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OTTAWA, February 16, 2022 – Members of Parliament and 50 environmental and citizen groups are opposed to the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC)’s forthcoming hearings to license Canada’s first permanent “disposal” facility for radioactive waste.

A statement calling for suspension of the hearings is signed by three MPs: Laurel Collins, NDP environment critic; Elizabeth May, Parliamentary Leader of the Green Party of Canada; and Monique Pauzé, environment spokesperson for the Bloc Québécois. 

Union signatories of the statement include SCFP Québec, Fédération des travailleurs et travailleuses du Québec (FTQ) and Health, safety and environment committee of Unifor Québec.

Other signatories include Friends of the Earth, Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment, Ralliement contre la pollution radioactive, National Council of Women of Canada, Ontario Clean Air Alliance, and Quebec’s Front commun pour la transition énergétique. Ottawa Valley groups include Concerned Citizens of Renfrew County and Area, Old Fort William Cottagers’ Association, Action Climat Outaouais, and Pontiac Environmental Protection, among others.

On January 31, the Kebaowek First Nation asked that the hearings be halted until a consultation framework between them and the CNSC is in place. The hearings are for authorization to build a “Near Surface Disposal Facility” for nuclear waste at Chalk River, Ontario, on unceded Algonquin Anishinaabeg lands alongside the Ottawa River.

The CNSC staff report recommends licensing the construction of the mound for 1 million cubic metres of radioactive and toxic wastes accumulated by the federal government since 1945. The CNSC has scheduled licensing hearings on February 22 and May 31. No separate environmental assessment hearing is scheduled.

The proposed facility would be an aboveground mound a kilometre from the Ottawa River, upstream from Ottawa and Montréal. 140 municipalities have opposed the project and fear contamination of drinking water and the watershed.

In 2017, the CNSC received 400 submissions responding to its environmental impact statement, the overwhelming majority of them opposed to the plan.

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Des députées et des groupes s’opposent aux audiences pour autoriser la première décharge permanente de déchets radioactifs au Canada

OTTAWA, le 16 février 2022 – Des députées et 50 groupes environnementaux et citoyens s’opposent aux prochaines audiences de la Commission canadienne de sûreté nucléaire (CCSN) pour autoriser la première installation permanente de « gestion » de déchets radioactifs au Canada. 

Trois députées ont signé une déclaration appelant à la suspension des audiences : Laurel Collins, porte-parole du NPD en matière d’environnement; Elizabeth May, Chef parlementaire du Parti vert du Canada; et Monique Pauzé, porte-parole de l’environnement pour le Bloc Québécois. 

Les signataires syndicaux de la déclaration incluent le Syndicat canadien de la fonction publique (SCFP) – Québec, la Fédération des travailleurs et travailleuses du Québec (FTQ) et le Comité de santé, de sécurité et environnement d’Unifor Québec.

On retrouve, parmi les autres signataires, les Amis de la Terre, le Ralliement contre la pollution radioactive, l’Association canadienne des médecins pour l’environnement, le Conseil national des femmes du Canada, l’Ontario Clean Air Alliance et le Front commun pour la transition énergétique du Québec. Des regroupements de la vallée de l’Outaouais l’ont également signée, dont Concerned Citizens of Renfrew County and Area, Old Fort William Cottagers’ Association, Action Climat Outaouais, et Protection environnementale de Pontiac, entre autres. 

Le 31 janvier, la Première Nation de Kebaowek a demandé que les audiences soient suspendues jusqu’à ce qu’un cadre de consultation entre elle et la CCSN soit mis en place. Les audiences portent sur l’autorisation de construire une « installation de gestion des déchets près de la surface (IGDPS) » pour les déchets nucléaires à Chalk River, en Ontario, sur les terres algonquines Anishinaabeg non cédées le long de la rivière des Outaouais.

Le rapport du personnel de la CCSN recommande d’autoriser la construction du monticule pour 1 million de mètres cubes de déchets radioactifs et toxiques accumulés par le gouvernement fédéral depuis 1945. La CCSN a prévu des audiences d’autorisation les 22 février et 31 mai. Aucune audience d’évaluation environnementale distincte n’est prévue.

L’installation proposée serait un monticule hors sol situé à un kilomètre de la rivière des Outaouais, en amont d’Ottawa et de Montréal. 140 municipalités se sont opposées au projet, craignant une contamination de l’eau potable et du bassin versant.

En 2017, la CCSN a reçu 400 soumissions en réponse à son étude d’impact environnemental : la grande majorité d’entre elles s’opposent au plan.

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OTTAWA, February 3, 2022 – Staff of Canada’s nuclear regulatory agency, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC), have recommended approval of a controversial giant above-ground nuclear waste dump for one million tonnes of mixed radioactive and hazardous waste alongside the Ottawa River. The recommendation was contained in a licensing document and environmental assessment report released on January 25. Citizens’ groups say the document is seriously flawed and vow to fight the recommendation in licensing hearings scheduled for February 22 and May 31, 2022.

Ole Hendrickson, scientist and researcher for the group Concerned Citizens of Renfrew County and Area, said the CNSC “has failed to assess the project in an objective and scientifically credible manner.”  Hendrickson noted a number of “critical omissions in the document” that he says “make it impossible for the Commission to make a sound decision about whether or not to license the dump.”

“The recommendation to approve this dump, given that it would leak and eventually disintegrate, is reckless and irresponsible on the part of CNSC staff,” said Johanna Echlin of the Old Fort William (Quebec) Cottagers’ Association. “The CNSC is supposed to protect Canadians from radioactive pollution created by the nuclear industry, not enable it,” she added.

Some of the critical omissions in the environmental assessment report noted by citizens’ groups include the following:

• Failure to consider future human exposures to nuclear waste packages containing plutonium and other long-lived substances that will remain dangerously radioactive for tens of thousands of years
• No identification of the impacts of constructing a pipeline to discharge contaminated effluent into Perch Lake, which drains into the Ottawa River; presented un-ironically as a “mitigation measure”
• Failure to seriously consider alternative sites that would avoid rapid discharge of radioactive and hazardous substances to a major water body, and avoid placing wastes in an area of high water with risk of flooding
• Inadequate consideration of alternative facility types that would not expose wastes to rain, wind, and snow; and that would not require unproven water treatment and “weather cover structure” technologies
• No consideration of risks to workers from accidents involving highly-radioactive industrial cobalt-60 irradiator wastes
• Failure to consider contamination of groundwater from the hundreds of tonnes of lead required to shield these highly-radioactive commercial wastes
• Astonishingly, the environmental assessment report contains no references
• The report fails to address the fact that the mound would degrade and that mixed radioactive and hazardous industrial wastes (arsenic, beryllium, mercury, benzene, dioxins, PCBs, etc.) would leak into the Ottawa River, essentially forever.

Echlin and Hendrickson point to previous studies by the dump proponent that identified many ways the mound would leak, and described the inevitable disintegration of the mound within 400 years through a process of “normal evolution.” Leakage from the dump is expected to flow into surrounding wetlands that drain into the Ottawa River less than a kilometre away, contaminating a drinking water source for millions of Canadians downstream.

(Photo above from Radio Canada Découverte, March 2018, showing the mound overflowing as part of the degradation and erosion process, described by the proponent in its Performance Assessment report.)

According to Hendrickson, “CNSC has outdone itself in promoting the dump project.  This is an object lesson in what happens when government agencies are captured by the industries they are supposed to regulate.”

The release of the environmental assessment report marks the end of a long “underground” phase of the licensing process for the giant radioactive dump, called the “NSDF” by the proponent, Canadian Nuclear Laboratories, owned by a consortium of multinational corporations that run Canada’s nuclear laboratories under a contract initiated by the Harper government in 2015.

Opportunities for public comments on the project’s environmental impacts ended in August 2017 after a flood of negative comments and concerns from First Nations communities, civil society groups, municipalities, independent scientists and individuals. 

The Assembly of First Nations, and more than 140 downstream municipalities have passed resolutions opposing the dump plan. Members of the public will have their final opportunity to submit concerns about the proposed project at the “Part 2 licensing hearing” that is scheduled to begin on May 31, 2022.  

“Interventions at that point are very unlikely to influence the Commission’s decision,” says Hendrickson, adding that “it is basically a rubber stamping process.”  A planned environmental assessment hearing that was to have preceded the licensing hearing was canceled by the CNSC.

April 11 is the deadline to apply to “intervene” inn the May 31 public hearing. Interventions can be oral or written.  Information about the intervention process is available here. If you are submitting written comments, your final intervention must be submitted with your application. If you wish to make an oral presentation at the hearing, you need to submit an outline of your presentation by April 11.

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OTTAWA, November 10, 2021 – The recent announcement of licensing hearings in February and May 2022 for a controversial nuclear waste dump beside the Ottawa River got a strong reaction from citizens’ groups who have been fighting the plan for five years. The groups say the environmental assessment has not been properly conducted and licensing hearings should be stopped because there are so many serious flaws in the plan.

The license would authorize a giant above-ground mound (called NSDF by the proponent) for more than a million tonnes of radioactive waste beside the Ottawa River, upstream of Ottawa-Gatineau.The Chalk River site is right beside a drinking water source for millions of Canadians and underlain with porous and fractured bedrock. 

Many citizens’ groups, along with NGOs, First Nations, and more than 140 downstream municipalities are opposed to the plan. Many say it fails to meet international guidelines for keeping radioactive waste out of the biosphere. As a disposal facility, it will eventually be abandoned.

“The facility would not keep radioactive waste out of the environment,” according to Concerned Citizens of Renfrew County and Area researcher Ole Hendrickson. “The proponent’s own studies identify many ways the mound would leak, and suggest the mound would disintegrate within 400 years and its contents would flow into surrounding wetlands that drain into the Ottawa River less than a kilometre away,” he said. Hendrickson also noted that the groundwater table would be right at the base of the mound, disregarding an Ontario standard for waste disposal sites that protects aquifers. 

A fact sheet produced by Concerned Citizens, based on the information prepared by the dump proponent, Canadian Nuclear Laboratories, identifies materials that would be disposed of. They include:

• Radioactive materials such as tritium, carbon-14, strontium-90, four types of plutonium (one of the most dangerous radioactive materials if inhaled or ingested), and several tonnes of uranium and thorium. Twenty-five of 30 radionuclides listed in the reference inventory for the mound are long-lived. This suggests the dump would remain radioactive for 100,000 years. 
• A very large quantity of cobalt-60 in disused radiation devices used in food irradiation and medical procedures. These materials would give off so much intense gamma radiation that workers would need lead shielding to avoid dangerous radiation exposures while handling them. The International Atomic Energy Agency says high-activity cobalt-60 is “intermediate-level waste” and must be stored underground.
• Dioxins, PCBs, asbestos, mercury, and up to 13 tonnes of arsenic and 300 tonnes of lead would go into the dump. It would also contain up to 7000 tonnes of copper, 3500 tonnes of iron and 66 tonnes of aluminum, tempting scavengers to dig into the mound after closure.

“The so-called environmental assessment of this project has been a sham from day one,” says Johanna Echlin of the Old Fort William Cottagers’ Association (OFWCA) based in Sheenboro, Quebec. 

Echlin says the serious flaws in the assessment process include failure to properly consult Indigenous Peoples, failure to properly consult the public, failure to consider substantive input at the project description and scoping stage, and changing the rules in midstream to benefit the proponent. 

In an August 2020 letter to the Minister of Natural Resources, the Kebaowek First Nation and the Algonquin Anishinabeg Nation Tribal Council called for suspension of the environmental assessment, stating that “the CNSC’s approach does not even meet the Government of Canada’s modernized standards of consultation, engagement and reconciliation with First Nations.”

“The fact that dates have now been set for licensing the radioactive waste mound is a sign of failure by the Government of Canada to listen to First Nations and hundreds of intervenors in the environmental assessment. It is past time for the government to step up and stop this licensing process and prevent permanent contamination of the Ottawa River,” Echlin says.

Echlin and others characterize the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC), the agency responsible for the assessment and licensing of the dump project, as “a captured regulator” that acts more like a “nuclear industry cheerleader” than a protector of the public and the environment. 

Echlin added that “It’s not just us saying that the CNSC is widely seen to be a captured regulator — the Expert Panel on Environmental Assessment noted the same in its final report to the Trudeau government in 2017.” A document obtained by the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility notes that the CNSC has never refused to grant a license in its 20-year history. 

The import of radioactive waste into the Ottawa Valley from other federal sites to be placed in the facility is a big red flag for citizens’ groups and First Nations.They say the Chalk River site is not suitable for long term storage of nuclear waste. According to a Joint Declaration from the Anishinabek Nation and Iroquois Caucus, “Rivers and lakes are the blood and the lungs of Mother Earth.  When we contaminate our waterways, we are poisoning life itself.  That is why radioactive waste must not be stored beside major water bodies for the long-term.” 

Importation of radioactive waste to the Ottawa Valley was also opposed by a City of Ottawa resolution in April 2021.

The economics of the project are also fraught with problems according to Hendrickson, whose study concluded the facility would not reduce Canada’s $8 billion nuclear waste cleanup liability and could even increase it. 

Citizens’ groups have also called into question the Government-owned Contractor-operated model for Canada’s nuclear facilities brought in by the Harper government in 2015 and renewed by the Trudeau government in 2020. Under the model, costs to the Canadian taxpayer have skyrocketed, and decisions about Canadian nuclear waste are being made by foreign nationals and corporations. The groups have called for cancellation of the contract and creation of a radioactive waste management organization in Canada, independent of the nuclear industry, similar to what exists in a number of European countries. 

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Additional resources:

The environmental assessment registry for the giant mound (NSDF) can be found at this link: https://iaac-aeic.gc.ca/050/evaluations/proj/80122

Open Letter: To Prime Minister Trudeau and members of the federal cabinet ~ Stop the Ottawa River radioactive waste dump