Open House on Nuclear Waste

We'll have more on this in our Dec. 17 print issue, but on Dec. 7 from 2-9 p.m. the Nuclear Waste Management Organization is hosting an open house at the Delta Hotel in Regina to review a protocol that's been created to facilitate any "informed and willing community" that wishes to host "a deep geological repository for the safe containment and isolation of Canada's used nuclear fuel."

If you recall, one of the recommendations that the Uranium Development Partnership made in its March 2009 report was that the provincial government support any community that expressed a willingness to be the site of such a repository. The NWMO is an industry-based association, so expect them to put forward a best-case scenario for the idea of burying radioactive waste in the Canadian Shield. Critics not only reject the idea that this material, which will remain toxic for tens of thousands of years, can be safely stored for any significant length of time, they are also alarmed at the danger posed by the transport via truck or rail through heavily populated areas of radioactive waste from nuclear facilities (that stretch as far east as New Brunswick) to the dump site. As well, once established, would the American government, which has failed repeatedly in its attempts to establish its own storage site, pressure Canada to accept its nuclear waste?

For more info on the NWMO position, visit their website at http://www.nwmo.ca/

Other open houses will be held Dec. 8 at the Art Hauser Centre in Prince Albert from 2-9 p.m. and at the Delta Bessborough Hotel in Saskatoon Dec. 9 from 2-9 p.m.