“Continuing to use conventional warehouse structures to store deadly waste and building more of them right on the edge of the lake is not taking the safety of millions of residents seriously.”
A Call-Out from the citizens advocacy group, Ontario Clean Air Alliance
Posted January 25th, 2023 on Niagara At Large
Surely Niagara West and Ford government MPP Sam Oosterhoff – in keeping with Premier Doug Ford’s zeal to f continue generating nuclear energy – would be pleased to accept a facility for storing nuclear waste in his riding.
(A Brief Foreword Note from Niagara At Large reporter and publisher Doug Draper – If we need to store nuclear waste anywhere in Ontario, perhaps the good people in the Niagara West Riding represented by Ford Government MPP Sam Oosterhoff would be willing to take it.
The MPP is very popular and appears vitually unbeatable in the rural riding of Niagara West and he most certainly supports his Premier Doug Ford’s desire to continue generating nuclear energy. In that spirit, there is land around the Smithville area in his riding that may be available, sine farmers seem willing to sell it to developers anyway.
And at least it is further inland from the Great Lakes.
Certainly Mr. Oosterhoff’s loyal Doug Ford constituents would embrace this. Better than more of those wind farms, right? – Doug Draper)
The aging Pickering Nuclear Power Plant on the north shores of Lake Ontario.
This Thursday, January 26, Ontario Power Generation (OPG) will be seeking permission from the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) to continue to store high-level radioactive wastes at the Darlington Nuclear Station in conventional warehouse buildings on the shore of Lake Ontario; and build new waste storage buildings even closer to the edge of the lake.
We need to tell the CNSC that OPG’s plan is unacceptable [https://www.cleanairalliance.org/storage/]. Continuing to use conventional warehouse structures to store deadly waste and building more of them right on the edge of the lake is not taking the safety of millions of residents seriously.
OPG should be listening to the International Joint Commission’s Great Lakes Water Quality Board which is calling for OPG to build “hardened” storage facilities away from the Lake Ontario shoreline.
It is time for OPG to shift from its “cheap and insecure” style of waste storage to the much more secure solution that has been adopted by German nuclear stations: above ground, attack-resistant, reinforced concrete vaults OPG has the cash: According to a report prepared for OPG, the total capital cost of building reinforced concrete vaults at Darlington would be approximately $333 million. Meanwhile, OPG’s nuclear waste storage fund has a market value of $11.3 billion.
There is no good reason for the CNSC to accept OPG’s second-rate plan. After all, the total radioactivity of the nuclear wastes stored at the Darlington Nuclear Station is more than 150 times greater than the total radiation released to the atmosphere by the Fukushima accident in 2011.
This waste remains highly toxic to humans and other life for countless hundreds of years. but the Fiord government wants to continue generating it.
It is time for Minister of Natural Resources Jonathan Wilkinson to remind the CNSC that it is not its job to protect OPG’s profits. The CNSC often confuses the nuclear industry’s interests with its own safety mandate [https://www.cleanairalliance.org/is-public-safety-really-the-top-priority-at-canadas-nuclear-safety-commission/]. This has to stop, and ordering OPG to build proper hardened storage facilities away from the lake is a good way for the CNSC to demonstrate that it is taking nuclear safety seriously.
The CNSC will be holding a one-day virtual hearing on Thursday, Jan. 26 starting at 9 a.m. You can click here- [http://www.nuclearsafety.gc.ca/eng/the-commission/webcasts/index.cfm] to watch the hearing. We’re scheduled to make our oral submission in the afternoon.
What you can do
Please contact Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson and the President of the CNSC, Rumina Velshi [https://www.cleanairalliance.org/storage/], and tell them to put safety first by directing OPG to immediately build above-ground, attack-resistant, reinforced concrete vaults, away from the Lake Ontario shoreline.
Send your message here [https://www.cleanairalliance.org/storage/]
Thanks for your help!
– Angela Bischoff, Director
The Ontario Clean Air Alliance (OCAA), established in 1997, successfully led the campaign to phase out the use of dirty coal power in Ontario. We are now working to move our province to a 100% renewable electricity system. This includes replacing our high-emission gas power plants and high-cost nuclear power stations with a combination of conservation, made-in-Ontario wind and solar power, and water power imports and storage from Quebec. Together these would lower our electricity bills and greenhouse gas pollution. For more info click on : CleanAirAlliance.org OntarioClimateAction.ca
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I’m surprised that Premiere Ford or MPP Sam Oosterhoff hasn’t suggested to Ontario Power Generation that it would be okay to store the high level radio active waste in the same warehouse where they are storing hundreds of thousands of illegible double blue ”A PLACE TO GROW” license plates. I’m quite sure there would be ample room beside the Carbon Tax gas pump stickers that didn’t stick.
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Hi Doug, good to see you soldiering on with great articles.
Its not just the storage, but, the stuff has to get there, and estimated to take 30,000 truck shipments thru Ontario cities to get it there.
Very few Canadians know there’s a technology in development in New Brunswick by Moltex Canada that can turn a lot of the co-called ‘waste’ into more electricity instead of shipping, storing, burying the ‘waste’, which will be done by Americans, and they want all the ‘waste’ because more money in their pockets.
https://www.moltexenergy.com/new-study-shows-strong-public-support-for-nuclear-waste-recycling-in-new-brunswick-2/
Its a Canada/UK partnership doing this. They are also developing better power plants, SMRs, Small Modular Reactors.
https://www.moltexenergy.com/
But instead of Canadian developed tech, Ontario has chosen American – Again !! for SMRs, and so have other provinces, under the SNC-Lavalin (those scandal scumbags, who bought the Chalk River site as their HQ, but have absolutely no Nuclear background ) and partnered with the Americans because Americans call the shots in most of Canada.
So, lots and lots of American BS going on in Canada’s nuke industry – as always has.
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