As reported by Jim Bloch in The Voice, Ontario Power Generation has told the Canadian federal Environment Minister, Catherine McKenna, that it will answer her request for additional information regarding its proposed Great Lakes shore Deep Geologic Repository (DGR) for radioactive waste burial by the end of this year.
April 18th was OPG's deadline for responding to the Environment Minister as to how long the requests for additional information would take.
Beyond Nuclear had praised the Environment Minister for making the information requests two months earlier, and for indefinitely postponing her decision on the merits of the DGR proposal.
Groups like Stop the Great Lakes Nuclear Dump have called on McKenna, and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, to cancel the DGR proposal outright. They have warned Trudeau that his environmental legacy depends on his doing the right thing regarding the DGR.
Beyond Nuclear's Kevin Kamps blasted OPG for its "half-baked" environmental assessments thus far, and its obviously "insincere" efforts to come. As quoted in the article:
"How can OPG, in nine short months, conduct a review of an alternate DGR in granite, to the north in Ontario, when its review of the limestone formation at Bruce NGS has, all told, taken 15 long years now?" Kamps asked.
Kamps said the process of environmental assessment has been flawed from the start.
"OPG's 2011 environmental assessment, ironically released right about the same time that the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe began, was half-baked to begin with," said Kamps. "Over the course of years, the JRP politely listened to countless, quality comments from hundreds to thousands of concerned citizens, and scores to hundreds of environmental groups, from both the U.S. and Canada. And then, in its Final Report, JRP largely to entirely ignored those comments and concerns."
Kamps questioned the company's commitment to the process.
"OPG's indication that it will fulfill Minister McKenna's broad requests for additional information by Dec. 31, less than nine months from now, shows how insincere OPG is at answering the minister's – and the downstream public's – deep concerns and broad questions," Kamps said.