Beyond Nuclear

News from Beyond Nuclear

For Immediate Release, Jan. 4, 2017

Contact: Kevin Kamps, Radioactive Waste Watchdog, Beyond Nuclear,

(240) 462-3216, kevin@beyondnuclear.org (Kamps also serves as board of directors member for Don’t Waste Michigan, representing the Kalamazoo chapter)

Media Statement of Kevin Kamps, Beyond Nuclear,

re: Ontario Power Generation’s Doubling Down on Great Lakes Shoreline Radioactive Waste Dump Scheme

Takoma Park, Maryland—“Ontario Power Generation (OPG) has doubled down on its insane scheme to bury radioactive waste on the Great Lakes shoreline, and our Canadian-U.S. environmental coalition will redouble its efforts to stop it. We have resisted the DUD (short for Deep Underground Dump) for more than 15 years now, ever since OPG first declared this war on the future of the Great Lakes. After Flint, we won’t let them nuke the Great Lakes next!

OPG has refused to name the specific sites it has so hurriedly studied as alternative dumpsites to the Great Lakes shore, despite Canadian Environment Minister Catherine McKenna’s explicit instructions in her request for additional information. For this reason alone, OPG must be given a failing grade, and its coveted Great Lakes shore DUD rejected outright.

OPG’s hypothetical alternative dumpsites analysis is all the more dubious, in that it was conducted in ten short months, as opposed to the 15 years it has spent targeting the Lake Huron shore at the Bruce Nuclear Generating Station in Kincardine, Ontario, Canada.

As U.S. Representative Dan Kildee (Democrat-Flint) has stated, ‘Surely in the vast land mass that comprises Canada, there must be a better place to permanently store nuclear waste than on the shores of Lake Huron.’

In fact, Canada has the second largest land mass of any country, after Russia.

We thank Rep. Kildee, as well as Michigan’s U.S. Senators, Debbie Stabenow and Gary Peters, for leading the bipartisan congressional coalition opposing OPG’s Great Lakes radioactive waste dump.

OPG’s claim -- that a national Canadian high-level radioactive waste dump nearby, in addition to the proposed DUD for all of Ontario’s so-called “low” and “intermediate” level radioactive wastes -- would not represent significant cumulative environmental impacts, would be laughable, if it weren’t so seriously dangerous. Three municipalities near Kincardine, under the influence of OPG and Bruce Nuclear Generating Station inducements, are still in the running for Canada’s national high-level radioactive waste dump. This is an environmental injustice, given the adjacent Saugeen Ojibwe Nation (SON) territory, and other Native American First Nations' treaty rights downwind and downstream, such as to hunting and fishing.

And OPG’s false assurances, echoing the Joint Review Panel’s that rubber-stamped the DUD, that the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) will oversee mitigation of cumulative environmental impacts over time at the DUD, is fatally flawed. CNSC, including its President, Michael Binder, is a completely captured agency, in collusion with the nuclear power industry it is supposed to regulate.

The Japanese Parliament concluded, after an independent investigation, that such collusion between regulators, the nuclear power industry, and elected officials, was the root cause of the ongoing Fukushima nuclear catastrophe. We must prevent a Fukushima on the Great Lakes shoreline!

As Beverly Fernandez, spokesperson for Stop the Great Lakes Nuclear Dump, has said, ‘Water is Life.’ Stop the Great Lakes Nuclear Dump has been instrumental in securing 186 municipal resolutions, representing nearly 23 million residents in each Great Lakes state and province, opposing OPG’s so-called “Deep Geologic Repository” for “low” and “intermediate” level radioactive waste burial, or any radioactive waste dump in the Great Lakes Basin, including Canada’s national high-level radioactive waste dump.

The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s leadership in defense of the Missouri River, drinking water supply for 17 million people downstream in multiple states, against the risk of crude oil leaks from the Dakota Access Pipeline, is an inspiration. We must similarly protect the Great Lakes, against leaks of hazardous radioactivity from OPG’s DUD. After all, the Great Lakes are the drinking water supply for 40 million people in eight U.S. states, two Canadian provinces, and a large number of Native American First Nations. Not just is the drinking water supply for current generations put at risk by OPG’s DUD, but so too for all future generations, for radioactive waste is deadly forevermore. As the Sioux say, 'Mni Wiconi,' Water is Life!

OPG’s DUD is all the more unacceptable after the lead poisoning of Flint, Michigan via the drinking water supply. Lead and radioactivity have a lot in common. There is no safe level of exposure – any exposure carries a health risk. The higher the dose, the higher the risk. The risks accumulate over a lifetime. And children, especially the fetus in the mother’s womb, are the most vulnerable of all.

In fact, the very agencies of the U.S. federal and state governments responsible for the lead poisoning of 9,000 children in Flint via the drinking water supply – the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Michigan Governor Rick Snyder and his Michigan Department of Environmental Quality -- have yet to do anything to protect Michiganders and other Americans downstream against OPG’s Lake Huron shore radioactive waste dump scheme. Most ironically, now that Flint is again getting its drinking water supply from a safe, clean source – Lake Huron – OPG is threatening it with hazardous radioactive contamination.

And tellingly, the congressional leaders who have led the fight against the DUD -- Sens. Stabenow and Peters, and Rep. Kildee -- are the very congressional leaders who have worked so tirelessly to deliver long overdue funding to begin to heal the wounds in Flint.

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. That’s why we need to nip the DUD in the bud, before hazardous radioactivity ruins the Great Lakes drinking water supply forevermore.”

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See Kamps’ essay, published at Counterpunch, entitled “After Flint, Don’t Nuke the Great Lakes Next!”

Based in Takoma Park, Maryland, U.S.A., Beyond Nuclear aims to educate and activate the public about the connections between nuclear power and nuclear weapons and the need to abolish both to safeguard our future. Beyond Nuclear advocates for an energy future that is sustainable, benign and democratic.