To the Editor:
Manitoba banned the storage of high level nuclear waste in 1987. Quebec passed a similar ban. We need a legislated ban on the storage and transportation of high level nuclear waste in Saskatchewan.
We are being targeted as a waste dump for mainly Ontario's nuclear waste. It is wrong on so many levels. We have to press our legislators now to enact legislation.
Nuclear waste is produced in Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick - not Saskatchewan. Saskatchewan is being targeted because other jurisdictions have turned them down before.
We have remote, impoverished northern communities. The Metis community of Pine-house, north of La Ronge, has expressed an interest in a depository as has the English River First Nation. Northern Saskatchewan is the second poorest region of Canada. Cameco, major uranium producer and co-owner of Ontario's Bruce Power, would benefit from a dump here.
Once the problem of nuclear waste is "solved," then the pressure to build more nuclear plants and sell more uranium-win, win for Cameco, not us. Note that the U.S. spent $13.6 billion over 20 years on a storage site in Nevada which proved unsatisfactory and was abandoned.
With all that American waste needing a place to go, how long before our "free trade" would bring it here to our home?
Deep rock storage in the Canadian Shield is problematic, The Nuclear Waste Mana-gement Organization, the nuclear waste producers group that is presenting this is as a solution, is just recycling a plan that was found wanting many years ago. Nothing new here.
Seven hundred million of our money was spent over 15 years on research and finally the Pinawa, Manitoba site was abandoned due to flooding.
In 1957, geologists found that under Pre Cambrian rock, such as in our north, is a large layer of salt water under extreme pressure. Deep rock gold mines have problems with flooding, yet the nuclear industry continues to promote this as a solution. In 1994, a plan was put forth for deep rock disposal. This plan was studied carefully and 90 problems were found that needed addressing. The Seaborn Comm-ission studied it further and found the plan unacceptable. So why is this unacceptable plan now suddenly acceptable? Are they hoping we have short memories?
The biggest problem is with the material itself. The manmade, highly radioactive isotopes (211 in all) have extremely long half lives. Iodine129 - 16,000,000 years, Cesium 135- 2,300,000 years. Plutonium 239-24,000 years.
All these materials cause cancer, genetic damage and many other adverse health effects in humans and all other living things. The accumulated waste in Canada, 45,000 tonnes, would take 20,000 trucks about 30 years to deliver to the depository across our roads and through our communities. The nuclear wastes, hot and highly fissionable, have to be widely separated and carefully packaged to avoid going critical. These hazards exist during transport and long after burial. No container can last as long as the radioactive material they encase.
Note that this proposal is for a depository, where the material can be accessed in future and reprocessed into fuel for nuclear power plants that they hope to design. The processing plant, producing plutonium-one of the most dangerous substances on the planet- may well be in Saskatchewan. More transport and exposure in this "remote" part of Canada - not Ontario.
Our provincial government has said not now to nuclear waste here previously, but has evidently flip flopped. Secret negotiations seem to be going on up north.
Is exploratory drilling taking place now? Consultations should not be secret and open to ALL the public and media and there must be open debate. The NDP passed a resolution calling for a ban, but their leader is certainly not pushing the issue.
You and I have to push the issue. If enough people contact their MLA, the Premier and the Opposition Leader, we can also have a ban on nuclear waste. Let's not go from breadbasket of the world to the nuclear waste basket of the world. That would be a sad legacy for our families.
Mike Bray, Indian Head, SK.
