Comments on the Deep Geological Repository

Allow me to preface my comments with a declaration that I believe the nuclear power industry to be deeply flawed. It is not safe, it is not clean, and it is highly expensive. It generates massive quantities of extremely toxic waste, material so dangerous it must be isolated from the environment for a million years or more. Burying it underground with the assertion that it will never be disturbed or compromised over that time frame is arrogant, misguided and delusional. Despite our best physics and engineering, this plan cannot be defended or rationalized by any scientific authority, or by anyone with the humility, imagination and clarity of mind to acknowledge its shortcomings. The nuclear power industry should never have gone ahead in the first place, given the potentially disastrous contamination that could result. The risks simply outweigh the benefits. It is a short-sighted and risky experiment that could end very badly and should be phased out as soon as possible.

My Main Points

1. The objective of this plan is absurd and unattainable due to a) human fallibility b) existntial dangers posed by the ever-changing earth and c) the required time frame.

a) Consider and recognize if you will, the obvious inevitable risk of human error. The Three Mile Island accident was caused by operators misdiagnosing a cooling system loss; Chernobyl was caused by operators conducting a test that led to an uncontrolled chain reaction; at Fukushima the engineers inexplicably located the backup pumping systems at ground level. And then, if you will, consider the amount of loading, construction, transportation, unloding and repackaging involved in the proposed deep geological repository. If something goes wrong during the transport, the handling, the packaging and the storage of high-level nuclear waste you will prove, once again that this is an unforgiving industry.

This proposal/plan incites public anger, protest, civil unrest, and the ugly possibility of terrorism. How do you plan to mitigate that? What if the terrorists on 9-11 had targteted nuclear p[ower plants? What if they should target any component of this repository? Considering the lengthy transportation timeline and the centuries of proposed storage, the hazards of human error and aggressive behaviour cannot be omitted. Technology is only as good as the humans that create it and oversee it.

b) Existential Risks:

Please consider, if you will, that existential risks over this time frame seem to go unrecognized. Over a million years this plan discounts the deleterious and unknown effects of earthquakes, continental drift, the compression caused by ice ages and the subsequent isostatic rebound, deep groundwater activity that we know very little about, asteroids colliding with the earth, tectonic plate movement. Th burial plan presumes that geology is a predictive science, when in fact geology is entirely about what has happened in the past. We don't have a clue what the world will be like in a million years, or how changed/unchanged, stable/unstable the geology involved will be.How can you postulate with any certainty that the surrounding geology will be stable and safe, considering the lengthy time frame? 

c) A million years of isolating 150,000 tone of highly radioactive nuclear waste from the environment is what this plan proposes as its objective. And yet, we don't know what's coming tomorrow. To predict the future in such a cavalier manner is insulting to the public's collective intelligence. The time frame required to achieve your objective negates any chance of achieving it. Every used nuclear fuel bundle contains man-made plutonium, one of the most toxic substances on earth, used to arm nuclear weapons. Plutonium-239 has a half-life of over 24,000 years. Whether it is buried deep underground or guarded on the surface, the risk of unauthorised use will exist for thousands of years.

2. Hazards to human life and the environment.

The radioactive material in question is so toxic that exposure to a miniscule quantity can cause cancer, mutations, and recessive genetic diseases that interfere with cell division and genetic integrity, and this damage can be passed on for generations. And yet this plan calls for the concentration of 150,000 tons of this poison to be concentrated in one place: our back yard. 

In the event of an inevitable leak from the repository over the duration of hundreds of thouands of years, the purity of the Arctic watershed will be jeopardized. What a legacy to pass on to the generations to come. I firmly believe that future generations will look back on the carbon-nuclear age as a time of self-serving madness. We know we are heating up the planet. We know that we are generating tons of nuclear waste. Yet we continue on. And no, nuclear energy is not the way to mitigate climate disruption. The trade-off is potentially too damaging. 

A favourite defense of pundits of the nuclear industry is to invoke the low body counts resulting freom nuclear accidents. And yet the insidious damage continues on in the bodies of the survivors, and in the soil, the plants, water, and wildlife born into contaminated zones. The initial survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki who eventually fell ill and and died are slowly added to the thousands of human casualties irradiated on the days the bombs fell. If this deep-burial plan fails at any point, whether at the reactor site, all along the trans canada highway, at the repackaging site, or during the storage process, the resulting contamination could persist for centuries. How do you account for that? How do you justify it? How do justify a crashed transport truck that spills its load? How do you fix  a leaking container containing plutonium when it is buried deep in the rock surrounded by 150,00 tons of lethal material?

3. Transportation is not addressed.

What really irks me about the initial project description is the exclusion of transportation. This is simply wrong. It is an integral part that the authors have chosen to omit. You are limting the entire scope of this proposal by project-splitting, and it smacks of obfuscation and cowardice. Don't act as if transportation is subordinmate to to your far-fetched burial plan. This entire project needs a full impact assessment that includes transportation of the waste over public roads. 

This project is indeed one that has province-wide implications, a project that could ultimately cause an environmental catastrophe by contaminating both the Atlantic and the Arctic watersheds, not to menmtion the citizens of the communities enroute. Don't downplay the scope. Don't be disingenuous.

4. No mention of a preferred alternate plan: Bury it where it sits. It is the only logical choice. Don't expose over half the province to the risks. And do it right, but keep it accessible to mitigate anything that goes wrong. Solutions might surface in the future.

5. No mention of costs. They will be astronomical and will contine to drive this province deeper into debt. All around us is flowing water available to turn turbines. Our provicial neighbours generate so much clean energy they sell the surplus, meanwhile Ontario contines to create tons of toxic garbage with no sound solution in place,  burying it in northwesrtern Ontarion next to the Trans Canada highway does not qualify as a solution.

Conclusion:

This misguided plan to bury nuclear waste in northwestern Ontario must be  stopped immediately by voices of reason. Long-term thinking considerations and sound environmental science should be enough to put an end to it. This is a dangerous, farfetched and foolish plan. Stop dangling money in front of impoverished towns in the northwest. Stop bribing First Nations communities. It undermines your credibility.