Chalk River Nuclear Waste

The Honourable Jonathan Wilkinson,

As an Ottawa resident and cottage owner on the Upper Ottawa River, I support the City of Ottawa’s call for a regional assessment of Ottawa Valley radioactive waste disposal projects, under the Impact Assessment Act.

Living near the Ottawa River and downstream from Chalk River has impacted my health and the health of countless others.

Unlike chemical spills, nuclear accidents such as those of Chernobyl, Three Mile Island and Chalk River, can never be completely cleaned up, some contaminants lasting hundreds of thousands of years. To build a giant dump-mound near the Ottawa River is unconscionable.

In 1943, the year I was born, plans were made to build a nuclear plant at Chalk River. As my parents and grandparents marveled in the hope and joy of birth, Canada joined the arms race. Little did they know that a radioactive isotope made at Chalk River would be needed to treat me.

In 1947 we travelled to Canada on the Cunard ocean liner, Queen Mary, and settled in Ottawa, near the magnificent Ottawa River. In 1952, the year of the biggest nuclear accident in Canadian history, we were invited to camp on a beach at the foot of Downey’s Bay near a friend’s cottage. From there, we could see the Chalk River plant and its smoke stacks. We fished for catfish, bass and pike and drank water straight from the river. Our neighbor said the water was pristine in the spring and it tasted pure. Every morning early, we walked up a hill to Mary Perreault’s farm for fresh cow’s milk.

A year later we built our own cabin, three miles downriver from the plant and spent all our summers there.

When my three sons were small, I noticed a hard lump in the front of my neck. The Dr. said it was thyroid cancer and in women, easily treated, and I would be fine. It took me a year to bounce back from the largest allowable dose of radiation, used to destroy my thyroid gland. And life was never quite the same, on a fixed dose of thyroid hormone.

Along our 5 kilometers of shoreline there were few cottages in the early days and cottagers came from the US and various locations in Ontario and Quebec. No statistics are available for cancers or other diseases. Within a half kilometer of our cabin, three of my beach neighbors developed thyroid cancer, one ovarian as well as thyroid cancer. My oldest friend next door had four unrelated types of cancer. Now there are many other cancers. The friend who invited us to Downey’s Bay died of kidney cancer.

Cottagers know that the earth moves on the Upper Ottawa. I remember waking up to dishes rattling on a number of occasions and feeling the ground move under my tent. We also feel the ground shake with blasts from Petawawa Military Base. Training flights roar overhead and guns sound. In the past, windows have cracked. Why would anyone build a nuclear reactor or an above ground mega-dump mound for nuclear waste in an earthquake zone, on a fault line, by a military base, below the aging 50’s Des Joachim Dam or beside a major river?

When I was sixteen a hurricane created seven-foot waves on the river and stray boats bobbed all over. Trees crisscrossed the road like matchsticks. All the cottagers got together to cut themselves out with hand saws. Water rose half way up our 60 ft. bank. I am sure there was unusually contaminated water that day—contaminated by past nuclear waste, buried in sand.

Why would anyone build a permanent mega-dump that may eventually be abandoned and could be easily damaged? Why would a mega-dump for nuclear waste from Chalk River, Quebec, Manitoba, other sites in Ontario, industry and from medical facilities, be built by our vulnerable Ottawa River? Why would anyone build a mega-dump seven stories high and the size of 400 Olympic swimming pools, when waste from accidents and uses of the past is still buried in sand and still leaching into the river. Isn’t cleanup a priority while a more permanent and safe solution is figured out?

Shouldn’t priority be given to safe long-term storage of nuclear waste and cleanup of waste from the past? Shouldn’t the creation of non-nuclear waste producing technologies have priority? Obviously, this is not the goal of nuclear industry interested in short-term profit. In order to avoid catastrophic impact on unsuspecting individuals and large communities, our government must listen to unbiased science and direct industry for the good of us all. 

Why would anyone endanger the health of Canadians further when there has been so much devastating damage done already?

Sincerely,

Georgina Bartos