Successul resistance to TransCanada's Keystone XL tar sands crude oil pipeline must now shift to fend off the dumping of TransCanada's radioactive wastes on the Great Lakes shore!Take action!
Urge your U.S. Senators and your U.S. Representative to oppose the burial of TransCanada Pipelines' radioactive wastes on the Great Lakes shoreline. Urge them to support congressional resolutions opposing Canada's proposed Great Lakes radioactive waste dump.
H. Res. 716 was introduced by U.S. Representatives Dan Kildee (D-MI) and Sander Levin (D-MI). It is co-sponsored by U.S. Rep. Gary Peters (D-MI, now elected to become a U.S. Senator in the next session) and U.S. Rep. Brian Higgins (D-NY).
U.S. Senator Carl Levin (D-MI, retiring after this session) introduced an identical resolution, S.Res.565, in the U.S. Senate. He has been joined in sponsoring it by U.S. Senators Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), Mark Kirk (R-IL), and Tammy Baldwin (D-WI). (This just in: U.S. Senate Assistant Majority Leader Richard Durbin (D-IL) has added his name as a co-sponsor of this resolution!)
If passed, the U.S. House and Senate resolutions would be added to nearly 150 more from across multiple states and provinces, representing more than 16 million Great Lakes residents, opposing the proposed Deep Geologic Repository. Stop the Great Lakes Nuclear Dump has posted a map showing the locations of all the resolutions passed thus far.
How to contact your Congress Members
Your U.S. Senators' and Representative's websites will contain ways to email, fax, snail mail, and/or phone them. Or you can be patched through to your Members' offices via the U.S. Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121. You can also request a face-to-face meeting with your Members themselves, or with their staff, when they are back home in-district, or at their Washington, D.C. office.
Environmental Assessment on "DGR" now ending
Canadian federal decision makers are closing the Joint Review Panel (JRP, Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission and Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency) reveiw of the proposed "Deep Geologic Repository" (DGR) proposal. In a Nov. 18th Notice to Parties, the JRP has announced that it will make its recommendation on the proposal to the Canadian federal Environment Minister by May 2015. The Environment Minister will then make a recommendation to the Prime Minister's Cabinet, bypassing Parliament.
Background
After the U.S. Senate -- by a single vote -- rejected a rush to construct and operate TransCanada Pipelines' Keystone XL tar sands crude oil pipeline through multiple U.S. states, the company's name is now a household word. However, it is little known that TransCanada Pipelines is also a major shareholder in Bruce Nuclear Generating Station (NGS).
Bruce NGS includes 9 reactors altogether, 8 still operable (4 units at Bruce A, and 4 units at Bruce B), and one, an early prototype called Douglas Point, permanently shutdown. This makes it one of the largest nuclear power plants in the entire world.
A map by International Institute of Concern for Public Health depicts the numerous dirty and dangerous nuclear activities that take place in and around the Bruce NGS, and how close it is to the U.S. across Lake Huron.
TransCanada and other partners took over the operations at Bruce NGS in 2002, after British Energy went bankrupt.
Ontario Power Generation (OPG) owns Bruce NGS, but TransCanada Pipelines and its partners lease and operate the reactors. Thus, TransCanada Pipelines has been responsible for generating radioactive waste there for a dozen years already, with many more years or decades of radioactive waste generation planned in the future.
OPG now proposes burying all of Ontario's so-called "low" and "intermediate" level radioactive wastes in a "Deep Geologic Repository" (DGR) on the Lake Huron shore at Bruce NGS, less than a mile from the water. Radioactive wastes generated by Bruce's 8 reactors, combined with additional radioactive wastes from a dozen reactors east of Toronto (8 at Pickering, 4 at Darlington), would be buried at the DGR. Thus, TransCanada Pipelines' radioactive wastes generated at Bruce would comprise a large fraction of the radioactive wastes to be buried on the Lake Huron shore. Again, see IICPH's map to get an overview of Ontario's nuclear risks.