Land of lakes and radioactive waste?
Jun 27, 2007
Last week the Canadian Shield along northeastern Ontario and Muskoka became the prime candidate for the location of a toxic dump for the waste generated by the nuclear industry — an industry that seems to hold the purse strings of decision-makers in Ottawa who care more about planning for their own comfortable retirement, than the fate of future generations.
How else can we reconcile the fact that the organization tasked with the creation of a nuclear fuel waste management plan comprises solely nuclear industry representatives such as Ontario Power Generation, Hydro-Québec and New Brunswick Hydro?
Their recommendation, to permanently build an underground repository for the radioactive nuclear waste, was quietly passed last week.
On the ministry website, Natural Resources Minister Gary Lunn is quoted as saying: “Today we are taking steps toward a safe, long-term plan for nuclear power in Canada for future generations.”
What about phasing out our use of nuclear energy, which only makes up about 15 per cent of electricity output? What about investing in safe and renewable energy sources?
The nuclear industry would have us believe it’s the cleanest and cheapest form of energy, but when you consider the fact that we have to bury its by-product in a $24-billion mausoleum deep in the bowels of the earth and cross our fingers that we don’t become the next Chernobyl, the words “cheap” and “clean” take on new meaning.
At the end of 2004 the waste created by nuclear reactor sites across this country amounted to 36,000 tonnes of uranium, waste that is said to remain dangerously active for thousands of years.
Now we have our federal natural resources minister ushering in what amounts to a nuclear renaissance with the promise of more nuclear waste to come.
Given Lunn’s promotion of the mining and natural resources industry, the nuclear portfolio ought to be removed from his grasp and squarely placed on the lap of Canada’s environment and health ministers to rationalize how taking the waste from existing nuclear storage facilities at the reactor sites and shipping it through our 400 series highways to the north is going to benefit Ontarians. We will not become the urinal for the nuclear industry or a government that doesn’t have the foresight or imagination to put the power of the tax dollar behind safe, renewable energy sources and a culture of conservation.
Speaking of the health minister, where is Parry Sound-Muskoka MP Tony Clement in all of this? Why haven’t we heard him fighting for his constituents? Will he toe the party line or will he fight for this riding and the future of all Canadians?
TdV
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