Hoarding Waste

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Man wearing gas mask in front of coal mine refinery

I’m trying to clear out some of my packaging treasures. When I buy pickles, they come in nice glass jars with resealable lids – easy to clean and reuse. I have too many, so I now have to recycle some of them, to make room to keep the best, which I may never use anyway.

The Canadian nuclear industry has been hoarding leftover nuclear waste, not because it is easily decontaminated and reusable, but because there is no GOOD way to dispose of it. Waste material has been piling up since the first nuclear bombs and then electrical power generating facilities were commissioned and built. A small fraction of spent fissionable material is used for medical diagnostics and treatment, but the rest is useful only for military purposes

The latest and biggest plan is to create a huge landfill mound of waste material, to be overseen for 50 years by a consortium of large corporations. There is no way that accountability on this scale can be achieved.

This mound will be “no man’s land” for tens, if not hundreds of thousands of years. Who’s going to look after that? How can a corporation, be held accountable if two thousand years in the future, some curious group decides to excavate this mound, thinking that we, the ancients of the future, must have hidden great treasures there? What will happen if natural forces rupture the containment, and allow radioactive particles to flow into the Ottawa River?

This is the great problem with nuclear energy; there is no good way to deal with the waste. The plan to erect a great mound of random waste, dangerous forever, is not a good plan. It’s just the only plan they’ve come up with so far. Vote no to forever waste.

Robert Wills
Shawville and Thorne