Dr. Gordon Edwards speaks against Canadian national high-level radioactive waste dump on Great Lakes shoreline

Dr. Gordon Edwards, president of CCNR.As reported by the Saugeen Times, Dr. Gordon Edwards (pictured, left), president of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility, spoke at an event sponsored by Southampton Residents Association-Save Our Saugeen Shores (SRASOS) on the Ontario shoreline of Lake Huron near the Bruce Nuclear Power Complex. He was joined by John Jackson, acting Executive Director of Great Lakes United. SRASOS opposes the Canadian national high-level radioactive waste dump targeted at Saugeen Shores, Ontario, as well as number of other communities nearby Bruce. In addition to the targeted communities on Ontario's Lake Huron shoreline, additional Canadian communities on Lake Superior's shoreline have also been targeted, as well as yet more in Saskatchewan. The selected high-level radioactive waste dump would then permanently host all of the irradiated nuclear fuel from all of Canada's nuclear power plants (20 reactors in Ontario, 1 in Quebec, and 1 in New Brunswick).

This proposed high-level radioactive waste dump is supposedly different than and distinct from the "Deep Geologic Repository" (DGR) for "low" and "intermediate" level radioactive wastes, also targeted at the Bruce Nuclear Complex itself by Ontario Power Generation, the provincial nuclear utility which owns 20 atomic reactors. But of course, how different and distinct can two such dumps be, located so close together?! And with DGR "storage space" astronomically expensive, as shown by the proposed Yucca Mountain, Nevada, high-level radioactive waste repository and its estimated nearly $100 billion price tag, how could two DGRs located very close together, rather than just one consolidated DGR, be economically justified?!

Beyond Nuclear's Kevin Kamps, a long-time member of the Great Lakes United (GLU) Nuclear-Free/Green Energy Task Force, is serving as an expert witness for GLU in the environmental assessment proceeding regarding the proposed DGR.

To confuse the two proposals yet more, the Nuclear Waste Management Organziation (NWMO), comprised of Canadian nuclear utilities, is in charge of both the high-level and DGR dump proposals.