CORRECTED : The name ‘Canada’ for most of us conjure up the image of a lovely place, with uncharted treks, beautiful white mountains and greenery all around. But what we see in the Hollywood flicks about the untouched Canadian scenery is just for the picture postcard that should be sent home. The reality is shocking instead.
Ontario Power Generation, New Brunswick Power and Hydro-Quebec, are 3 power companies that happen to operate about 2 nuclear power plants each. They are all nuclear reactors. The Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) has released a draft recommendation that allows these nuclear reactors to rebuild that would in effect double the radioactive waste they produce.
Canada already has a huge amount of radioactive waste that it needs to be take care of. They in the past have been carting it off to registered US dump sites, which is an expensive and dangerous option. In 2002, NWMO decided to handle the nuclear waste through three different management regimes, one burying the waste in the natural fissure deep down in the Earth on the Canadian Shield, second storage at the nuclear site and third disposal at a central storage area. Even NWMO realizes that all three have their separate management problems. But they still want to go ahead with all of them in a phased manner that would last for the next 300 years and would make them spend around $24 billion in the process and still basically bury it in one of the states that would always be a potential hazard as has been proved by now innumerable times. The exact location of the dumping ground is still questionable, as none of the states want it. The dumping site would anyways take around 60 years to complete, making it another disaster to happen.
The environmental commission for North America formed for the US, Canada and Mexico in its report has said that the Canadian facilities spew out about 1/3rd more harmful air pollutants than their neighboring US facilities. Canada, unlike the US promises to implement the suggestions of the Kyoto agreement on climate change. But its home grown environmental problems will not take care of themselves.
According to environmentalists these wastes would remain in the environment for the next one million years. They argue that instead of refurbishing the old reactors, Canada should be phasing out the reactors and opt for greener options like wind farms or tidal waves or volcanoes, especially when the reactors are to be phased out in 2020 according to an agreement on a nuclear waste strategy. Dr. Gordon Edwards from the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility says, “The first priority should be the phase-out of nuclear power not the phase-in of a radioactive waste dump”.
