Wawa-news.com You can't hear the 'big picture'!
Oct 23, 2024 at 12:24
The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission is conducting a virtual hearing today – October 23 – to consider Canadian Nuclear Laboratories application to renew their decommissioning license for the Whiteshell Nuclear Laboratories near Pinawa, Manitoba.
Indigenous and public interest interveners will present during the afternoon session, outlining concerns with the application, including the failure of the application and supporting documents to adequately describe the volume, types and characteristics of the radioactive wastes that will be managed during the three year period of the license. Indigeous and environmental organizations based in northern and eastern Ontario are expressing particular concerns and opposition to plans to transport low, intermediate and high-level waste through northern Ontario for deposit at the Chalk River Laboratories site on the Ottawa River, between North Bay and Ottawa.
“CNL’s plans include thousands of shipments of radio-active wastes through northern Ontario, including shipments of high-level radioactive waste”, commented Brennain Lloyd, project coordinator with Northwatch.
“We’re requesting that the Commission convene additional hearings on the transportation package, the security plans, and the emergency response. That information is either not yet available or has been withheld from the public. These decisions should not be downgraded to staff level within the CNSC. They should be made by the Commission, with public and Indigenous involvement.”
Shipments of low and intermediate level radioactive waste are already ongoing. Shipments of high-level radioactive waste could begin in mid-2025, using a modified version of a transportation package developed by Ontario Hydro in the 1980s and adopted by the Nuclear Waste Management Organization. The NWMO’s certified Used Fuel Transportation Package has not been subject to full-scale testing, and has not yet been put into use. The NWMO has now applied for certification of a modified transportation package which would be used to ship the mixed high-level wastes currently at the Whiteshell site.
If approved, the high-level radioactive wastes would be shipped through northern Ontario to the Chalk River site for “storage”. Other intervenors in the hearing have noted the absence of any plans for storage at the Chalk River site. According to the NWMO’s conceptual plans for a deep geological repository for high-level radio-active wastes, the high-level wastes from Whiteshell would be held at Chalk River until 2068 before being transported again to the NWMO’s proposed deep geological repository. The NWMO is currently considering two candidate sites as possible locations for their proposed deep geological repository. The Teeswater site is in South Bruce in southwestern Ontario, and the Revell site is between Ignace and Dryden in northwestern Ontario.
The hearing is being livestreamed HERE.
Northwatch’s written submission is HERE.
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