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Over 100 people gathered on Parliament Hill to protest a radioactive waste facility. Kitigan Zibi Chief Dylan Whiteduck holds a sign that reads, “Protect the Ottawa River from nuclear waste.” Photo by Natasha BulowskiListen to article
Kebaowek First Nation and opponents of a recently approved radioactive waste disposal facility took the fight to Parliament Hill on Wednesday with a peaceful rally urging the federal government to stop the project.
“We stand united in safeguarding the well-being of our shared environment and the fundamental right of all Canadians to access clean and uncontaminated drinking water,” said Kebaowek Chief Lance Haymond at a morning news conference.
Shortly after, more than 100 people rallied at the Centennial Flame on Parliament Hill to oppose the project, which would hold up to one million cubic metres of radioactive waste about one kilometre from the Ottawa River.
Following the rally, Algonquin leaders watched question period from the gallery where Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet pressed Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on the waste facility.
Kebaowek is officially challenging the decision by the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) to greenlight construction of the “near-surface disposal facility” (NSDF) on the basis that the commission did not secure the First Nation’s free, prior and informed consent during the licensing process, as required by the United Nations Declaration Act. A second legal challenge launched by three groups argued the CNSC failed to consider a range of evidence about the project design and the radioactive waste it would take. A handful of nuclear industry veterans warn some of the waste slated for disposal is a “mishmash” that contains unacceptably long-lived radioactivity, as reported by Canada’s National Observer.
“The NSDF is the wrong technology in the wrong place,” said Ole Hendrickson, representing the three groups. “What a terrible precedent for future radioactive waste facilities.”
Haymond came to Ottawa “to ask the current federal government, nation to nation, to step in and stop the nonsense decision made by the CNSC.” At the press conference, he was flanked by Indigenous leaders and MPs from the Bloc Québécois and the Green Party.
This is a “golden opportunity” for Trudeau to prove that UNDRIP (the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples) is more than just a piece of paper, said Haymond.
“I grew up watching The Simpsons and we’re going to have a situation potentially of three-eyed fish,” said Kitigan Zibi Chief Dylan Whiteduck, referring to the mutated orange fish found in ponds outside the nuclear power plant in the TV show. A big concern for opponents is the project’s proximity to the Algonquin’s sacred Kichi Sibi (Ottawa River) and the release of contaminants over time, both planned and unplanned, depending on how the containment mound holds up.
Opponents of a recently approved radioactive waste disposal facility took the fight to Parliament Hill on Wednesday with a peaceful rally urging the federal government to stop the project.
Whiteduck said “this whole process and the fact that Canadians are just allowing this to happen” is “mind boggling.”
“Accountability has to be on this government,” he added.
Whiteduck said Kitigan Zibi and other Algonquin First Nations will not join Kebaowek and act as intervenors in the legal case. Instead, he and other Algonquin chiefs will follow Haymond’s lead and fully support Kebaowek First Nation.
“It’s very important that we support him because we want to put a united front of all the Algonquin communities,” Henry Rogers, chief of Long Point First Nation, told Canada’s National Observer. Rogers is one of six other Algonquin chiefs and leaders who joined Haymond at the press conference and rally.
Sébastien Lemire, local MP and the BQ spokesperson for Indigenous relations, wants to see ministerial intervention. He reiterated the Bloc’s long-standing opposition to the project and said his party “unequivocally supports” Kebaowek’s legal challenge.
Haymond is “very disappointed” Energy and Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson, Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault and the prime minister have not directly responded. Specifically, he asked Guilbeault to withhold a permit that would let Canadian Nuclear Laboratories (CNL) destroy habitat for species at risk until Kebaowek’s legal challenge moves through the court.
Kebaowek First Nation Chief Lance Haymond at a press conference in Ottawa on Feb. 14, 2023. Photo by Natasha Bulowski
At the time of publication, Guilbeault had not responded to Haymond’s request and did not directly answer Canada’s National Observer’s question about the permit issue at a press conference later that day.
Instead, Guilbeault pointed to the CNSC, which manages all impact assessments for nuclear projects, as well as Natural Resources Canada.
In an email, a spokesperson for Wilkinson said the ministry has no comment on the two judicial review applications and awaits the decisions of the court.
The minister “has no role in CNSC’s licensing decisions,” it reads, adding that the CNSC is an independent, quasi-judicial body that makes science-based decisions.
The federal government hasn’t taken a position, “but indirectly they have because they delegated their responsibilities and authority to the CNSC, who, in our opinion, have muffed up the decision,” said Haymond. Kebaowek is asking federal ministers to recognize there were errors and intervene to make the necessary adjustments and corrections.
“It’s playing environmental Russian roulette by threatening present and future generations,” Bloc MP Monique Pauzé said in French in a party press release.
Haymond and the three organizations behind the second legal challenge also want the International Atomic Energy Agency to undertake a thorough review of the NSDF and CNL’s waste management systems.
According to CNL, the estimated bill to construct and operate the NSDF is $750 million and Canadian taxpayers would fund it, said Hendrickson.
“The government of Canada owns the waste. It must take responsibility and not leave matters in the hands of profit-seeking private sector corporations,” he said at the press conference. As Green Party Leader Elizabeth May pointed out, CNL is owned by a consortium of three multinational companies including AtkinsRealis, formerly SNC-Lavalin, and two Texas-based companies, Fluor and Jacobs.
CNL was created by Crown corporation Atomic Energy of Canada Limited in 2015 and sold to the consortium. CNL is contracted to run day-to-day operations at federal nuclear sites and is responsible for obtaining licensing permits under this government-owned contractor-operated model.
“We keep coming up against examples of where [the] United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples is celebrated by Liberals until it gets in the way of a decision they’ve already made,” said May.
“We really need to … take a stand here,” said May. “The primary jurisdiction and sovereignty here is that of the Algonquin and Anishinaabe First Nations.”
Matteo Cimellaro & Natasha Bulowski / Local Journalism Initiative / Canada’s National Observer
People participate in a rally against the Near Surface Disposal Facility (NSDF) project at the Canadian Nuclear Laboratories Chalk River site, on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, on Feb. 14.JUSTIN TANG/THE CANADIAN PRESS
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Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault was urged by First Nations chiefs Wednesday not to issue a permit to allow a nuclear waste dump on a forested site northwest of Ottawa where a variety of wildlife, including “at risk” wolves, live.
First Nations, supported by environmentalists and Bloc Québécois and Green MPs, said the site of the Canadian Nuclear Laboratories’ planned nuclear waste dump is too near the Ottawa River, which supplies drinking water to the country’s capital. They fear it could be polluted with a radioactive substance running off the site.
Kebaowek First Nation last week filed a Federal Court application for a judicial review of the Jan. 9 decision by the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, alleging the government breached its duty to consult Indigenous people.
At a press conference, preceding a rally with First Nations on Parliament Hill, Kebaowek Chief Lance Haymond urged the Prime Minister to intervene and halt the project saying First Nations had not been properly consulted.
First Nations leaders on Feb. 14 called on the federal government to oppose a nuclear waste disposal site near the Ottawa River that they say threatens drinking water and their rights. Chief Lance Haymond of Kebaowek First Nation says First Nations stand united in safeguarding the well-being of the environment, and the fundamental right of all Canadians to access clean and uncontaminated drinking water.
Chief Dylan Whiteduck of Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg First Nation told The Globe and Mail that an inadequate assessment of the impact on plants and mammals – including black bears hibernating in dens on the site – was conducted before approval was given.
First Nations spent several months surveying the site and found it rich with wildlife, but he said they were not given long enough, and a more extensive survey is needed.
Mr. Haymond said if Mr. Guilbeault were to issue a permit under the Species at Risk Act (SARA) it would pre-empt an assessment his department is carrying out on upgrading to a threatened species eastern wolves that roam on the site.
Gretchen Fitzgerald, national programs director at Sierra Club Canada Foundation, an environmental organization, has written to Mr. Guilbeault asking him to instruct his officials “to not issue a SARA permit until impacts on at-risk migratory birds, turtles, bats and eastern wolves have been thoroughly assessed.”
“The project would replace roughly 35 hectares of high-quality mature forest with an above-ground landfill for a million cubic metres of radioactive waste,” the letter said.
Ole Hendrickson, president of the Sierra Club, said the site is an important corridor between the wolves’ territories in Quebec and Ontario and a rich feeding ground for them, with deer and moose congregating near a very old fir plantation in the forest.
Mr. Haymond urged Mr. Guilbeault not to issue a permit under the Species at Risk Act and told The Globe that the forested site of the planned nuclear waste dump is a nursery to black bears, with several active dens, as well as a habitat for eastern wolves, which roam there.
He said it would be remiss of the Environment Minister to issue a permit while his officials are assessing whether to upgrade the eastern wolf to a threatened species.
“The eastern wolf is a species at risk that requires protection,” Mr. Haymond said. “They have been talking about uplisting it since 2016 and they shouldn’t pre-empt that.”
In 2015, the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada reassessed the status of the eastern wolf as threatened.
If the wolves are classed as threatened, their habitat would need to be protected, which could put on hold plans to build the waste dump on territory where they roam.
The eastern wolf, also known as the Algonquin wolf, numbers between an estimated 236 and 1,000 adults, and is confined to forests in Central Ontario and Southwestern Quebec. It is currently listed as a species of special concern.
The federal government published the proposed uplisting of the eastern wolf to a threatened species in November last year, carrying out a month-long consultation. It has until August to make a decision.
The proposed order amends Schedule 1 to the Species at Risk Act “to support the survival and recovery of the eastern wolf in Canada by uplisting it from a species of special concern to threatened.”
An assessment of the impact of amending the act, published by the government, says Canadian Nuclear Laboratories (CNL) was twice consulted on the proposal to upgrade the wolf’s status.
It said, depending in part on the timeline for the start of construction, there could either be no costs for CNL or, in one of four scenarios, huge costs.
Under one scenario, CNL told them that if eastern wolves were upgraded, it could potentially lead to estimated costs of up to $160-million, the cancellation of the Chalk River nuclear disposal site, and restarting the planning and approval process to move the project to an alternative location.
Samuel Lafontaine, spokesman for Environment and Climate Change Canada, said theCanadian Nuclear Safety Commission “conducted a rigorous and extensive environmental assessment that included a careful consideration of impacts on species at risk.” He said mitigation measures to minimize impacts on wolves in the vicinity of the project had already been proposed.
Rachel Chennette, spokesperson for Canadian Nuclear Laboratories, said “CNL has been working with Environment and Climate Change Canada since the submission of the Near Surface Disposal Facility project description in 2016 to the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency.”
Please subscribe to the National Observer using this link, to support the excellent investigative journalism of Natasha Bulowski on the Chalk River nuclear waste.
Former employee at Atomic Energy of Canada Limited Kerry Burns (centre right, with a beard and spectacles) at AECL’s Whiteshell Laboratories in Manitoba in 1979. Photo submitted by Kerry Burns
Approval of a nuclear waste disposal site near the Ottawa River hinged on a promise that only low-level radioactive waste would be accepted. But former nuclear industry employees and experts warn some waste slated for disposal contains unacceptably high levels of long-lived radioactive material.
The “near-surface disposal facility” at Chalk River Laboratories (CRL) will store up to one million cubic metres of current and future low-level radioactive waste inside a shallow mound about one kilometre from the river, which provides drinking water to millions of people in the region. But former employees who spent decades working at the labs in waste management and analysis say previous waste-handling practices were inadequate, imprecise and not up to modern standards. Different levels of radioactive material were mixed together, making it unacceptable to bury in the mound.
“Anything pre-2000 is anybody’s guess what the hell they have on their hands,” said Gregory Csullog, a retired waste inventory specialist and former longtime employee of Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL), the Crown corporation that ran the federal government’s nuclear facilities before the Harper government privatized it in 2015.
Gregory Csullog pictured at the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in 2001 while employed with the International Atomic Energy Agency. Photo submitted by Gregory Csullog
Csullog described the waste during this earlier time as an unidentifiable “mishmash” of intermediate- and low-level radioactivity because there were inadequate systems to properly label, characterize, store and track what was produced at Chalk River or shipped there from other labs. “Literally, there were no rules,” said Csullog, who was hired in 1982 to develop waste identification and tracking systems.
International safety standards state low-level radioactive waste is suitable for disposal in various facilities, ranging from near the surface to 30 metres underground, depending primarily on how long it remains radioactive. High-level waste, like used fuel rods, must be buried hundreds to thousands of metres underground in stable rock formations and remain there, effectively forever. Intermediate-level waste is somewhere in the middle and should be buried tens to hundreds of metres underground, not in near-surface disposal facilities, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
Radioactive waste is recognized by many health authorities as cancer-causing and its longevity makes disposal a thorny issue. Even short-lived radioactive waste typically takes hundreds of years to decay to extremely low levels and some radioactive isotopes like tritium found in the waste — a byproduct of nuclear reactors — are especially hard to remove from water.
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Canadian Nuclear Laboratories (CNL) originally wanted its near-surface disposal facility to take intermediate- and low-level waste when it first proposed the project in 2016. Backlash was swift and concerned groups, including Deep River town council and multiple experts, argued it would transgress international standards to put intermediate-level waste in that type of facility. In 2017, CNL changed its proposal and promised to only accept low-level waste. The announcement quelled the Deep River town council’s concern, but some citizen groups, scientists, former employees and many Algonquin Nations aren’t buying it.
CNL says its waste acceptance criteria will ensure all the waste will be low-level and comply with international and Canadian standards. Eighty seven per cent of the waste will be loose soil and debris from environmental remediation and decommissioned buildings. The other 13 per cent “will have sufficiently high radionuclide content to require use of packaging” in containers, drums or steel boxes in the disposal facility, according to CNL.
Approval of a nuclear waste disposal site near the Ottawa River hinged on a promise that only low-level radioactive waste would be accepted. #ChalkRiverLabs
However, project opponents note that between 2016 and 2019, about 90 per cent of the intermediate-level waste inventory at federal sites was reclassified as low-level, according to data from AECL and a statement from CNL. The timing of the reclassification raised the alarm for critics, who took it to mean intermediate-level waste was inappropriately categorized as low-level so it could be stored in the Chalk River disposal facility. CNL said the 2016 estimate was based on overly “conservative assumptions” and the waste was reclassified after some legacy waste was retrieved, examined and found to be low-level.
The disposal facility will also accept waste generated over the next two decades and some shipments from hospitals and universities.
The history of Chalk River Laboratories
To fully understand the nuclear waste problem, you first have to know the history of Chalk River Lab’s operations and accidents, according to Mahdi Khelfaoui, professor of the history of energy, science and technology at the University of Quebec at Trois-Rivières and author of multiple articles on the nuclear industry and its history in Canada.
Chalk River Laboratories photographed in 1945. Photo from the National Research Council Canada archives
Chalk River is Canada’s biggest research facility. Built in 1944, it became home to the world’s first recorded nuclear reactor core meltdown in December 1952, followed by another incident in 1958. The 1952 accident was ranked a five on the International Atomic Energy Agency’s scale of one to seven; Chernobyl was a seven.
The partial reactor meltdown spewed radioactive material into the air and environment. During the year-long cleanup, highly radioactive debris and fuel rods were buried in a sandy area near the Ottawa River and millions of litres of contaminated water were dumped into ditches less than two kilometres from the river.
In this day and age, burying wooden boxes of fuel rods in shallow holes would be unthinkable, said Khelfaoui.
“At the time, the radioactive waste issue was almost synonymous with protecting the [commercial] interests of the nuclear industry,” said Khelfaoui. Public involvement in waste management policy was “nonexistent” before the end of the 1990s, he said.
Keeping accurate information on waste over time is a challenge and there have been inventory discrepancies at Chalk River, he added.
For example, the fuel rods buried in a “rudimentary” fashion after the 1952 meltdown were dug up and moved to safer storage in 2007, said Khelfaoui. AECL expected to find 19 fuel rods and cans in the boxes, but there were actually 32.
Over 75 years, Chalk River Laboratories developed CANDU reactors, did nuclear weapons research, supplied the United States’ nuclear weapons program with plutonium and uranium, and at one time was the world’s largest supplier of medical isotopes used to diagnose and treat cancers.
Chalk River Labs’ isotope separation laboratory in 1948. For 60 years, Chalk River Labs produced medical isotopes used to treat and diagnose diseases like cancer. Photo from the National Research Council Canada archives
Inherent inventory issues
Until the mid-1990s, waste wasn’t even categorized as intermediate, low or high-level, said Csullog, who worked at AECL back when the Crown corporation still ran day-to-day operations at Chalk River Laboratories. Much of it was stored together in what he described as a “mishmash of unsegregated, unmarked, uncharacterized mixture of low- and intermediate-level waste.”
“This mixing and lack of identification would make all these wastes unsuitable for the near-surface disposal facility,” said Csullog.
His main concern is the packaged legacy waste, which includes contaminated protective gear, old mops, rags, tools and lab equipment from former operations. For example, some of this equipment was used to clean up highly radioactive water that leaked out of the site’s two nuclear reactors, said Csullog.
A historic photo of the National Research Experimental Reactor (NRX). NRX began operation in 1947 as Canada’s first large-scale research reactor and played a major role in developing the CANDU reactor. It was used to test fuels and materials and for nuclear physics research in support of the Canadian nuclear power program, according to the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission. NRX was shut down on Jan. 29, 1992. Photo courtesy of Canadian Nuclear Laboratories
During his 21 years at AECL’s Chalk River Laboratories, Csullog developed programs to label and track all the radioactive waste created or shipped to the site. He later wrote the International Atomic Energy Agency’s guidelines on waste inventory record-keeping systems.
Developing these programs for AECL posed a challenge because many of the logbooks he was given to transcribe at the outset of his work in 1982 had precious little information on where the waste came from, how it was created or its radionuclide content. Csullog described the information in these historical records as “meaningless.” Until the mid-’90s, there weren’t even waste package labels to link waste to the correct paperwork, which also hindered his work, said Csullog.
“We didn’t track it. You can’t throw it all together and say, ‘We’ll use historical information.’ It’s irrelevant,” said Csullog.
In an email statement to Canada’s National Observer, CNL said the radioactivity of the legacy waste packages is based on records from its waste database. “CNL recognizes there are gaps” in this data and said no waste will be placed in the facility based only on historic information. Data on older legacy waste data will be reassessed and “modern analysis techniques” used to ensure there is “enough information on the waste” to make certain it meets the acceptance criteria.
The majority of packaged waste now in storage was generated pre-1995 and there is enough information to classify it as low-level waste “within a reasonable certainty,” a CNL representative told the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) during the licensing process. All waste generators have to submit documents detailing the properties of the waste and then it’s up to CNL to verify the waste matches the documentation before it goes into the disposal facility.
Even after Csullog’s waste identification and tracking program was implemented in the mid-’90s, some waste with higher radioactivity was still compacted with really low-level material when it should have been kept separate, said Csullog.This was done so the radiation emitted by each bale was limited enough for people to handle and move them but in hindsight, was a mistake, he said. At this period in time, the industry was on a learning curve when it came to waste management, said Csullog.
It takes a “very, very small amount of a contaminant that’s long-lived” to make low-level waste transition to intermediate, Csullog emphasized.
By the time Csullog left the Crown corporation in 1999, his final iteration of a waste inventory database was being used for package labelling, validation, inspection and compliance monitoring. While it was a vast improvement on past practices, the program still relied on estimates of waste characteristics and only helped keep tabs on newly created wastes — not the pre-2000’s waste Csullog says is unacceptable for the facility. Estimates are not a substitute for the more involved process of characterization,a process to verify the specific type and concentrations of radionuclides,said Csullog, but it helps identify which waste should be a priority and make a plan to verify its characteristics. Radionuclides are radioactive atoms.
To safely manage, dispose and store waste, it must first be characterized so you know how long the radionuclides take to decay and can then accurately classify waste as low or intermediate level based on their disposal requirements, said Kerry Burns, an expert on radioactive waste characterization methods who worked at AECL for 25 years and the IAEA for eight years.
In either case, Csullog said when he returned to AECL in 2006 after a stint working for the IAEA, his program that estimated waste characteristics and tracked them had been “abandoned.” The outstanding question in Csullog’s mind is what has been done to take its place.
In a detailed submission to the CNSC, Csullog outlined the many problems with waste identification and inventory systems during his time at AECL and the persistent lack of data to verify the radionuclide content of this older waste.
Csullog emphasized he is not against the disposal facility as a whole. He is against CNL putting this particular legacy waste into it. Instead, CNL should put this legacy waste into a deeper facility designed for intermediate-level waste since it will have to dispose of other intermediate-level waste anyway, he said.
A majority of the waste planned for disposal in the near-surface facility is soil and debris from decommissioned buildings. Most of the buildings decommissioned so far were administrative and likely had little contamination and CNL could feasibly have enough information on the radioactive properties, said Csullog. But the site’s wide range of research and development activities exposed lab equipment and some buildings to many different radioactive materials. For example, some labs separated plutonium for the U.S. weapons program, said Burns.
Kerry Burns, longtime AECL employee and radioactive waste characterization expert, outside his home in 2024. Photo submitted by Kerry Burns
Because of the site’s wide-ranging activities, it is unknown exactly what concentrations of radionuclides are in the legacy waste, said Burns.
The radionuclides typically encountered at Chalk River Labs have half-lives ranging from seconds to tens of thousands of years and can give off three different types of radiation. Low-level waste should decay to extremely low levels within roughly 300 years. As radionuclides decay, some of them turn into other radionuclides with different properties, which is vital to know when you’re planning how to store waste, said Burns.
Some controlled activities — like operating a nuclear power plant — produce waste with fairly predictable types and amounts of radionuclides. As long as these predictable waste streams are kept separate, you can often measure, sample and analyze it, said Burns, who spent years at AECL developing radiochemical analysis methods to determine exact properties of waste, and authored multiple articles on these methods.
But these methods only work if the waste is consistent, monitored carefully over time and kept separate from other waste streams, said Burns.
“I am afraid that the legacy and decommissioning wastes at CNL fall into the category of a dog’s breakfast,” said Burns. To know exactly how dangerous and long-lived the materials going into the facility truly are, a detailed analysis of each package and container would be required, said Burns.
According to CNL’s waste acceptance criteria, radiochemical analysis is not part of its minimum verification requirements, though it may be done as an additional verification measure.
Canada’s National Observer asked CNL which waste streams, if any, have had their radionuclide content confirmed using radiochemical analysis.
CNL said radiochemical analysis and background information are used to create “fingerprints” for waste streams based on what background information and past data exist on the waste.
“Some fingerprints have been established, while others are still in development,” said CNL. The company gave no specifics on which waste streams were examined using radiochemical analysis.
All waste will have “sufficient characterization data” to confirm it can be placed in the near-surface disposal facility, according to CNL.
Radiochemical analysis is “prohibitively expensive” and “extremely time-consuming” but is the only way to determine the inventory of long-lived, hard-to-detect radionuclides in thiswaste, said Burns. This chemical analysis becomes even more challenging when waste from different operations is mixed together, as Csullog and Burns said was the case for a great deal of waste pre-2000. If a sample isn’t representative of the whole waste stream, the results won’t reflect everything in it, said Burns.
Canada’s National Observer asked CNL if it has a budget or cost estimate for radiochemical analysis and which wastes will require this analysis. CNL declined to answer.
CNL is responsible for ensuring waste meets its acceptance criteria.CNL is owned by a consortium of private companies (including AtkinsRealis, formerly SNC-Lavalin). AECL receives federal funding and contracts CNL to manage and run the federal sites, including Chalk River.
Minimum requirements for verification include inspecting waste package labels and providing documents on the waste profile and management plan. CNL’s waste acceptance criteria doesn’t specify how often verification takes place. CNL declined to explain how frequently it would verify waste.
Chalk River Laboratories photographed from the Ottawa River in 1945. It was constructed in 1944. Photo from the National Research Council Canada archives
Csullog and Burns can only speak to the waste management practices from their time at Chalk River. Burns’ team at AECL used radiochemical analysis paired with another group’s measurements to characterize the mixed waste that was compacted into bales. These bales are on the lower end of radioactivity compared to other operations waste and the characterization data showed even those are unsuitable for the disposal facility, said Csullog.
CNL could have adequate systems and practices in place to characterize and track waste being generated today, they say, though neither is convinced based on the company’s submissions to the CNSC. But proper waste management today doesn’t change the fact that the Chalk River site is dealing with waste from an era when far less was known about the importance of handling radioactive waste, said Csullog.
“It was a good place to work … but when it came to waste management, it was always sort of the lowest priority,” said Burns, referring to AECL back in his day. “You’re dealing with a research site where people get rewarded for publishing papers, for doing innovative research, not for handling wastes and putting it in storage.”
Natasha Bulowski / Local Journalism Initiative / Canada’s National Observer
“A decision to approve the construction of a nuclear waste storage facility two hours west of Ottawa has led Indigenous leaders, activists and experts to voice concerns about what they describe as fundamental aws within Canada’s nuclear regulator.”
“Critics of the decision believe the recent approval is the latest example of the CNSC prioritizing the nuclear industry over Canadians, which they say stems from a lack of regulatory independence.”
“Bloc Québécois MP Monique Pauzé lamented the approval what she described in French as an “insane and inconceivable project.”
“Ottawa confirms to us the bogus status of the hearings conducted by the CNSC where the Commission heard the opposition of multiple stakeholders only to nally brush them aside in the decision rendered yesterday,” Pauzé said in a statement.”
Chalk River nuclear waste site project “The place is wrong and the method is wrong”.
A proposed nuclear waste disposal site near the Ottawa River should be rejected because of the environmental risks it poses and because the authorization procedure is tainted by a conflict of interest, argue various aboriginal nations.
Jean-Thomas Léveillé – La Presse
Published Nov. 24, 2023
The development of a “near-surface waste management facility” (NSWMF) – a nuclear waste burial site – at Chalk River Laboratories, on the Ontario side of the river, has been the subject of an application for authorization studied since 2016 by the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC). A decision is expected in the coming weeks.
The proposed landfill would receive low-level radioactive waste for at least 50 years in the municipality of Deep River, near Chalk River, Ontario, one kilometer from the Ottawa River, close to a wetland.
It would consist of a man-made mound, equivalent in height to a five-storey building, made up of different storage cells and equipped with leachate collection, leak detection and environmental monitoring systems.
This design is “essentially the same” as that of any domestic hazardous waste landfill in Canada, whereas radioactive waste requires a “much stricter” level of protection, astonishes lawyer Theresa A. McClenaghan, Executive Director of the Canadian Environmental Law Association.
“You would never, ever, ever put a landfill in a wetland, and never this close to a major river […]. […] It’s absolutely appalling, we can’t believe it.”
Theresa A. McClenaghan, Executive Director, Canadian Environmental Law Association
In the event of a leak, radioactive material could enter the wetland and reach the Ottawa River, says Ms. McClenaghan, warning that the consequences could be multiplied tenfold in the event of an extreme weather event.
In this artificial mound, “there would be room for a million tonnes of radioactive waste”, which would remain there for centuries, says Justin Roy, band council member and economic development advisor for the Kebaowek First Nation in Quebec, one of a dozen Algonquin communities opposing the project.
The Ottawa River, which the First Nations call Kichi Sibi, is of great spiritual and cultural importance to them, not least because of the presence of sacred sites.
The cities of Gatineau and the Communauté métropolitaine de Montréal are also opposed to the project, pointing out that the Ottawa River and the St. Lawrence River, into which it flows, are the source of drinking water for millions of people downstream of the Chalk River site.
Potential impacts “not trivial at all”
The health impacts of a potential leak “are not trivial at all”, worries Dr. Éric Notebaert, vice-president of the Association québécoise des médecins pour l’environnement and professor at the Université de Montréal’s Faculty of Medicine.
“Any exposure to ionizing radiation, no matter how small, carries risks, especially if it’s chronic,” he explains. He is also concerned about the tritiated water, “radioactive water”, generated at Chalk River.
Its rapid penetration into DNA, demonstrated by animal studies, “can induce cancers, birth defects, deaths in utero,” says Dr. Notebaert, whose organization also opposes the project.
“The location is wrong and the containment method is wrong. Sooner or later, there will be runoff into the river. That’s very worrying.”
The Canadian Nuclear Laboratories, for their part, maintain that their project will enable safe storage of waste thanks to a one-and-a-half-meter-thick bottom liner, a two-meter-thick cover, site monitoring and the possibility of carrying out repairs if necessary.
Apparent conflict of interest
One of the two commissioners responsible for reviewing the project application, Marcel Lacroix, previously worked at Chalk River Laboratories, according to his biography on the CNSC website. He holds a doctorate in nuclear engineering, is a professor at the Université de Sherbrooke and is an engineering consultant. The second commissioner has completed her term.
The Kebaowek and Kitigan Zibi First Nations see this as “a big problem”, says Justin Roy. He hopes the Commission will study the project objectively.
“The CNSC has never said no to a project, not once. Every time a project has been submitted, the CNSC has approved it.”
Justin Roy, Kebaowek First Nation
The CNSC “is very close to the industry it regulates,” says lawyer Theresa A. McClenaghan.
“You have to wonder whether the regulator is sufficiently independent when there are too many people from the regulated industry,” she says, arguing that this fuels the perception of bias or lack of independence on the part of the Commission.
For its part, the Commission assures us that the evaluation process is impartial.
“There is no conflict of interest. The Commissioners are appointed by the Governor in Council, that is, the Governor General, on the advice of Cabinet,” responded a spokesman for the organization, Braeson Holland, by e-mail, after declining La Presse’s request for an interview.
“Commissioners are committed to the highest ethical standards and guidelines regarding conflict of interest,” he added, noting Marcel Lacroix’s extensive expertise.
Contacted for this article, Marcel Lacroix did not return La Presse’s calls.
Rights denied
The First Nations deplore the fact that the project was able to go ahead without their free, prior and informed consent, a notion enshrined in Canadian legislation, and accuse the CNSC of failing to consult them properly.
The chiefs of three Algonquin communities were heard at the Commission’s final hearing in August, but were not allowed to ask the project proponent any questions, deplores Justin Roy.
The First Nations have not ruled out taking their case to court to challenge the Commission’s eventual authorization of the project.
They have also launched a petition, sponsored by the Bloc Québécois, calling on the federal government to submit nuclear reactor decommissioning and permanent waste disposal projects, such as Chalk River, to the International Atomic Energy Agency for review, and for the Commission to stay its decision on the matter until their rights have been respected.
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1945
Chalk River Laboratories begin operations, leading to the development of the CANDU nuclear reactor.
SOURCE: CANADIAN NUCLEAR SAFETY COMMISSION
1952
Chalk River Laboratories are the scene of the world’s first nuclear accident, on December 12. A second accident occurred in 1958.
On August 10, 2023, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission held a precedent-setting final licensing hearing for a giant above-ground radioactive waste dump beside the Ottawa River upstream of Ottawa-Gatineau and Montreal at Chalk River, Ontario.
Delegations from three Algonquin First Nations – Kebaowek, Kitigan Zibi and Barriere Lake – gathered at 50 Sussex Drive to make their final presentations in-person to community members, non-Indigenous allies and a handful of elected officials, in defiance of a Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) decree that the hearing would be virtual only. The CNSC presided over the hearing by Zoom.
While the hearing was taking place, an unprecedented storm hit the venue with huge amounts of rain, thunder, hail and wind that blew over the chairs on the outdoor covered terrace where the overflow crowd was watching the proceedings. Despite the ferocious storm, Algonquin Elders kept a ceremonial sacred fire burning throughout.
If approved, the giant dump, called a “near-surface disposal facility” (NSDF) by the proponent, would hold one million tonnes of radioactive and hazardous waste in an above-ground mound on the property of Chalk River Laboratories, a heavily contaminated federal nuclear facility established on stolen Algonquin land in 1944 to produce plutonium for US nuclear weapons. Chalk River Laboratories is a huge environmental liability for the Government of Canada, with an estimated cleanup cost in the billions of dollars.
The dump proponent is a multinational consortium comprised of SNC-Lavalin, and two Texas-based multinationals, Fluor and Jacobs. The consortium was contracted by the Harper government in 2015 to quickly and cheaply reduce the enormous federal legacy nuclear waste liability. Perversely, costs to Canadian taxpayers for managing Canada’s federal legacy radioactive wastes ballooned to more than 1 billion dollars per year after privatization.
The August 10 hearing was precedent-setting in two ways. If approved, the NSDF would be the first ever facility for permanent disposal of nuclear reactor waste in Canada. Secondly, the decision whether or not to license the facility is an important test of Canada’s commitment to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which forbids storage of radioactive waste on the land of Indigenous Peoples without their free, prior and informed consent. Ten of the eleven Algonquin First Nations whose people have lived in the Ottawa Valley since time immemorial say they do not consent to the NSDF on their unceded territory.
Many of the wastes proposed for disposal in the NSDF will be hazardous and radioactive for thousands to millions of years, according to Canada’s foremost expert on the federal legacy radioactive wastes and how best to manage them, Dr. JR Walker. Dr. Walker has clearly stated that wastes proposed for the NSDF do not qualify as low level waste but are in fact“intermediate level” radioactive waste that should be disposed of tens to hundreds of meters below the ground surface. He also notes that the proposal is non-compliant with International Safety Standards.
The site for the proposed “NSDF” is on the side of a hill surrounded by wetlands that drain into the Ottawa River – less than one kilometre away. The proponent’s environmental impact statement documents many ways the dump could leak during operation and after closure. Three isotopes of plutonium are included in the long list of radionuclides that would be discharged into the Ottawa River in “treated effluent” from the dump. The mound is expected to degrade and erode and eventually disintegrate due to “natural evolution.”
Most people believe it is wrong to deliberately discharge radioactive materials into a major drinking water source such as the Ottawa River, since there is no safe level of exposure to these man-made poisons. Every accidental and deliberate discharge increases risks of cancer, birth defects and genetic damage in the populations exposed.
The Assembly of First Nations and more than 140 downstream municipalities – including Ottawa, Gatineau and Montreal – have passed resolutions of concern about the NSDF proposal.
Despite the many serious shortcomings and strong opposition, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission staff have never wavered in their support for the dump. It appears they never “got the memo” back in 2000, when the organization’s mandate changed under new legislation from a role that included promotion of the nuclear industry, to a mandate strictly focused on protecting Canadians and the environment.
The August 10 hearing was presided over by only one Commissioner – along with the CNSC President. Both of their CVs tout long service and allegiance to the nuclear industry. The two officials askednot one single question of the First Nation intervenor teams, who were clearly shocked by the lack of interest in the information they had gone to such great lengths to gather and share. A member of the team asked, “Well, can we ask you some questions?” to which the President curtly replied, “That’s not our process.”
Canada’s seriously deficient nuclear governance regime has been described previously in the Hill Times here and here. Nuclear governance in Canada relies heavily on the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission for almost all aspects of nuclear industry oversight. The CNSC is widely perceived to be a “captured regulator” that promotes the projects it is supposed to regulate.
It is clear that our seriously deficient nuclear governance regime has enabled the NSDF — a grotesque mockery of a responsible radioactive waste management facility— to be proposed and taken seriously in Canada. A CNSC decision to approve the license for the NSDF is expected soon.
The powerful storm that pounded 50 Sussex Drive while testimony was being heard in the Algonquin language about greed and heedless destruction of the environment, underlined the serious decision being contemplated. There is no question that a record-breaking storm like that one, hitting the NSDF during its 50-year long filling stage – while wastes are exposed to the elements, could readily cause large spills of radioactive poisons and other hazardous materials into the Ottawa River.
It’s long past time that the government woke up and dealt with this environmental catastrophe in the making, a serious problem that will only grow steadily worse the longer it is ignored.
Lynn Jones is a retired public health program manager now with Concerned Citizens of Renfrew County and Area, a non-governmental organization that has been working for the clean-up and prevention of radioactive pollution from the nuclear industry in the Ottawa Valley for over 40 years. She is based in Ottawa.
Image below is a simulation of the bathtub effect from the Decouverte documentary “Chalk River Heritage.”
The seven year long, CNSC-led, Environmental Assessment of the proposed giant radioactive waste mound or “NSDF” has been fraught with serious problems and deficiencies. These deficiencies, in our view, have led to a poor-quality assessment, leaving the Commission with poor recommendations on which to base its EA decision.
Inadequate consultation with Indigenous Peoples on whose unceded territory the proposed radioactive dump would be built
CNSC and the proponent announced the design, site and commencement of an EA for the dump in 2016. No consultation with Algonquin First Nations occurred prior to the announcement of the design, site and EA. Some consultations occurred during the protracted EA, but not all Algonquin First Nations were consulted. As a seeming afterthought, after the final NSDF licensing hearing concluded in June 2022, the CNSC decided to leave the record open for further consultations with two of the eleven Algonquin First Nations whose peoples have lived in the Ottawa River watershed since time immemorial, and whose people never ceded their territory to the Crown via a treaty.
Problems in the early stages with the project description and scoping for the EA
1 The CNSC dismissed critical comments on the project description, submitted by radioactive waste management experts, that should have resulted in a fundamental rethinking of the project design, or at least major changes to the scope of the Environmental Assessment.
2The CNSC’s scoping of the Near Surface Disposal Project (NSDF) was seriously flawed. A combined scoping decision for three separate projects (the NSDF, and the entombment of the NPD and WR-1 reactors) was made nine days before the draft environmental impact statement (EIS) for the NSDF project was released. The CNSC allowed the proponent to conduct environmental impact studies before the project scope was determined. The scoping decision ignored many serious criticisms of the NSDF project description. It was released by a 1-person “Panel” comprised solely of the CNSC President. The public was not apprised of the “Panel” hearing, which may never have actually taken place.
Obstacles to “meaningful public participation”
3 The CNSC did not require the NSDF proponent to translate documents into French, despite a clear potential for adverse environmental impacts in the Province of Quebec. The closest residents to the NSDF project site are in Quebec. Lack of access to French language documents led to a complaint from a Quebec citizen and a decision by the Commissioner of Official Languages to require translation of the draft EIS.
4 The CNSC delayed or refused to provide access to documents referenced in the draft EIS for the Near Surface Disposal Project. A footnote on page 3-14 of the draft EIS (12) states that “The Safety Analysis Report demonstrates that even after failure of some of the design features, the wastes do not present a risk to the public and environment.” However, the Safety Analysis Report was not released until after the public comment period on the draft EIS ended. Key portions of this document (such as section 4.2.1.3 on “Nuclear Criticality Safety”) were redacted.
5The CNSC did not provide the “meaningful opportunities for public participation” required by section 4(1)(e) of CEAA 2012. CNSC closed the record for public comments pursuant to the Environmental Assessment in August 2017 following CNL’s release of a draft Environmental Impact Statement. This created nearly a 5-year gap before the May/June 2022 hearing. CNSC provided no opportunity for the public to provide formally recorded comments on the final EIS, despite the numerous changes made to the project that are reflected in it.
6 The CNSC arbitrarily decided that written intervenors at the May/June 2022 hearing would not have the right to make final submissions.
7 The CNSC’s January 31, 2023 Notice of Public Hearing and Procedural Guidance for Final Submissions said that “new information may not be presented.” This was changed very close to the submission deadline (on May 17, 2023) to “Final submissions may reference any material on the record.”
8 The CNSC public hearings provided no opportunity for witnesses to be cross-examined.
9 During public hearings, the proponent (CNL), its contractor (AECL) and the regulator (CNSC) were given unlimited time to make their arguments, but intervenors (other than First Nations) were restricted to 10 minute presentations. In some cases this required thousands of hours of research to be summarized in 10 minutes.
10 The document registry for the NSDF EA was very cumbersome and awkward and did not facilitate access to submissions by all interested parties.
CNSC staff recommendations to Commissioners fail to mention that the Commission is required to refer the decision to Cabinet if the project is likely to cause significant adverse environmental effects
12 There is no mention of CEAA 2012 Section 52 in CMD 22-H7. In this document CNSC staff recommend that the Commission decide that the NSDF is not likely to cause significant adverse environmental effects. However, Section 52 says the Commission could decide that the NSDF is likely to cause significant adverse environmental effects; in which case the Commission must refer the matter to the Governor in Council (Cabinet). Were CNSC staff so certain that the Commission would never dare to disagree with one of their recommendations that they felt it was not worth mentioning this option? Regardless, this is a serious omission. Information provided in CMD 22-H7 about “matters of regulatory interest” with respect to the proposed NSDF should be complete and objective.
CNSC staff allowed the proponent to write its own conditions (856 “mitigation measures”) and the manner in which they are written makes them impossible to enforce.
13. Section 53 of CEAA 2012 says that it is the decision maker — either the Commission or Cabinet and not the proponent – that “must establish the conditions… that would permit a designated project to be carried out.” However, CNSC staff allowed the proponent to write its own conditions (the 856 mitigation measures in CNL’s 105-page NSDF Consolidated Commitments List) in a manner that they would be impossible to enforce. There is no evidence that the Commission ever reviewed these conditions. Furthermore, the CNSC staff draft licence handbook for the NSDF Project requires CNL to only implement mitigation measures during construction and pre-operation activities. Most of the significant adverse impacts of the NSDF Project would occur in the operation and post-closure phases. By only requiring mitigation of adverse effects occurring during construction and pre-operation activities, the CNSC’s approach would not mitigate the most significant adverse impacts of the NSDF Project.
“With regard to section 53, it is astounding that the CNSC has allowed the proponent, CNL, to write its own mitigation measures, and to write them in such a way that nearly all of them would be unverifiable.”
Ole Hendrickson, CCRCA researcher
Problems with the “Administrative Protocol” document
The “Administrative Protocol” is a document co-signed by the regulator and the proponent. It described the steps to be followed for the Environmental Assessment with milestones and target dates.
Six different versions of Appendix A to the Protocol were published between 2016 and 2022.
The Administrative Protocol omitted any mention of the Duty to Consult with First Nations
At one point in the middle of the EA process all the dates for milestones were removed. Interested parties were left with no idea when they might be required to allocate time to preparing final briefs and oral presentations.
An original provision for a dedicated Environmental Assessment hearing was removed. No Environmental Assessment hearing was ever held. The Environmental Assessment report was buried in a staff document and contained no references whatsoever.
And finally…
The CNSC, as responsible authority, was unable to complete the Environmental Assessment in a “timely manner” as required by section 4(1)(f) of CEAA 2012.
EAs normally are completed within one or two years. The EA of the NSDF is currently in its seventh year and counting.
Should the CNSC be responsible for environmental assessment?
The Expert Panel on Reform of Environmental Assessment recommended in its final report to the Minister of Environment and Climate Change in 2017 that the CNSC not be in charge of Environmental or Impact Assessments. The CNSC-led EA of the NSDF proposal was started before the Expert Panel review so it was conducted previous legislation, but the flaws and failings documented above seem to suggest that removing the CNSC from involvement in Impact Assessment would be prudent.
Photo below by Robert Del Tredici, August 2018, Ottawa
A key takeaway from this briefer is that because they use unenriched uranium as fuel, Canadian nuclear reactors produce roughly ten times more radioactive waste per unit electricity generated, than US nuclear reactors.
Background: In 2017, civil society groups were trying to understand how three irresponsible radioactive waste projects (the giant Chalk River mound and two legacy reactor entombments), could be undergoing environmental assessment in Canada. The lack of a substantive federal radioactive waste policy was noted as a serious problem that had allowed the projects to proceed. The policy vacuum was brought to the attention of the IAEA, the Prime Minister, the Auditor General and many other Canadian officials. In September 2019, an international peer review team from IAEA flagged Canada’s lack of a radioactive waste policy as a serious problem. In response, Natural Resources Canada began a review process which took place from 2020 to 2023. The review included extensive involvement from civil society groups and concerned individuals across Canada. The new policy, released in March 2023, is a huge disappointment to many people who, in good faith, worked hard to provide many valuable suggestions only to find their input virtually ignored by the captured bodies (CNSC and NRCan) that developed the policy. In the words of our Quebec colleagues at Ralliement contre la pollution radioactive, the policy is “a fiasco and a slap in the face to democracy.” What follows is a detailed analysis of the many serious failings of Canada’s new “modernized” radioactive waste policy.
***
Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) uses “ensure” in its various forms 28 times in the final version of its new radioactive waste policy, up from 14 times in the draft.
Use of “ensure” in a policy context represents an empty promise – a promise that is not associated with any specific action and that lacks a verifiable, measurable, time-bound target. Reliance on such language indicates an intent to avoid further discussion.
For example, NRCan’s claim that Canada could “ensure nuclear non-proliferation” if plutonium reprocessing were to be allowed (and plutonium-fueled reactors were to be exported to other countries) demonstrates the policy’s superficial and specious nature.
The closest thing to a target in the policy is found in one of the “vision” statements:
By 2050, key elements of Canada’s radioactive waste disposal infrastructure are in place, and planning is well under way for the remaining facilities necessary to accommodate all of Canada’s current and future radioactive wastes.
This begs the questions, “What are those “key elements?” and “What are the remaining facilities?” To achieve this rather weak and vague vision:
The federal government accordingly ensures… that responsibility for maintaining institutional controls over the long term, including the preservation of records and knowledge management of radioactive wastes, is assigned, in an open and transparent manner, to an appropriate entity.
It appears that the federal government is unprepared to accept responsibility at this time for managing radioactive waste, even the waste that it has generated. The federal government created the nuclear industry and generated a massive (~ $16 billion) waste liability through R&D work carried out by the crown corporation Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL) over the past 75 years. AECL continues to receive annual appropriations exceeding a billion dollars.
The policy only promises that at some indefinite time in the future the government will “ensure” that an “appropriate entity” is created to maintain institutional controls over the long term. This side-steps the key issue of governance. A public entity to oversee radioactive waste management is urgently needed. Hundreds of submissions on the draft policy called for the government to establish an independent oversight body now.
Although the policy gives the nuclear industry free rein in managing its waste, with no oversight, it assigns no real responsibility to the industry, either. It calls upon the industry to develop “conceptual approaches” and to submit an “Integrated Strategy for Canada’s radioactive waste to the federal government for review and consideration.”
An International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report prompted the government to undertake a radioactive waste policy review. The IAEA specifically recommended that the government “enhance” the principles contained in its previous Radioactive Waste Policy Framework. The most important principle was “polluter pays”:
The waste producers and owners are responsible, in accordance with the principle of “polluter pays”, for the funding, organization, management and operation of disposal and other facilities required for their wastes.
Rather than being enhanced, this principle was deleted from the new policy. This opens the door to subsidies from the federal government for management of radioactive wastes produced by non-federal entities.
The policy lacks acceptable language regarding assessment of radioactive waste management facilities. NRCan rejected the following civil society proposal:
Amend the Physical Activities Regulations under the Impact Assessment Act to include construction and operation of new nuclear reactors, decommissioning of nuclear reactors, and all phases in the development, operation and closure of long-term waste management facilities.
Instead, NRCan said:
The Policy recognizes and is aligned with federal legislation, particularly the Nuclear Safety and Control Act, the Impact Assessment Act and the Nuclear Fuel Waste Act, as well as other legislation, associated regulations, and other policy tools that further support radioactive waste management,
adding that
These policy tools are regularly reviewed and updated by the federal government, as required, to ensure they remain relevant and effective.
This is a dubious claim, given that the government had not reviewed or updated the previous waste policy “framework” for 27 years, and has not reviewed or updated the Nuclear Safety and Control Act for 26 years.
Stating that the new policy “is aligned with” the Impact Assessment Act fails to mention that the Physical Activities Regulations under this Act exempt decommissioning of reactors and other nuclear facilities, new radioactive waste storage facilities, fuel waste reprocessing facilities with an annual production capacity of less than 100 tonnes of plutonium per year, and construction and operation of small modular reactors (and management of their wastes).
Hence, nearly all major nuclear activities are exempted from assessment.
Most current nuclear decommissioning activities are occurring on federal lands owned by AECL. In theory, impact assessment is required for all projects occurring on federal lands under section 82 of the Impact Assessment Act.
AECL, despite being a federal authority under the Act, ignores decommissioning projects, and delegates the determination of the significance of other waste-related activities (such as a new intermediate-level waste storage facility) to its private contractor, Canadian Nuclear Laboratories. This is not allowed under the Act.
With regard to health, safety and environmental aspects of radioactive waste management, NRCan rejected the following civil society suggestions on the policy draft:
Radioactive waste will be contained and monitored to ensure it remains isolated from the accessible biosphere for the time frame relevant to the category of waste;” and “Prioritize the health, safety and security of people and the environment by requiring that radioactive wastes are kept contained and isolated from the biosphere.”
These suggestions were based on the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safety standard for radioactive waste disposal. The IAEA says:
The specific aims of disposal are:
(a) To contain the waste;
(b) To isolate the waste from the accessible biosphere and to reduce substantially the likelihood of, and all possible consequences of, inadvertent human intrusion into the waste;
(c) To inhibit, reduce and delay the migration of radionuclides at any time from the waste to the accessible biosphere;
(d) To ensure that the amounts of radionuclides reaching the accessible biosphere due to any migration from the disposal facility are such that possible radiological consequences are acceptably low at all times.
The new policy does not contain the words “biosphere”, “isolation”, “migration” or “intrusion”, instead substituting vague phrases such as “ensure protection of the environment”. The policy’s failure to commit to isolating waste from the biosphere allows the nuclear industry to use the environment – particularly water bodies – as a way of diluting and disposing of its radioactive waste.
The policy’s failure to commit to isolating waste from the biosphere allows the nuclear industry to use the environment – particularly water bodies – as a way of diluting and disposing of its radioactive waste.
Dilution is the strategy employed by the “NSDF project”, announced by a consortium of multinational companies immediately after the Harper government contracted them to deal with the 75-year accumulation of radioactive waste at AECL’s nuclear sites across Canada. The NSDF would be Canada’s first permanent disposal facility for radioactive waste from nuclear reactors – a million-cubic-meter mound of waste next to the Ottawa River, including a pipeline that would discharge partially-treated leachate from the mound into a lake that drains into the river. It would set a terrible precedent for future facilities.
First Nations have expressed serious concerns about the NSDF project and two other permanent disposal projects that involve entombing AECL prototype reactors in concrete and grout and abandoning them next to the Ottawa and Winnipeg Rivers.
After the public comment period on the draft policy, a new section was added entitled “Canada’s commitment towards building partnerships and advancing reconciliation with Indigenous peoples.” It calls for “early, continuous and meaningful engagement” in future radioactive waste projects. However, the policy is silent on the question of whether the current disposal projects – announced without that early engagement – could be approved without the free, prior and informed consent of First Nations. Nor does the new policy commit to First Nations “consent” for future projects.
Another new section, entitled “Scope of the Policy,” adds confusion about reprocessing and fails to address Canada’s experimental work with plutonium fuels. The language on reprocessing says:
Reprocessing, the purpose of which would be to extract fissile material from nuclear fuel waste for further use, is not presently employed in Canada, and so is outside the scope of this Policy.
However, the federally-owned Recycle Fuel Fabrication Laboratories have been conducting plutonium fuel research for many years. Furthermore the government has given a private company $50.5 million to develop a commercial reprocessing facility under the guise of waste “recycling”.
Despite thousands of letters requesting a ban on plutonium reprocessing in the policy and noting the dangers of this technology for nuclear weapons proliferation, the word “plutonium” appears nowhere. Claiming that reprocessing is “outside the scope” of a radioactive waste policy is irresponsible. Furthermore, a new phrase in section 1.7 of the final policy encourages “recycling and reuse of materials.” This could be read as promoting “recycling” of used fuel to extract plutonium.
Also highly problematic is the following phrase in the new policy:
The government of Canada remains deeply committed to the 1970 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), which remains the only legally binding global treaty promoting nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament.
The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) entered into force on 22 January 2021. State Parties to this treaty “undertake never under any circumstances to… Develop, test, produce, manufacture, otherwise acquire, possess or stockpile nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices.”
While Canada may refuse to acknowledge the existence of the TPNW, this does not alter the fact that the international community has acted to ban nuclear weapons.
The section on “Scope of the Policy” also contains contradictory and confusing wording on naturally occurring radioactive material (NORM). The IAEA says NORM is “Radioactive material containing no significant amounts of radionuclides other than naturally occurring radionuclides.” The IAEA definition explicitly includes “Material in which the activity concentrations of the naturally occurring radionuclides have been changed by a process.”
In contrast, the new policy defines NORM as “material found in the environment that contains radioactive elements of natural origin.” This would appear to exclude from the policy the waste that is created when NORM is extracted from the environment and then processed.
The CNSC regulates many facilities that process NORM (using the internationally agreed definition): uranium mines, Cameco’s processing facilities in Blind River and Port Hope, fuel fabrication facilities, etc. The new policy also says:
“this Policy does not address NORM other than those associated with the development, production or use of nuclear energy or technologies and those associated with the transport and import/export of nuclear substances.”
This statement is both grammatically incorrect (NORM refers to “material”, not “materials”) and does not adequately address the contradiction inherent in defining NORM in a manner that excludes the many processing activities occurring in Canada, and the wastes they generate.
The terms “process” and “processing” appear nowhere in the policy. Even the word “uranium” is absent from the policy, further illustrating the superficial nature of the new policy.
Also problematic is the reference to “an independent nuclear regulator that makes decisions using inclusive, open, and transparent public hearings.” Self-serving promotion of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission does not belong in a radioactive waste policy. Claims of transparency and openness do not match reality. The real issue is that the CNSC invariably dismisses public input in making its decisions.
Public input has also been dismissed in this new policy. It reads as if it was written by the CNSC, which may be true. The CNSC is widely considered to be completely “captured” by the nuclear industry, with a revolving door between CNSC, the nuclear industry, and Natural Resources Canada.
The policy rejects the demand by civil society organizations for a ban on imports of radioactive waste from other countries. It says that the federal government:
is committed to the principle that radioactive waste generated in other countries are [sic] not to be disposed of in Canada and radioactive waste generated in Canada will be disposed of in Canada, with the exception of certain radioactive wastes subject to return arrangements.
The policy lists as exceptions the “repatriation of disused sources to Canada.” It adds that “radioactive sources that were not from Canada may be brought to Canada.”
This is a clear admission that Canada is importing radioactive waste from other countries and intends to continue doing so. The ownership of this waste is eventually transferred to the Government of Canada, and the waste is stored at the federally owned Chalk River Laboratories of AECL.
The financial arrangements involved in these waste transfers are completely non-transparent. In this way, the waste imports could be adding to the liabilities recorded in the Public Accounts of Canada. Canadian taxpayers may be subsidizing not only Canada’s own nuclear industry, but the nuclear industry of foreign nations as well.
As noted in the recent Hill Times op-ed by Eva Schacherl, Political Opposition Growing to New Reactors, both small modular nuclear reactors AND the high-level fuel waste they produce are EXEMPT from environmental assessment in Canada
From the op-ed:
“The Impact Assessment Act was intended to create “greater public trust in impact assessment and decision-making.” But there will be no federal assessment of nuclear reactors up to 200 thermal MW in size, nor of new reactors built at existing nuclear plants (up to 900 MWth). Yet new tidal power projects, as well as offshore wind farms with 10 or more turbines, need an assessment under the regulations, as do many new fossil fuel projects.”
“Also exempted from federal assessment is the “on-site storage of irradiated nuclear fuel or nuclear waste” associated with small modular reactors. This will make it easier for SMRs’ radioactive waste to be potentially left in the northern, remote, and First Nations communities, where they are proposed to be built.”
This SMR fuel waste exemption was a last-minute insertion in the Impact Assessment Act regulations. It is found in section 28 of the Physical Activities Regulations (the so-called ‘project list’ for the new Impact Assessment Act and reads as follows:
28 The construction and operation of either of the following:(a) a new facility for the storage of irradiated nuclear fuel or nuclear waste, outside the licensed boundaries of an existing nuclear facility, as defined in section 2 of the Nuclear Safety and Control Act, other than a facility for the on-site storage of irradiated nuclear fuel or nuclear waste associated with one or more new fission or fusion reactors that have a combined thermal capacity of less than 200 MWth;
As far the fuel waste from the proposed SMR (the “MMR Project“) at Chalk River is concerned, there is another exemption in section 28 – the phrase “outside the licensed boundaries of an existing nuclear facility” allows it to be kept on site at Chalk River, a licensed nuclear facility.
Artist’s rendering of a prototype small nuclear reactor plant. Under Canadian legislation, the whole plant along with the irradiated nuclear fuel it produced could become a radioactive exclusion zone, permanently off limits to humans
Concerned Citizens of Renfrew County and Area 