U.S. could learn from Canada on nuclear waste issues, stop throwing away money ...Middle East

Government efficiency is the buzz these days — so why aren’t we working harder to stem taxpayer losses of $2 million each and every day?

That, friends, is what it costs the U.S. government on the daily because it has no place to put commercial nuclear waste — a service we ratepayers have already paid for, and which the federal government is contractually obligated to provide. Millions of pounds of the radioactive stuff lives in concrete a few hundred feet from the ocean at San Onofre — not the most ideal place — as well as at Diablo Canyon and at scores of other commercial nuclear plants in communities throughout the nation. Communities that never agreed to host “nuclear waste dumps,” as critics say.

So it was with glimmers of hope that Southern California’s Spent Fuel Solutions coalition heard Monday about the monumental steps forward taken by the Great White North: Canada has chosen a site for a deep geological repository for nuclear waste at Wabigoon Lake Ojibway Nation/Township of Ignace in northwestern Ontario.

Canada is way ahead of us here (and Finland and Sweden are way ahead of Canada).

Lisa Frizzell, of Canada’s Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO), explained how it managed to find an “informed and willing host community,” even as obstacles remain.

Step by step

Step one might be this: NWMO’s creation was mandated by the government, but it’s not part of the government. Rather, it’s a not-for-profit established by Canada’s nuclear electricity producers, as detailed in Canada’s Nuclear Fuel Waste Act in 2002.

There were decades of technical studies to find the right geography. Field studies to understand rock characteristics. Bedrock surveys at the surface and deep underground. Borehole drilling. But, as in America, the issue with constructing these facilities has never been the science, but the social.

“Though it may look like a tech project, it’s an emotional issue,” Frizzell said. “It’s important to listen. … There’s a lot of misinformation and misconception out there, and the fear or concern is real, even if the facts they thought it was based on are not.”

That meant funding for and a heavy investment in working directly with communities, answering their questions, addressing their concerns, explaining how things work. The repository would be about as deep underground as the Empire State Building is tall, and would have multiple redundant safeguards so that if one barrier failed, another was there to protect it. “It ensures fuel and people safe essentially forever,” Frizzell said.

This multi-generational project would stretch over 175 years. Construction costs are pegged at a modest $4.5 billion, with total long-term costs of some $26 billion (in 2020 Canadian dollars or about $21 billion in today’s American dollars). Compare that to the $30 billion to $50 billion the U.S. is slated to pay directly to utilities for babysitting the waste, and that’s before any repository is built.

The Canadian repository’s economic impact — hundreds of jobs, infrastructure investment, growing communities — generated a good bit of interest. In 2010, Ignace formally said it wanted to explore its potential to host, and last year, it was chosen.

“The site has great rock,” Frizzell said. “We’re confident we can move forward safely. We’ve kicked the tires from every possible angle.”

Screenshot from Spent Fuel Solutions webinar

Screenshot from Spent Fuel Solutions webinar

Screenshot from Spent Fuel Solutions webinar

Screenshot from Spent Fuel Solutions webinar

Screenshot from Spent Fuel Solutions webinar

Screenshot from Spent Fuel Solutions webinar

Screenshot from Spent Fuel Solutions webinar

Canada’s plan is now moving forward with “informed and willing hosts, where the municipality, Indigenous peoples, communities and others in the area are working together to implement it,” the agency says on its website. “We remain committed to continuous study and active engagement with these communities.”

But the decision, of course, is not without controversy.

Legal challenge

Some in the area passionately object, citing equity issues and respect for the Indigenous people who’d be hosting this waste for generations to come.

“The proposal is to store it in a large hole within the earth,” wrote Chief Ron Tremblay, whose traditional name translates to “Morningstar burning,” in the forward to a critical report. “What’s below the earth? What are the harms to the aquifers and to the life inside Earth? Will this open the opportunity to various countries like the United States to come and dump their waste into that site? Those are my concerns.

“Nuclear reactors are fueled with uranium mined on Indigenous lands. Go ask our sisters and brothers of the Navajo Nation about the despair they live with, from the birth defects and stillborn children and the high rates of cancer within their nation.”

There has been a request for judicial review of the site selection, Frizzell said, and that’s not unexpected. “We’ve been engaging with multiple First Nations for many years, and we are committed to continuing to do that,” she said. “It will be a long and collaborative and engaging process. Just because we selected a site doesn’t mean we’re done. There’s a lot of work to do.”

NWMO recognizes that Indigenous people have been treated very poorly and has a “huge commitment to reconciliation,” she said.

Will the fight be as fierce as Nevada’s against Yucca Mountain? The big difference may be that Canada really took the community outreach bit to heart, and would engage only with willing communities — an approach that the U.S. Department of Energy has recently adopted.

Obviously, that doesn’t mean it’s smooth sailing.

“I’d like to share a parable,” Tremblay wrote. “Just imagine if we built birch bark canoes without paddles. … Today it would be like if you made a vehicle without brakes or without safety features like seatbelts or airbags. That’s exactly what is occurring: They created all these nuclear sites without any future idea or intent of where to store the nuclear waste. This is our concern. We believe that the Earth is our Mother, and that she has been violated, she has been hurt, she has been raped, she has been damaged for far, far too long.”

That profound lack of foresight was a global fail, but others are doing more to address it than we are. Canada is even looking forward rather than simply backward: It’s starting work on another disposal site for intermediate-level waste, expected from next-generation nuclear reactors.

The Spent Fuel Solutions coalition includes local governments in Orange and San Diego counties, as well as Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric, San Onofre’s owners. Its mission is to goose the federal government to action: Under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, the feds were required to start taking possession of commercial nuclear waste in 1998. More than a quarter of a century later, however, it has still failed to collect a single ounce. And some $47 billion sits in a trust fund, waiting.

“It’s comforting to us that a thoughtful process can lead to the kind of result you’ve accomplished,” Chris Wahl, the coalition’s executive director, told Frizzell.

Or, in Canadian, “Good luck, eh?”

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