The Ottawa River is a Canadian Heritage River that flows for 1300 kilometers from its origin in central Quebec to its confluence with the St. Lawrence River at Montreal.
The Ottawa River is sacred for the Algonquin Anishinaabe People whose traditional territory it defines. In Algonquin it is called Kitchi Sibi, or “Great River.”
The Algonquin People have lived in the Ottawa River watershed since time immemorial. A strong ethic of environmental stewardship is part of their Anishinaabe worldview and they consider it their responsibility to protect the land and water for all life and future generations.
We are fortunate that the Algonquin People take their stewardship responsibility seriously. Right now, they are a strong protective force standing between a giant above-ground nuclear waste dump and the beautiful Kitichi Sibi that supports so many lifeforms and provides drinking water to millions of people downstream.
A multinational consortium (SNC-Lavalin, Fluor and Jacobs) wants to build the seven-story nuclear waste mound on the grounds of the Chalk River Laboratories, northwest of Ottawa, directly across the Ottawa River from the province of Quebec. If approved, it would hold one million tonnes of radioactive and other hazardous waste. The proposed dump is called the “NSDF,” and the proponent is “Canadian Nuclear Laboratories,” a wholly-owned subsidiary of the multinational consortium.
The Chalk River Laboratories site is heavily contaminated from eight decades of nuclear activities including production of plutonium for the US nuclear weapons program. The accumulated radioactive wastes at Chalk River were described in a 2011 Ottawa Citizen article “Chalk River’s Toxic Legacy.†The estimated cost for a proper cleanup is $16 billion. Chalk River Laboratories was privatized by the federal government in 2015 to quickly and cheaply reduce this enormous environmental liability.
The Chalk River site needs to be cleaned up but the proposed giant landfill is not the right approach according to many who have studied the proposal including Algonquin First Nations, retired senior scientists from Atomic Energy of Canada Limited, civil society groups and concerned citizens. The Assembly of First Nations and more than 140 municipalities, including Pontiac County, Ottawa, Gatineau and Montreal have passed resolutions of concern about the proposed project.
Critics say that the proposed site is unsuitable for a dump of any kind. It is located less than one kilometre from the Ottawa River and is surrounded by wetlands that drain into the river. The site is tornado and earthquake prone and the underlying bedrock is porous and fractured.
Other concerns include: — Many of the radioactive materials destined for the dump, such as plutonium, will be hazardous for 100,000 years. The International Atomic Energy Agency says radioactive wastes such as these must be carefully stored out of the biosphere, not in an above-ground mound. — Dioxins, PCBs, asbestos, mercury, arsenic and hundreds of tonnes of lead would go into the dump along with thousands of tonnes of copper and iron and 33 tonnes of aluminum, tempting scavengers to dig into the mound after closure. — The dump proponent is importing commercial and federal nuclear wastes to Chalk River for disposal in the NSDF. These shipments are happening despite a specific request from the City of Ottawa for cessation of radioactive waste imports into the Ottawa Valley. — The mound would leak radioactive and hazardous contaminants into the Ottawa River during operation and after closure. The mound is expected to eventually disintegrate in a process referred to as “normal evolution.” – There is no safe level of exposure to the radiation that would leak into the Ottawa River from the Chalk River mound. All of the escaping radioactive materials would increase risks of birth defects, genetic damage, cancer and other chronic diseases. — The giant pile of leaking radioactive waste would be difficult to remediate. Remediation costs could exceed those of managing the wastes had they not been put in the mound. There are far better ways to manage radioactive waste and keep it out of the biosphere but they cost more money. It would be better to spend the money up front on high quality facilities farther away from a major drinking water source.
The environmental assessment for the NSDF has dragged on for seven years. The final licensing hearing is scheduled for August 10, 2023. The assessment and the decision about whether or not to license the dump are in the hands of Canada’s “captured nuclear regulator,†the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission. CNSC staff continue to recommend approval of the dump. An Expert Panel recommended in 2017 that the CNSC not be in charge of environmental assessment for nuclear projects. Participants in the environmental assessment for the NSDF have noted many serious flawsin the process.
Weeklong licensing hearings in June 2022 were to have been the “final” hearings for the NSDF but in a surprise move, the CNSC decided to “keep the record open” for continued consultations with Kebaowek and Kitigan Zibi First Nations, two of the 11 Algonquin First Nations whose people have lived in the Ottawa River watershed for thousands of years and who have never ceded their territory to the Crown or the Canadian government.
During the extended consultations which wrapped up this past spring, Kebaowek and Kitigan Zibi First Nations conducted research at the proposed dump site. They documented extensive threats to their Indigenous rights and to biodiversity in the NSDF footprint in a booklet available online here. Their joint final submission outlines numerous potential legal failures and violations should the CNSC decide to license the NSDF on their unceded territory.
On June 20 at a press conference in Ottawa, Chiefs of Kebaowek and Kitigan Zibi First Nations along with two Algonquin Grand-Chiefs, together representing 10 of the 11 Algonquin First Nations, said very clearly that they do not consent to the construction of the NSDF on their unceded territory and that approving the dump without their consent would contradict the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Earlier in June, their sister First Nation, the Algonquins of Pikwakanagan, signed an agreement with the proponent, offering consent for the NSDF in exchange for economic and business opportunities and a role in monitoring at the site.
This struggle seems destined to play out in the courts over many years. It seems tragic that so much time, energy and money have been expended on such a bad proposal. Canada’s poor nuclear governance system is largely to blame for this; there is literally no one minding the shop other than our captured nuclear regulator, the CNSC and nuclear reactor proponents at Natural Resources Canada.
Thank goodness for our Algonquin brothers and sisters who are standing firm to protect Kitchi Sibi and actually have a good chance to eventually stop the madness.
Lynn Jones is a founding member of the Ottawa River Institute, a non-profit, charitable organization based in the Ottawa Valley. ORI’s mission is to foster sustainable communities and ecological integrity in the Ottawa River watershed.
From Planetary Association for Clean Energy, Inc. Bronson Avenue, Suite 1001 OTTAWA, Ontario K1R 6G8, Canada (613) 236-6265 / fax: (613) 235-5876 paceincnet[at]gmail.com / http://www.pacenet.homestead.com An international collaborative network of advanced scientific thinking NGO in Special Consultative status with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations (ECOSOC)
May 7, 2018
Greg Fergus, MP, PC Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development
Hon. Greg Fergus,
First of all, I wish to thank you for organizing the March 5 Town Hall Meeting, Forum on Chalk River at UQO in your riding. Some of our associates were thus able to exchange with the qualified interveners and to affirm professional observations. This keynote event has led to meeting you with our colleagues on April 5th on the interdisciplinary theme of clean soil, water and responsible waste management, with an emphasis on alternative nuclear waste treatment and remediation. We note from the April 12 Government of Canada announcement of the launching of an Expert Panel on Sustainable Finance to enable clean growth an impetus and opportunity for innovative and remunerative rectification of a costly and hurting long-term state of affairs.
In our group meeting with you, we underlined a priori, based on 50 years of hands-on executive experience with landfills that, even in the cases of well-conceived and engineered designs, contaminants, quite toxic, end up deleteriously in soil and in water.
The very concept of landfill is illogical: it implies that all materials (in this case, aging barrels and containers, instruments, rods, construction debris, etc.) are lumped together, with no certainty nor predictability of what can happen between the contaminants. In this case, as well, one does not see a Hazard and Operability Study (HAZOP) methodology of considering everything that could possibly go wrong (used in software research). It applies to complex ‘processes’ such as nuclear waste whereby sufficient predictable and explicitly-identified information is available.
Our first suggestion is that nuclear waste be separated and segregated at source, and in sequence of decommissioning. This is also helpful for alternative on-site, real-time decontamination. One treats to radioactive depletion components such as rods as they are assessed and retrieved, at near range – without hazard to workers, with robotics ; one treats liquids, facility equipment items, structural remains, etc. specifically and with appropriate and the most efficacious technology and protocols than are pre-tested first for their ability to reduce as quickly as viable radioactivity levels.
Our second suggestion is to focus on methodologies that are not only much more affordable, with more immediate applicability in terms of timelines but also those than can lead to productivity and rapid returns on capitalization by offering options for stocks of not only commodities but also of rare earth elements.
The interest of PACE goes back to the demands of its co-founder, scientist Senator Chesley W. Carter who aspired that Canada avoid nuclear energy facilities that were imposed as a result of the energy crisis of the 1970s, by embarking instead on less expensive and less uncertain advanced clean energy production technologies that were then being considered, and since peer-reviewed internationally with the participation of our collaborative network, which includes Nobelists. (See the Annexes.)
Retrospectively, a comptroller exercise shows that had the National Research Council of Canada (under pressure from the U.S. Secretary of State) not contradicted the July 1976 initiative by the Rt. Hon. Pierre E. Trudeau, prime minister to embark on the clean energy path suggested by Senator Chesley W. Carter as spokesperson for our collaborative network, Canada would have probably remained with a deficit-less national budget, and free of need of GST taxation. This repudiation led to the massive federal subsidy of the nuclear energy programme in Ontario and the expensive maintenance of status quo with regards to oil & gas, several megaprojects in a response to the then energy crisis due to rise in oil prices.
We propose that an initiative been undertaken to develop a matrix, on the basis of a full testing in appropriate nuclear licensed facility in Canada to determine which currently described and, additionally other promising and peer-reviewed accelerated and radioactivity-depleting nuclear waste remediation systems and protocols are most adapted and optimised for their logistical decontamination with due regard to the environmental and hazards issues.
We do hope that this communication enables risk-free and enhanced-economic viability for Canada.
Dr. Andrew Michrowski, President Joseph Kennedy, P.Eng. , Director
To: Hon. Catherine McKenna, MP <Catherine.McKenna(at)parl.gc.ca>
Date: Wed, May 17, 2017 at 8:31 AM
Subject: Near Surface Disposal Project – your urgent attention required
Dear Ms. McKenna,
We are writing to express our growing concerns about the proposed Near Surface Disposal Facility (NSDF) at Chalk River, Ontario. We request your urgent attention and efforts along with those of your cabinet colleagues to put a stop to the NSDF Project.
It has become very clear that the landfill type technology proposed for this project is entirely inappropriate and flouts the International Atomic Energy Agency safety standard (IAEA safety standard SSR-5 Disposal of Radioactive Waste, Section 1.14) on how to manage radioactive wastes. This international standard states that landfills can only be used for “Very Low Level” radioactive wastes, such that the wastes decay to a harmless state before the liners and covers break down. The international consortium now running AECL, Canadian Nuclear Laboratories (CNL), is proposing to place one million cubic meters of “Low Level” and “Intermediate Level” radioactive waste in the NSDF landfill. No mention is made in the proponent’s Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) of “Very Low Level” radioactive wastes, the only classification of radioactive waste that would be considered suitable for disposal in a landfill by the IAEA.
The proponent’s EIS clearly states their intention to dispose of ALL of the radioactive wastes from decommissioning at the Chalk River facility and Whiteshell Labs in Manitoba in the NSDF landfill. This includes many highly-toxic and long-lived radionuclides that will be hazardous for thousands of years. The relevant section of the EISÂ may be viewed (here). Some of these radioactive wastes are also mixed with toxic heavy metals such as lead, cadmium and arsenic; and with persistent organic pollutants such as dioxin and PCBs. To propose to dispose of and ultimately abandon such materials in a landfill beside the Ottawa River is brazen and scientifically indefensible.
This proposal should never have reached the Environmental Assessment stage given that from the outset it clearly proposed to violate IAEA standards on management of radioactive waste. Canada’s gutted Environmental Assessment process and Canada’s policy vacuum on the long-term management of non-fuel radioactive wastes are two factors contributing to this potential debacle, which have negative implications for all projects involving the governance of radioactive waste in Canada. We are preparing a petition to the Auditor General that will request an investigation into these and other problems that have allowed this colossal waste of taxpayer dollars to get as far as it has.
Our group is actively participating in the flawed Environmental Assessment process for this project. Our comments on the initial and revised project descriptions are posted on the CEAA website and we recently submitted a detailed list of serious deficiencies in the EIS for the project.
We note that CNL and CNSC officials have signed an “Administrative Protocol” with an Appendix that includes several “federal review” phases. We request that you ensure that officials in your department are reviewing this project, that you provide them with this letter, and ask them to inform you about the review comments that they have provided or will be providing to CNSC.
In case you are not already aware, Bloc Quebecois Leader, Martine Ouellet, recently gave an excellent speech on the threat posed by the NSDF to Quebecers. Here is a link to her speech to the Quebec National Assembly’s Commission des Transports et de l’Environnement on May 3, 2017.
The NSDF must be stopped or, at minimum, be put on hold until Canada’s Environmental Assessment Process can be repaired according to the recommendations in the Report of the Expert Panel, which recommends sole decision making authority not reside with the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission on projects such as this. We would be happy to meet with you to provide any additional information that you require in order to take appropriate action.
Jimmy Carter touring Three Mile Island, April 1, 1979
Courtesy of Wikipedia.org. Public domain.
Former President Jimmy Carter recently had cancer on his liver removed, and is now being treated for cancer on his brain.
Jimmy Carter helped cleanup a nuclear accident in Canada during the 1950s. As President, he toured Three Mile Island on the fourth day after the partial meltdown, while the accident was still ongoing. And he was part of then-Captain Hyman G. Rickover’s fledgling nuclear submarine program when he served in the Navy. These substantial radiation exposures are risk factors for cancer, but they aren’t mentioned in the (virtually identical) media reports dated August 20. One AP article stated his cancer is probably due to too much sun.
Many think Jimmy Carter was just a peanut farmer who became President for one term, and then got involved with Habitat for Humanity. His career is much more extensive.
Carter graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy, served on submarines as a Navy officer, did graduate work at Union College (NY) in reactor technology and nuclear physics, and was senior officer of the pre-commissioning crew of the Seawolf, the second US nuclear submarine. He helped shut down and disassemble the Ontario Chalk River Experimental Reactor after it suffered a partial meltdown in 1952. This, plus his exposure at TMI in 1979, together with his exposures in Rickover’s program and in graduate school, are risk factors for his present cancers.
Carter himself seems unwilling to bring up this issue.
Cancers often have long latency periods and can take decades to develop.
Especially now that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission wants to declare “low-level” radiation exposure as beneficial, the lack of information on Jimmy Carter’s background and exposure is suspicious. With no information, there is no bad press for the nuclear industry, no derailing an industry-friendly NRC decision, and no reminders about Fukushima.
Note: A 2007 New York Times article on the Carter family also sidestepped malathion and pesticide exposure as a reason for his family’s high death rate from pancreatic cancer.
Heal Fukushima 