDP MP Brian Masse

[ http://www.lfpress.com/2015/06/08/exten ... rian-masse ]

By Debora Van Brenk, The London Free Press, Monday, June 8, 2015

Nuclear-waste disposal near the Great Lakes has been a political hot potato for months and now it's been dropped into the upcoming federal election.

Rather than decide for or against a plan to build an underground vault for low- and mid-level waste near Kincardine's Bruce Nuclear power plant, Federal Environment Minister Leona Aglukkaq has extended the deadline to Sept. 1 for commenting on a recommendation that the project go ahead.

That means the matter would be decided after the fall federal election, not before it.

"It's to try to play it both ways," charged MP Brian Masse (NDP - Windsor), who is his party's opposition critic for Great Lakes and the Canada-US border. "They're looking to [attract] voters that oppose and support this issue."

He called the delay 'political posturing' that could backfire at election time this autumn.

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[ http://www.lfpress.com/2015/06/08/exten ... rian-masse ]