Beyond Nuclear

U.S. Senator Debbie Stabenow (Democrat-Michigan), joined by Sens. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), Gary Peters (D-MI), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Richard Durbin (D-IL), Tammy Duckworth (D-IL), Sherrod Brown (D-OH), and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), have introduced a Senate resolution, opposing Canadian high-level radioactive waste dumping in the Great Lakes Basin.

The Senate resolution mirrors a House resolution introduced last September, by U.S. Rep. Dan Kildee.

A bipartisan, bicameral congressional caucus has been fighting Canadian government and nuclear industry schemes to dump radioactive waste on the shore of the Great Lakes, or in its Basin, since 2013.

Beyond Nuclear has fought these schemes since its founding in 2007. A binational grassroots environmental coalition, incuding such groups as NIRS and Northwatch, CCNS and Don't Waste Michigan, Coalition for a Nuclear-Free Great Lakes and Greenpeace Canada, have fought such DUDs since 2001.

Stop the Great Lakes Nuclear Dump, a Canadian grassroots NGO, moved mountains on this issue. They gathered more than 232 resolutions from municipalities across the Great Lakes Basin, representing more than 23.4 million people. They also gathered more than 100,000 petition signatures opposed to the DUD.

DUD is a sarcastic acronym, short for Deep Underground Dump. It pokes fun at DGR, the Canadian government and nuclear industry's preferred acronym, short for Deep Geologic Repository.

A DUD for "low" and highly radioactive "interim" level nuclear wastes from 20 reactors across Ontario was stopped in Jan. 2020, after a two-decade battle. It was targeted at the Lake Huron shore, at the Bruce Nuclear Generating Station in Kincardine, Ontario. The final nail in the DUD's coffin was a tribal referendum vote by the Saugeen Ojibwe Nation very nearby, and on whose land the DUD was targeted. The vote was 86% opposed, to 14% in favor, despite a vast sum of money offered to the First Nation as an inducement to say yes.

Even though that DUD was supposedly "only" for "low" and "intermediate" level radioactive wastes, it was likely by the camel's nose under the tent. High-level radioactive wastes were likely to have followed.

In fact, a national high-level radioactive waste dump is now targeted at South Bruce, Ontario, a short distance inland from Kincardine. The U.S. congressional resolutions above apply to this DUD directly.

A second DUD is targeted near Ignace, Ontario. Altough just barely outside the Great Lakes Basin, northwest of Lake Superior, this DUD is also on Ojibwe First Nation land, upstream of many Ojibwe and other First Nations, including in the U.S., as at Lake of the Woods, MN. In addition, shipments of high-level radioactive waste from two-dozen atomic reactors in southern and eastern Canada would also impact the Great Lakes Basin, en route to this Ignace, Ontario DUD.

Update on February 24, 2022 by

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Also see a late 2017 letter to Members of Congress from the Great Lakes region, spearheaded by Beyond Nuclear and signed by dozens of Great Lakes environmental groups. While the letter thanks the Members of Congress for their strong stand in opposition to Canadian radioactive waste dumping on the Great Lakes shores, and in the Great Lakes Basin, it also calls on them to oppose the generation, and very long-term storage, of radioactive wastes on those same shores, and in that same Basin, whether on the Canada side, or on the U.S. side.

And here is the press release put out in early 2018, about the letter.