I appreciated J. A. L. Robertson's comments on NWMO's "discussions," posted at http://www.nwmo.ca/adx/asp/adxGetMedia.asp?DocID=742,352,86,21,1,Documents&M ediaID=1487&Filename=Citizens+Dialogue.doc ( 59.5 KB Word file) Jaro ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Artic le_Type1&c=Article&cid=1095372612958&call_pageid=970599119419 Sep. 18, 2004. 01:00 AM Clashing views on nuclear waste Experts favour permanent burial Public wants a different approach PETER CALAMAI SCIENCE WRITER OTTAWA-First, [450 poorly informed ] Canadians indicated last month what mattered most to them in the country's long-term plans for dealing with radioactive waste fuel from its nuclear power reactors. Then, the experts weighed in with their own ideas this week. And now the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) has a big problem. It has to recommend a waste management plan to the federal government a year from now, and the public and the experts are in sharp disagreement. The independent expert assessment team - seven men and two women assembled by the NWMO - gave top marks in almost every category to an approach long backed by Ottawa called "deep geological repository." For decades, this has been defined as burying nuclear waste a kilometre deep in the rocky Precambrian Shield, sealing off the hole and forgetting about it. But the [450 poorly informed members of the ] public doesn't like this approach. The majority of 450 Canadians with no known axe to grind [and little undestanding of the issues] said as much this past summer at day-long discussions organized on NWMO's behalf in a dozen cities, including Toronto, Ottawa, Sudbury and Thunder Bay. These "unaffiliated" [and "ignorant"] citizens want the used fuel bundles to be accessible because new technology could come up with better ways of handling waste that stays radioactive for centuries. [as if the "deep geological repository" precluded retrievability. Quote : "The geological repository would be built so that it could eventually be backfilled and sealed." and "The Assessment Team noted that... a decision to further process CANDU fuel... would require a commitment to the continued use of nuclear energy by current and future generations." ] The nuclear waste organization was set up under federal legislation to recommend what approach Canada should follow in managing 3.6 million bundles of used fuel that will eventually be produced by the country's 22 existing nuclear power reactors. In addition to deep geological repository, the NWMO is also examining storage at one central location, either above or below ground, or continuing the current practice of storing the waste at the individual nuclear power stations. Once the cabinet makes a final decision, the same agency will have to put the plan into effect, drawing on a fund financed largely by Ontario Power Generation, which generates 90 per cent of the country's waste nuclear fuel. The NWMO asked the assessment team to rank the three possible management schemes against eight objectives: fairness, public health and safety, worker health and safety, community well-being, security, environmental integrity, economic viability and adaptability. "The average scores indicate that the deep geological repository option is expected to perform better than either at-reactor-site or centralized storage on nearly every objective," says a report posted this week on the NWMO website (http://www.nwmo.ca). Centralized storage ranked second. [ The Team's report - 1.6 MB pdf - is available in its entirety at http://www.nwmo.ca/adx/asp/adxGetMedia.asp?DocID=735,20,1,Documents&MediaID= 1476&Filename=NWMO_Assessment_Team_Report.pdf ] Unfortunately, "The Assessment Team .....assumed that the volume of used nuclear fuel to be managed would be limited to the levels projected for the life of the current facilities." -- i.e. there is no consideration of spenf fuel recycling for use in future nuclear power plants.... they might just as well have assumed that energy-consuming humans will vanish from the face of the Earth, or that hydro dams will only produce power from one-year's worth of rain captured in their impoudment basins.... The Assessment Team members were : Michael Ben-Eli - Chair; John Neate - Secretary; Jo-Ann Facella; Anthony Hodge (geological engineer, served as President of Friends of the Earth Canada from 1989-1992); Thomas Isaacs (Director of Policy, Planning and Special Studies at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory); William Leiss ; Michael Margolick; Katherine Moshonas Cole (Most recently... served as Managing Director of ITER Canada); Fred Roots (was Secretary to the group recommending management of used nuclear fuel in Canada (the Hare Report 1977), and a member of the Seaborn Panel 1992-1998 ] The outside experts ducked one potentially explosive consequence of their tilt toward deep geological repository - the reaction of aboriginals whose communities are likely to be the nearest to any nuclear waste hole in the Precambrian Shield. The nine-member assessment team, which included no aboriginals, wrote that it "did not feel capable of anticipating the perspective of aboriginal peoples." Nonetheless, the experts concluded that a deep geological repository "would create the least adverse community impacts." The NWMO is consulting separately with Inuit, First Nations and Métis. --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.766 / Virus Database: 513 - Release Date: 9/17/2004
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