ShareThisWanted: Friendly, open-minded community in need of jobs and a whack of infrastructure cash. Must be willing to play host to nuclear waste, perhaps until the end of time.
More than six decades after joining the nuclear club, Canada is home to 22 nuclear reactors, 18 of them in operation, producing about 15 percent of the country's electricity. Canada also has 88 million pounds of radioactive waste -- and counting.
For years, the issue of how to best dispose of this waste has plagued policy-makers, scientists and citizens. Suggestions have included shooting it into outer space or exporting it to the South Pole.
Now, Canada is preparing to get rid of its nuclear detritus once and for all -- by burying it.
That solution will cost $16 billion to $24 billion, and it could take until 2020 just to choose a location. But if all goes well, millions of bundles of spent nuclear fuel will be buried half a kilometer underground in a complex network of subterranean rooms forever. Or at least until future generations come up with something better to do with it.
One niggling question remains: Where?
The multi-decade, multibillion-dollar endeavor is the brainchild of the Nuclear Waste Management Organization, established by the Canadian federal government in 2002 to come up with a solution to the problem that has plagued Canada's nuclear-safety regulators since the 1940s -- what to do with the waste that builds up as a result of all nuclear activity, and which continues to emit potentially harmful radioactive energy for decades, centuries or even millennia.
Consultations are just beginning on how to select a location.
The NWMO's invitation for feedback notes that the nuclear-waste repository will bring "economic benefits, including direct employment for hundreds of people at the facility for many decades, plus many more indirect jobs" to residents of the community that takes the 2 million used uranium fuel bundles now in existence -- a number that will grow significantly if Canada continues to conduct nuclear research and use nuclear reactors to generate electricity.
Right now, the spent fuel is in specially licensed above-ground concrete-and-steel silos on reactor sites.
The plan is to bury the waste deep enough below ground that it doesn't cause harm, but in such a way that it can be retrieved if a better way of storing it is discovered.
The site will require 4 square miles of open land in an area away from groundwater, heritage sites, mineral deposits or national parks.
Once a selection process is established, planners estimate it will take up to 10 years to choose a site. Add the timeline for environmental assessments, licensing and construction, and it will be at least 2035 before the facility is functioning.
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
Canadian clients may not use
Must credit Toronto Globe and Mail
(All currency U.S.)
