Stop the Great Lakes Nuclear Dump billboard, seen by hundreds of thousands of commuters per day in the Toronto area
[Send your hand-written comments and questions about this insane proposal to:
Debra Myles; Joint Review Panel Secretariat; 160 Elgin St.; 22nd Floor; Ottawa, ON; K1A 0H3; Canada.
Or email them to:
DGR.Review@ceaa-acee.gc.ca.
You can also sign the online petition being circulated by the grassroots Bruce area environmental and residential group "Stop the Great Lakes Nuclear Dump." (See their Toronto area billboard, left)]
The federal Joint Review Panel (JRP) conducting an environmental assessment of Ontario Power Generation's (OPG) proposal to bury all of the province's so-called "low" and "intermediate" level radioactive wastes (L&ILRWs, from 20 atomic reactors across Ontario) in a "Deep Geologic Repository" (DGR) at the Bruce Nuclear Generating Station, 400 meters from the waters of Lake Huron, has announced that May 24th will close the time window for asking questions. Next stop, full hearings.
Bruce Nuclear Generating Station is one of the world's single biggest nuclear power plants. It "hosts" a total of 9 reactors, as well as incineration for 20 reactors' LLRWs, and warehouses for the leftover ashes, as well as ILRWs of Ontario. It is located a mere 50 miles across Lake Huron from Michigan.
The Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO), comprised of Canada's nuclear utilities, has taken over the L&ILRW DGR process. This is an alarming development, as the NWMO was created to find a DGR for high-level radioactive waste (HLRW), irradiated nuclear fuel. In fact, NWMO is working with several municipalities near Bruce, largely populated by Bruce nuclear workers, which have "volunteered" (in exchange for large amounts of funding -- is that really "volunteering"?!) to be considered for becoming Canada's HLRW DGR location, for 22 reactors' irradiated nuclear fuel (outside Ontario, there was a single reactor in Quebec -- now permanently shutdown -- and a single reactor in New Brunswick).
As DGRs would cost billions, or tens of billions, to construct and operate (the U.S. Department of Energy's most recent estimate for the price tag on the Yucca Mountain dumpsite proposal approached $100 billion), it is very likely that the L&ILRW and HLRW DGRs at/near Bruce would be merged into a single dumpsite, to save billions or tens of billions of dollars on a second, redundant DGR nearby.
The Great Lakes comprise 20% of the world's surface fresh water. They provide drinking water to 40 million people in 8 U.S. states, 2 Canadian provinces, and a large number of Native American First Nations.
As environmentalists, who instead refer to the DGRs as Deep Underground Dumps (that is, DUDs), have asked: would you bury poison beside your drinking water well?!
Please take this opportunity to help generate a flurry of concise statements of opposition aimed at preventing the Great Lakes shoreline from being turned into a permanent dumpsite for Ontario's L&ILRWs, and very likely all of Canada's HLRWs to follow.
Send your hand-written comments and questions about this insane proposal to:
Debra Myles; Joint Review Panel Secretariat; 160 Elgin St.; 22nd Floor; Ottawa, ON; K1A 0H3; Canada.
Or email them to:
DGR.Review@ceaa-acee.gc.ca.
You can also sign the online petition being circulated by the grassroots Bruce area environmental and residential group "Stop the Great Lakes Nuclear Dump." (See their Toronto area billboard, above left)
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