In from Gordon: "Nuclear waste: Hearings raising lots of new questions A few days of hearings into plans for a nuclear waste site in Ontario have raised more questions than they’ve answered. By John Spears, Business reporter, Toronto Star, Fri Sep 20 2013 tinyurl/k539ht5 A few days of hearings into Ontario Power Generation’s plans to bury radioactive waste deep beneath the Bruce nuclear station have answered few questions, and raised new ones. They include what will go into the waste site; the role of First Nations in determining whether it will go ahead at all; and the format of the hearings themselves. That’s without even raising the issue of how Canada will dispose of the spent fuel from reactors, the most dangerous form of nuclear waste – a topic that can’t even be discussed at the current hearings before a federal panel. Ontario Power Generation’s (OPG) proposal covers only low- and intermediate-level waste. That can include anything from protective clothing up to the reactor cores themselves (though not the fuel that goes inside them.) What’s at issue isn’t whether to deal with nuclear waste, but how. Ontario already has thousands of tonnes of waste from four decades of operating nuclear plants. Like nuclear or loathe it, the waste exists, and must be handled. But problem of how to do it isn’t getting any easier. Here are some of the new questions; First Nations: Shortly before the four-week hearing opened, OPG said it had reached an agreement with the Saugeen Ojibway Nation (SON) not to proceed without the support of SON. SON has legal standing before the panel, and Chief Randall Kahgee has signaled that it won’t be sidelined. Kahgee said SON was never asked whether it wanted a major nuclear plant in what it considers its traditional territory. While the town of Kincardine invited the nuclear waste site to the area, SON was left out, he told the panel. “We played no role,” Kahgee said in an interview. “Largely, these processes operated under a policy of exclusion where we’ve been left on the outside looking in at our own territory.” “There’s a fundamental difference in talking to somebody and talking with somebody. At the time [when the site was selected] we were being talked to, we weren’t being talked with.” Clearly, Kahgee now wants to be “talked with,” and listened to. SON’s lawyer Alex Monem has also put the panel on notice that he objects to the limits placed on participants in questioning witnesses and evidence before the panel. Even after long, technical presentations on the site, buttressed by thick supporting documents, participants like SON were initially limited to asking only two questions. That doesn’t allow SON or other interested parties to pursue a full line of inquiry, Monem said. “I must state for the record that the process that we’re adopting here for intervenor questions is severely limiting and it is curtailing our ability to participate in the fact-finding process and the evidence-testing process,” he said. That’s a strong warning from a player whose support is needed if the project is to go ahead. Panel chair Stella Swanson told Monem that the hearing isn’t a courtroom. But she said she’d loosen restrictions to a point, while keeping proceedings on a tight deadline. Whether that will settle the question remains to be seen. What goes into the site? At the same time, the Canadian Environmental Law Association has made a formal request for a ruling on its own procedural grounds. It wants to know what’s going into the Bruce site. The Bruce site was supposed to take waste from operating nuclear plants. Waste generated when plants are decommissioned and demolished – called “decommissioning waste” – wasn’t part of the project. But OPG vice president Laurie Swami told the hearing clearly that this “decommissioning waste” could end up at the Bruce site near Kincardine. “At this point in time, OPG expects to place the waste arising from decommissioning into the low- and intermediate-level waste DGR in Kincardine,” she told the panel Tuesday. (The DGR, or deep geologic repeository, is the technical name for the site, to be constructed 680 metres underground.) Further assessments would be needed before that happens, she said, but “it is the site we would propose to use.” The Canadian Environmental Law Association was sufficiently concerned about the confusion that it has asked for clarification. If OPG does indeed intend to expand the Bruce site’s scope to include decommissioning waste, CELA wants the current hearing adjourned. It says OPG should have to resubmit its application, so its plans for the Bruce site are considered in total, rather than piece by piece. OPG has been told to make submissions on CELA’s request by next week. What about used fuel – high level waste? Meanwhile, a question lurking in the background is what to do with high-level waste – the used fuel that is the subject of a separate federal process. Everyone know that the high-level waste site isn’t open for discussion – despite the fact that municipalities bordering Kincardine have said they might be willing to host it. But the panel itself has broached the issue. Panel member Gunter Muecke asked OPG why it is combining low-level waste – which requires special handling for only a few hundred years – with intermediate-level waste – some of which requires special shielding for millennia, just like high-level waste. Wouldn’t it make more sense to put intermediate-level waste in a high-level waste site? Muecke mused. The answer he got from OPG and federal bureaucrats was more legal than scientific. Legally, OPG is responsible for low- and intermediate-level waste. It needs a site to fulfill that obligation. That’s why OPG is proposing the Bruce solution. Federal law makes the federal government responsible for high-level waste – a task it has assigned to the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO). The two projects can’t be mixed. (At the same time, ironically, OPG has hired the NWMO as a contractor to work on the Bruce site.) Meanwhile, as the questions pile up, so does the waste. "
Posted on: Sat, 28 Sep 2013 02:05:36 +0000
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