“We are very concerned that the contract negotiated with SNC Lavalin and others, emphasizes low cost, disposal of all wastes, and completion of a facility within six years. It appears the consortium may have won the bid to manage Canadian Nuclear Labs by proposing a quick and dirty approach to dealing with Canada’s nuclear wastes that reduced the cost of “cleanup” from $10 billion to $600 million. We want to know who said it was okay to ignore over a billion dollars worth of work on the previous cleanup plan.“

The NSDF facility, if approved, will be the first permanent repository to be authorized by the Canadian government, through the CNSC, for the permanent irretrievable storage of post-fission radioactive elements. These radioactive poisons have been mass-produced by humans as waste byproducts of the nuclear age. Keeping them out of the environment is an unprecedented challenge, with a virtually infinite time horizon. Technetium-99 has a 210,000 year half-life. Plutonium-239 has a 24,400 year half-life. Worse yet, every atom of plutonium239 eventually decays, turning into an atom of uranium-235 – and uranium-235 has a 700 million year half-life. We are talking about an infinite time horizon. 

I sometimes wonder whether such information is ever communicated to the Commissioners. It certainly is not communicated to the general public. The industry, and the regulator, seem to prefer not to disrupt the benign state of ignorance about radioactive materials that is so prevalent in our society. Too bad. The CNSC could perform a great public service by educating people on the facts, in an objective and unbiased way, thereby dispelling the ignorance.

From the CCNR intervention for the NSDF hearings 30 May to 3 June 2022