The fate of the Great Lakes is at stake, as OPG DUD hearings begin

The Stop the Great Lakes Nuclear Waste Dump petition now has nearly 33,000 signatures! If you haven't already signed it, please do! And please spread the word about the petition to everyone you know!

As reported in the Stop the Great Lakes Nuclear Waste Dump's press release section, Canada's most famous environmentalist, David Suzuki, as well as North American physicians organizations, have joined the effort to block the dump!

On August 19th, Beyond Nuclear's Kevin Kamps had to honor of sharing the stage with Stop the Great Lakes Nuclear Dump's Beverly Fernandez, as well as Sierra Club South East Michigan Group's Ed McArdle, Michigan State Senator Hoon-Yung Hopgood, and Michigan State Representative Sarah Roberts, at a town hall meeting at Wayne State University's law school in downtown Detroit, held to organize resistance to this nuke waste dump.

As documented in Tom Lawson's recently published, inspiring book Crazy Caverns: How one small community challenged a technocrat juggernaut...and won!, Suzuki played an important role in the successful grassroots campaign in the mid-1990s that stopped the burial of radioactive wastes on the Lake Ontario shore at Port Hope, Ontario.

As reported last week, Beyond Nuclear's Radioactive Waste Watchdog, Kevin Kamps, will testify on Sept. 23rd alongside a large number of environmental allies from both the U.S. and Canada at a hearing that could determine the fate of the Great Lakes, the drinking water supply for 40 million people in 8 U.S. states, 2 Canadian provinces, and a large number of Native American First Nations.

Kevin has already submitted written testimony and prepared a power point presentation.

The pre-mature Joint Review Panel environmental assessment hearings for Ontario Power Generation's (OPG) proposed Deep Geologic Repository (DGR) for all of Ontario's so-called "low" (LLRW) and "intermediate" level radioactive wastes (ILRW) began last week.

LLRWs and ILRWs from a dozen additional atomic reactors, at the Pickering and Darlington nuclear power plants just east of Toronto, have been imported, over the past 40 years, into the Bruce Nuclear Generating Station, itself one of the world's single largest nuclear power plants with 9 reactors (one a permanently shutdown prototype, Douglas Point, but 8 still-operable). Bruce is on the Lake Huron shoreline, less than 100 miles from Michigan (see map, above left).

Months ago, Beyond Nuclear joined with a coalition of environmental groups from both sides of the border, to protest the commencement of the hearings, as the environmental assessment is woefully incomplete. As Kevin will testify on Monday, OPG has barely even considered the cumulative impacts of dozens of atomic reactors, as well as a large number of fossil fuel burning power plants, discharging radioactivity and toxic chemicals into the Great Lakes watershed, combined with the risks of future leaks or accidents at the proposed DGR. The JRP is composed of two members from the Canadian Nuclear Safety (sic) Commission (CNSC), as well as one member from the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency (CEAA).

Once at Bruce, the LLRWs have been incinerated. Atmospheric radioactive emissions from this large-scale incineration of radioactive wastes are very likely greater than zero, to put it mildly! The resulting LLRW ashes, as well as the ILRWs, have since been stored at Bruce's Western Waste Management Facility (WWMF), alongside a growing stockpile of high-level radioactive wastes (HLRW) in dry cask storage. It is immediately adjacent to the WWMF that OPG wants to dig the entrance tunnel to its DGR, or as Dave Martin of Greenpeace Canada dubbed it, the DUD (for Deep Underground Dump). This proposed entrance tunnel is a mere half-mile from the waters of Lake Huron.

But this LLRW and ILRW DGR is but DUD#1. It could easily pave the way for DUD#2--a national HLRW dump for irradiated nuclear fuel from 22 Canadian reactors in three provinces (20 in Ontario, plus Gentilly-2 in Quebec and Point Lepreau in New Brunswick). A half-dozen Bruce area municipalities have "volunteered" to be considered by Canada's Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) for the national HLRW dump. Never mind that these municipalities are mostly populated by Bruce Nuclear workers, and are also blinded by dollar signs.

Beyond Nuclear has joined with Canadian environmental allies like Northwatch to demand answers about a DUD#3, that could double the capacity of DUD#1 from 200,000 to 400,000 cubic meters of radioactive waste. While DUD#1 is supposedly to be limited to operational and refurbishment LLRWs and ILRWs, DUD#3 is for decommissioning LLRWs and ILRWs.

Media coverage of the hearings began on day one, and has continued steadly, including this hard-hitting column in the Toronto Star.

The Star also reported on the environmental coalition's challenge to DUD#3, as mentioned above.