Dispatches from the 148 by Fred Ryan
Let me get this straight. A profit-making group of corporations wants to build
a massive dump to bury varying levels of radioactive waste along MRC Pontiac’s water source, at Chalk River? We learn they also want to bury an entire nuclear reactor just upstream, at Rophton? Correct so far?
Dispatches from the 148 by Fred Ryan
Let me get this straight. A profit-making group of corporations wants to build
a massive dump to bury varying levels of radioactive waste along MRC Pontiac’s water source, at Chalk River? We learn they also want to bury an entire nuclear reactor just upstream, at Rophton? Correct so far?
Both projects are alongside the Ottawa River (and its earthquake fault line)? Millions of Canadians live downstream from Montreal up to the sites – including Ottawa, Quebec’s fourth largest city, Gatineau, and most of the MRC Pontiac’s population? Aren’t the sites on unceded Algonquin lands?
How do corporations increase profits? They cut costs and increase revenues (by bringing in waste from all over?).
Can anyone in their right mind deny the potential dangers presented by
these projects? Image a few.
We’re familiar with nuclear catastrophes; the greatest are still out of control – Chernobyl and Fukushima — after years of “solutions”. No technology has worked.
So, how will you and I answer our grandchildren’s “Fukushima Questions”: Who thought this up? Who let this happen?
And why would the communities threatened by these projects accept them? And for nothing, basically, in return?
Would you, would I? Yes, there are about fifty Pontiac jobs, largely clean-up work,
I understand. Yes, a few municipalities have received grants for “emergency
preparedness” (that’s re-assuring?) – one in the Pontiac, so far. They have now, reports the Pontiac Journal, an inflatable boat and one off-road vehicle, plus storage garages. They think we are idiots, obviously.
These minor benefits are in no way proportionate to the huge risks our communities are taking. This is a question we expect our Pontiac MRC’s mayors to consider – and act upon.
Almost no one is calling on these research facilities to be shut down. That’s a red herring by the project promoters to tar concerned residents.
Suppose the consortium and government committed to build a modern research facility here, a university, to research nuclear wastes – there’d be scientific oversight, significant jobs, a future for some of our kids, and our region would be attractive to investors. Years ago a local novelist suggested a “University of the Dumoine”. What about that?
Research includes recycling this waste (not just burying it like kitchen garbage) and researching various treatments: deep-well, glassification, and others.
Isn’t the silence from our political leaders really misinformation? It constitutes an attempt to cover up or distract public attention from the very real caution which must be exercised in handling and storing radioactive waste with a life-time estimated to be at least a 100,000 years. No current company will be around then, but no company could afford the cost of radioactive damages anyway. Is this why the Canadian government continues to own these facilities, while the corporate consortium merely manages them – including the multi-million in remedial funds these projects attracted?
Will these mostly-foreign corporations pocket the profit, while our government is responsible for any disaster? Yup, they think we’re idiots.
Hasn’t the world enough nuclear dumps? Thirty-two are considered radioactively contaminated.
One is a huge site in upper NY State, on our border, with radioactive waste from the US’ first atomic bomb tests – shipped up from New Mexico. Radioactive waste has been transported for years. This site includes anthrax-contaminated items, indicating the care to which waste is categorized. So, yes, Chalk River building waste can be transported to better sites, away from water and people
At the very minimum, we deserve clear information and the end to double-talk and silence. If the Ottawa Valley is to become a world-famous toxic canal, don’t
we deserve proportional benefits – the research university? But if our community is to be respected, and “best practises” observed, these wastes must be put into tested, checkable reservoirs away from towns and water. Google “Nuclear Waste Disasters”.
Make your feelings known – the MRC Pontiac website contains the Warden’s address. You know how to find our MP’s and MNA’s addresses. And the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission(nuclearsafety.gc.ca, go to Nuclear Waste). Use your mail; use your vote.
Last, can’t we idiots support a crowd-funding campaign to build a legal war chest to bring all those complicit in these projects to justice?
