WHY IT IS IMPERATIVE FOR NUCLEAR REACTORS TO UNDERGO ENVIRONMENTAL ASSESSMENT… (comments from Dr. Gordon Edwards, President, Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility, May 29, 2019)

“All nuclear reactors must be subject to environmental assessment without exception, given that all reactors (regardless of size) produce every category of human made radioactive waste materials — low-level, intermediate level and high-level — which if released to the environment can cause long-lasting damage due to radioactive contamination.

These materials are capable in principle of causing thousands to millions of human cancers if released through any means whatsoever.

Given that the world’s first major nuclear accident occurred in 1952 at the NRX reactor at Chalk River, a very small reactor producing only 10 to 20 megawatts of heat (and no electricity), and creating high-level radioactive waste (irradiated nuclear fuel) much of which is still on site, that will remain dangerous for hundreds of millennia, as well as highly radioactive structural materials (including the destroyed reactor vessel) that will remain radioactive for tens of thousands of years, it is clear that any reactor producing as little as 10 megawatts of heat can have extraordinary impacts on the environment.

Basic environmental justice demands that remote and indigenous communities that may be the intended recipients of such reactors must have the opportunity to question the plans and challenge the assumptions of the promoters, and educate themselves to the range of risks that they may be facing as well as the long-lived radioactive legacy that such a reactor will create.”

comments submitted by Dr. Gordon Edwards on the Draft project list and proposal to exempt most nuclear reactors from impact assessment. May 29, 2019

Comments may be submitted until Friday May 31, by registering and using the purple button to type your comments in the comment box on this webpage: https://www.impactassessmentregulations.ca/consultation-on-the-proposed-Project-List?preview=true