Activists concerned by Pinawa plan

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 22/08/2018 (2660 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA — Activists are calling on Ottawa to halt plans to bury radioactive parts of the Whiteshell facility in concrete near the Winnipeg River — and stop producing nuclear energy anywhere in Canada— until it crafts a policy for disposing of nuclear waste.

“Canada’s nuclear-waste policy is pathetic,” Gordon Edwards, head of the non-profit Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility, told reporters Tuesday.

“We don’t know how to get rid of this stuff; it’s impossible. Radioactivity cannot be shut off.”

The group says Canada needs clear rules around how inactive nuclear sites dispose of their buildings and components, including Whiteshell Laboratories in Pinawa, a community 113 kilometres east of Winnipeg.

The Whiteshell site hasn’t produced energy in decades, and a federal regulator is expected to rule on the facility’s closure plans in October. If approved, the site should be fully decommissioned in 2024.

At that point, all fuel and most of the facility’s parts will have been moved off-site to another nuclear facility in Chalk River, Ont., for likely a decade or more, before being placed in a permanent spot, yet to be determined.

But some remaining parts of Whiteshell would be left underground and covered with concrete. Edwards says that presents a risk of leakage into the Winnipeg River.

He and other activists said the Whiteshell plan flies in the face of the International Atomic Energy Agency rulebook. In the safety requirements it updated in 2014, the agency says entombment “is not an option in the case of planned permanent shutdown” and “may be considered a solution only under exceptional circumstances (e.g., following a severe accident).”

But the man in charge of shutting down the Whiteshell facility says its current plan doesn’t fit the IAEA definition of entombment.

“We’ve looked at both the short-term and the long-term risks that could exist for the public and the environment,” said Brian Wilcox, a director with Canadian Nuclear Laboratories.

Wilcox says the plan involves “partially dismantling” the plant, while leaving underground the “reinforced concrete structure” that includes some components of the reactor. That structure would be filled with concrete grout to avoid an air pocket, leaving the metals that have absorbed radiation.

“The radioactivity is stuck in the metal,” he said, adding both the metal would break down over tens of thousands of years, while the concrete returns to its commensurate granite and sand.

The activists say Canada ought to instead replicate a pilot project in Finland that stored radioactive material in caverns carved out of bedrock, so officials can access those parts if they start to leak. The groups claim the cement plan will make it impossible to access those materials, however, Wilcox said it would still be possible.

He also claimed the amount of clay in the nearby soil alone would likely impede the impact of such a leak on the Winnipeg River.

“CNL’s prime objective is safety — we will never comprise the safety of our workers, or that of the public. That’s what guides us in all of our work decisions,” Wilcox said.

Theresa McClenaghan, head of the Canadian Environmental Law Association, said she’s heard from retired Whiteshell scientists raise issues around the Pinawa environmental review, which she suspects is why it’s been delayed.

“There are very knowledgeable people who are raising questions with the (Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission),” she said.

Yet, Pinawa residents seem more focused on keeping the nuclear industry’s foothold in the town. This year, an American firm expressed interest in building a plant in Pinawa to construct small modular reactors that could be used to power off-grid communities and mining camps.

Edward said there should instead be a moratorium on all nuclear energy production within Canada, until the country figures out how it stores nuclear waste. “There’s a lot of unawareness in society, generally. And in the case of Pinawa, this is what we call a ‘company town.'”

While there are detailed rules for disposing of the fuel used in nuclear processing, the rest of radioactive waste is subject to a three-paragraph guideline that vaguely calls for safe but affordable disposal, paid for by the companies that generated the waste.

In fact, current Trade Minister Jim Carr wrote a letter last month in his last day as natural resources minister, confirming July 17 that “Canada does not yet have a federal policy for the long-term management of non-fuel radioactive waste.”

The federal Liberals would not say whether they plan to change that. Natural Resources Canada instead wrote that its three-paragraph guideline “provides the necessary policy direction to waste owners concerning their responsibilities” and “assigns clear responsibilities for both the federal government and waste owners.”

The advocates say they’ll be protesting outside of a meeting by the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, which starts Wednesday in Ottawa.

dylan.robertson@freepress.mb.ca