LETTER

Chalk River radioactive dump: revised!

 

Chalk me up as a cynical skeptic when it comes to the CNL announcing it will not include that 1% intermediate waste in the proposed dump, or as they call it, "a very engineered facility."

The suggestion that they are suddenly becoming thoughtful monitors safely storing radioactive waste by promising to remove the 1% of intermediate waste looks to me like a cheap trick. They now have something they can point to and say, “look how thoughtful we are in listening to complaints”. I feel that by their having added this 1% to the dump materials, which flew in the face of all recommendations, they have given themselves an underhanded way to point to their thoughtfulness when they remove it.

In the end, they do not even have the incentive to do the job safely because once CNL's contract is up after 10 years, all responsibility passes to the federal government, namely Atomic Energy Canada Limited and the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission. Who of us can say that they feel confident that any of these institutions could still be conscientiously fulfilling these requirements for the next 400 years?
 
I agree with Lynn Jones and Johanna Echlin's letter and add to that my skepticism with CNL's revision as satisfying the concerns of the public good. To paraphrase Ralph Nader: "unsafe at any depth."

Ron Temchuk
Aylmer