| Conservationists are criticizing the federal government for championing the storage of radioactive waste deep underground, arguing there’s no guarantee it will be safe. They also question which area of the country would be willing to accept radioactive waste for burial.
Last week, Minister of Natural Resources Gary Lunn announced his department had accepted the Nuclear Waste Management Organization’s recommendation for permanent storage of radioactive waste in a "deep geological depository." However, Lunn says years of public consultation will be required before a site can be chosen
Opponents of nuclear energy often point to the fact that Canada currently has no long-term plan in place to store radioactive waste as a reason that the industry shouldn’t continue to grow. For decades, nuclear reactors have stored the waste on-site. The issue has become a relevant question for Albertans because Energy Alberta Corporation is proposing to build two accelerated Candu reactors that would each produce 1,100 megawatts of electricity. Peace River and Whitecourt town councils have both expressed interest in the reactors being built in their communities. If approved, the proposed nuclear reactors in Alberta would be the largest ever built in the country, which would rapidly add to Canada’s radioactive waste problem.
Mark Winfield, director of environmental governance for the Pembina Institute, is not convinced burying the waste underground is a smart option. "According to the Nuclear Waste Management Organization you have to basically isolate it from the environment and human contact for a million years. You have to come up with something that is going to stay secure for at least 100 times longer than human civilization has existed," he says. "There’s not only environmental risks, there’s also security risks as well. How do you make it secure? How do you stop the storage sites from becoming the plutonium mines of the future?"
When it comes to environmental concerns, the biggest is that radioactive waste could leach into groundwater. Transporting the radioactive waste from reactors to the underground storage site would also entail safety risks, Winfield says. "It would take 30 years, two or three truckloads a day for 30 years to move all the existing stuff to a site," he says. Ontario alone produces 6,000 cubic metres of radioactive waste a year
Winfield says it’s hard to imagine any community that would accept radioactive waste being buried near it. Manitoba has adopted legislation prohibiting nuclear waste dumps and people in northern Ontario "go nuts" over the idea, he says. Even if a site could be found, Winfield says an underground storage plan would take around 300 years to implement and would cost $24 billion. He also points out that no country in the world is currently storing radioactive waste underground.
Paul Pryce, the Calgary chair of the activist group Albertans Against Nuclear Energy, says he’s worried about whether the radioactive waste would truly be secure. "In practice, I don’t think (burying nuclear waste) is realistically possible unless they force it down a community’s throat. I don’t think that would look too good in the polls," he says.
Stephen Hazell, executive director of the Sierra Club of Canada, shares concerns about the underground storage method. "This stuff is toxic for hundreds and hundreds of generations. Just to bury it underground and forget about it is no solution," he says. "The idea that we can monitor this stuff and we can make sure that it remains stored safely over that period, that’s wildly speculative that we could actually do that."
Hazell also worries about transportation of radioactive waste. "We’d have these great caravans going up (Highway) 401 or 417 carrying this highly toxic nuclear waste. Which cities in southern Canada are going to put their hands up and say ‘we want these caravans of toxic material running past our community?’" he asks.
Lunn defends the plan, saying it will allow radioactive waste to be continuously monitored and would also allow spent fuel to be retrieved and reused in the future as nuclear technology advances. |
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