On-site SNF storage not as popular as some might think.....
Jaro
U.S. politicians worry about nuclear storage: Radioactive waste site near Tiverton a cause for concern for senators in Michigan
Owen Sound Sun Times Wed 30 Oct 2002
Jim Algie
Both Michigan's Democratic senators want a say in Ontario Power Generation's storage plans for high level radioactive waste at the Bruce Power site on the Lake Huron shore.
In an Oct. 16 letter to U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, Senators Debbie Stabenow and Carl Levin cite post-Sept. 11, terrorist risks in a bid for formal talks between U.S. and Canadian governments concerning waste storage at Bruce, which is run by Ontario Power Generation.
As well, Michigan Attorney General Jennifer Granholm, now a candidate for governor in November state elections, expressed concern earlier this summer in a letter to a constituent. The letter was made public recently by a Michigan environmental activist.
U.S. political involvement followed a failed attempt in September by Michael Keegan, who heads the Monroe-Michigan-based Coalition for a Nuclear Free Great Lakes, to convince Canada's Nuclear Regulatory Commission to hold public hearings in his home state regarding waste at Bruce.
Senators Stabenow and Levin told Powell that waste storage plans at Bruce would accumulate 17 times more radioactive waste than is stored in the entire state of Michigan. They called for thorough evaluation and careful consideration of the project "in the wake of the events of Sept. 11, 2001.
"Special consideration needs to be given to the potential environmental impacts of such a large radioactive waste site on the shorelines of our region's most important natural resource," the letter says.
COULD BE LARGEST IN WORLD
Observers say it is destined to become the largest nuclear waste storage site on the continent.
That includes Yucca Mountain, Keegan said, referring to the controversial Nevada site for long-term radioactive waste endorsed this summer by the U.S. Congress and President George Bush.
In early October Ontario Power Generation officially opened its $84 million Western Used Fuel Dry Storage Facility at Bruce.
Two years in construction, the waste storage facility employs 140 people who handle waste fuel from on-site reactors as well as low-level waste from Bruce Power and OPG reactor sites in Ontario.
OPG nuclear waste vice-president Ken Nash defends the interim storage facilities as "environmentally safe and proven technology" used internationally in at least five other nuclear power nations.
It includes storage space for about 2,000 dry storage containers in four buildings.
Each 63-ton container is designed to hold 96 used fuel bundles shielded by 20-inch thick reinforced concrete walls lined inside and out with half-inch steel. Workers are to begin handling waste as soon as this week following final regulatory approvals.
Some area residents have objected to the facility since it was first proposed in 1996 to cope with a growing volume of reactor waste at Bruce. One area ratepayers' group seeking more detailed environmental assessment mounted a costly court challenge turned down two years ago at the Ontario Court of Appeals and later rejected by the Supreme Court of Canada.
SOME LOCAL RESIDENTS AGREE
Despite their frustration with failed efforts at stalling the development, anti-storage activists expressed satisfaction with recent U.S. support.
"I am delighted the senators in Michigan are concerned, they ought to be," Bruce site neighbour Eugene Bourgeois said in an interview.
"Parliamentarians here ought to be concerned, every citizen ought to be concerned that there is too much of an accumulation of risk all in one area," Bourgeois said.
An accident involving high level waste on the shores of Lake Huron "could jeopardize 20 per cent of the world's fresh surface water," Keegan said. "OPG's plans have slipped past the public's radar and nobody is aware of its implications."
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