NUKE WASTE(ON): Eight New Buildings Planned At Kincardine

[Oscar]

SUBJECT: Eight New Buildings Planned At Kincardine Nuclear Waste Facility
FROM: Gordon Edwards" <ccnr@web.ca>
DATE: January 10, 2018

Background

For the first time in Canada’s history -- unless we, the citizens of Canada and our American neighbours to the South act to stop it -- hundreds of varieties of human-made radioactive waste materials created through the nuclear fission process will be emplaced in an underground repository (DGR = Deep Underground Repository) less than a mile from Lake Huron and eventually abandoned there. These wastes include constituents that will remain dangerously radioactive for many hundreds of thousands, even millions of years.

For example, here are some of the “half-lives” of materials to be abandoned:

Carbon-14, 5,730 years
Nickel-59, 76,000 years
Nickel-63, 101,000 years
Niobium-94 20,300 years
Radium-226, 1600 years
Americium-241 432 years
Plutonium-239 24,000 years
Technetium-99, 120,000 years
Iodine-129, 15,700,000 years
Chlorine-36, 301,000 years
Calcium-41, 102,000 years

The half-life is the time required for HALF of the radioactive atoms to disintegrate. If you double that period of time, there will be only ONE QUARTER of the original amount remaining. If you triple that time period, only half of that amount — ONE EIGHTH of the original amount will remain. It will take TEN HALF-LIVES for 99.9 percent of the radioactive atoms to be gone, so that only ONE THOUSANDTH of the original amount remains. So you can multiply all those years listed above by a factor of 10 to see just how long that will take!

The radioactive garbage to be emplaced in the DGR, if Ontario Power Generation has its way, will include ALL the radioactive waste produced by the 20 nuclear reactors owned by OPG, except for the irradiated nuclear fuel. And OPG is now extending the life of most of these reactors so they will be adding to the radioactive inventory for the next 20 or 30 years.

The Saugeen Ojibway First Nation has the power to stop this abandonment project by refusing to give their approval. However the burden should not be on their shoulders alone. We all have an obligation to protect the Great Lakes and ensure that good governance is in place to protect our grandchildren’s grandchildren’s grandchildren.

Gordon Edwards.
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Eight New Buildings Planned At Kincardine Nuclear Waste Facility

[ http://blackburnnews.com/midwestern-ont ... ncardine/# ]

BY JORDAN MACKINNON JANUARY 8, 2018 2:51PM https://tinyurl.com/y7uchljt

2018 is looking to be a busy year for Ontario Power Generation’s waste management operations.

Vice President of Nuclear Waste Management Lise Morton says they have plans for either the design or construction of eight buildings at the Western Waste Management Facility on the Bruce Power site.

She says five buildings are planned to store low-or-intermediate level nuclear waste, an additional two buildings will be constructed for dry storage of used nuclear fuel from the Bruce Power reactors, as well as a waste processing building.

She says the processing building will help divert some waste from permanent storage on the site.

“A building in which our low-level waste specifically, is sorted through so that we look for opportunities for either diversion of some of that waste, decontamination of some of that waste and some further processing,” says Morton. “So ultimately, we’re trying to reduce our environmental footprint.”

Morton says the additional development at the Western Waste Management Facility is not as a result of delays in gaining approval for the planned deep geologic repository on the site, which is proposed to store low-and-intermediate level nuclear waste nearly 700-metres below the surface.

She says they remain committed to the DGR project, including fulfilling the latest request from federal environment minister Catherine McKenna, who asked OPG to update its cumulative effects projections to include impacts on local First Nations communities.

Morton says they are also continuing positive dialogue with Saugeen Ojibway Nation, maintaining their commitment to only proceed with First Nations approval.

“We believe that that engagement is going very well, we remain committed to Saugeen Ojibway Nation, as well committed in a 2013 letter from our president that we will not build the DGR without their support,” says Morton. “So we continue working with them and respecting the community’s timeline and their process, and working with them through that process.”

Morton says OPG does not expect to have an answer from Saugeen Ojibway Nation on the approval process for at least a year.

[Oscar]

Some supporters of OPG's Lake Huron radioactive waste dump are beginning to have second thoughts

Gordon Edwards" <ccnr@web.ca>
Subject: [cleangreensask]
Sent date: 11/01/2018 09:26
To: "Gordon Edwards"<ccnr@web.ca>

Background:

Ontario Power Generation (OPG) wants to build a Deep Geologic Repository (DGR) to house all of the radioactive waste from all of Ontario’s 20 nuclear power reactors, except for irradiated nuclear fuel, less than a mile from Lake Huron, close to the town of Kincardine, Ontario. The plan is to eventually abandon these wastes there.

OPG admits that these wastes will remain dangerously radioactive for at least 100,000 years. The Great Lakes were formed by the retreat of glaciers about 10,000 years ago. The Egyptian pyramids are about 5,000 years old. Nuclear reactors have been in existence for about 75 years.

But even a cursory glance at the radioactive inventory intended for OPG’s DGR shows that 100,000 years is far too short a time to expect the waste to remain dangerously radioactive.

Here are the “half-lives” of just a few of the hundreds of radioactive elements that are intended to be interred for eternity without monitoring:

Nickel-59, 76,000 years x 10 760,000 years
Nickel-63, 101,000 years x 10 1,010,000 years
Niobium-94 20,300 years x 10 203,000 years
Plutonium-239 24,000 years x 10 240,000 years
Technetium-99, 120,000 years x 10 1,200,000 years
Iodine-129, 15,700,000 years x 10 157,000,000 years
Chlorine-36, 301,000 years x 10 3,010,000 years
Calcium-41, 102,000 years x 10 1,020,000 years

The half-life is the time required for HALF of the radioactive atoms to disintegrate. If you double that period of time, there will be only ONE QUARTER of the original amount remaining. If you triple that time period, only half of that amount — ONE EIGHTH of the original amount will remain. It will take TEN HALF-LIVES for 99.9 percent of the radioactive atoms to be gone, so that only ONE THOUSANDTH of the original amount remains. So you can multiply all those years listed above by a factor of 10 to see just how long that will take!

Every underground repository for radioactive wastes that has so far been tried for more than a decade has suffered major setbacks. In Germany, two underground repositories for low and intermediate level radioactive wastes have failed dramatically. At Carlsbad New Mexico, low and intermediate level waste stored in a drum 750 metres below the surface exploded in 2014, creating a “flame-thrower” effect and sending plutonium-contaminated dust vertically upwards to the surface where 22 workers were contaminated. Long-term clean-up costs could top $2 billion, approximately equal to the cost of cleaning up after the 1979 Three Mile Island reactor meltdown in Harrisburg Pennsylvania.

The German government is now paying a lot of money to have radioactive waste removed from the Asse-2 Salt Mine, which has been collapsing and leaking for decades. The difficult job of extracting radioactive waste from the failed repository will take at least 30 years. Another German radioactive waste repository, at Morsleben, is undergoing collapse as well. Remedial measures costing 2.2 billion euros are underway.

Gordon Edwards.
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Councillor On The Fence Over Proposed DGR

[ http://www.bayshorebroadcasting.ca/news ... wsID=98761 ]

Neil Menage having second thoughts over DGR for low & intermediate level nuclear waste.

Saugeen Shores | by John Divinski, Bayshore Broadcasting, January 10, 2018

Ontario Power Generation (OPG) is still on record as supporting a Deep Geologic Repository (DGR) to store low and intermediate nuclear waste.

The subject came up at Monday's (JAN 8 ) Saugeen Shores Committee of the Whole meeting as OPG's vice-president of Nuclear Waste Management Lise Morton brought council up to date on what the company is doing.

But it was Councillor Neil Menage who threw a curve-ball into the conversation.

Menage, who has supported the DGR in the past, says he's having second-thoughts about whether or not low and intermediate nuclear waste, needs to be stored in a planned repository at the company's Western Waste Management Facility near Bruce Power.

He says he'd like to see OPG hold another Open House meeting to explain again why we need to spend over one-billion-dollars to have the low and intermediate waste go underground.

Morton, reacting to Menage, says "It's important to have a repository for low and intermediate level waste to really protect the environment because these wastes do remain radioactive for many years to come. We maintain the DGR is the right solution for those wastes."

She says though that they will take under advisement about possibly setting up future Open Houses, to explain the company's thinking about a DGR.

The repository plans call for the wastes to be buried 680-metres below ground.

OPG continues to wait for approval to move ahead with construction of the DGR and that isn't expected for at least a year.