“By failing to provide adequate waste containment, this proposal flagrantly disregards the International Atomic Energy Agency’s safety standard for disposal of radioactive waste.”

“The EIS does absolutely nothing to address the very long-term implications of the project. For example, the NSDF is intended to house approximately 1000 tonnes of uranium-238, a primordial radioactive element with a half-life of 4.5 billion years. As time goes by, the disintegration of uranium-238 atoms creates a dozen other radioactive “decay products”, all of them much more radiotoxic than uranium-238 itself. Thus the uranium-238 “family” becomes increasingly more radioactive, not less radioactive, as the centuries tick by.

In the first year alone the radioactivity from uranium-238 in the NSDF will just about triple, due to the inbreeding of thorium-234 and protactinium-234. The total radioactivity of the uranium-238 family will continue to increase until it ends up being more than seven times as radioactive as the original uranium-238. The amount of radon gas generated inside the NSDF will steadily increase, year after year, virtually forever, as will the radium-226 content. In fact the NSDF facility will eventually hold the radioactive equivalent of 500,000 tonnes of Elliot Lake uranium tailings, just due to the uranium-238 family alone. ”

Read the submission: goo.gl/9io9Vq