LETTER

CNL’s floating false information  

Recently CNL placed a full-page ad in various regional newspapers  entitled “There is a Lot of False Information ‘Floating Around’ About CNL’s NSDF Project”.  The ad claims to provide the facts. What are CNL’s facts?

Let’s start with the title. CNL calls its nuclear waste project a “Near Surface Disposal Facility” (or NSDF).  However, the proposed facility is not near surface.  It is an above-ground mound, a landfill, as shown in all its depictions.

CNL claims it has “conducted remarkable work over the past 60 years.”  This is an amazing claim.  CNL was incorporated in 2014, and a management contract was awarded to the consortium in 2015.  Except to tear down numerous buildings on the Chalk River site and to close down the NRU reactor, it has yet to achieve anything substantial.

CNL’s answer to “What is the NSDF?”, i.e. an “engineered containment mound”, is an admission that the moniker “NSDF” is misleading. CNL then asks: “Does the location pose a threat to the Ottawa River?”  The location itself does not pose a threat.  It’s what CNL proposes to place in their mound that is the threat.

How credible are CNL’s other answers?  One only has to consider the number of questions/comments about CNL’s project documentation submitted by public and Indigenous groups, and Federal and Provincial reviewers, in accordance with the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act.  The number may surprise you.  Even after combining similar comments, that total is 894 – including 669 from the public and 194 from Federal and Provincial reviewers.

Is CNL dismissing all 894 comments/questions as “false information”?

By the way, all comments/questions are on the public record and can be found by a web search on the Canadian Environmental Assessment Registry using the Reference Number: 80122.

Consider CNL’s last question, “Where can I get the facts about this Project?”  With 894 unresolved comments/questions, CNL’s web page cannot the best source.  

I suggest that the first action to address all the “false information floating around” is for CNL to stop referring to its project as the “NSDF”.  Using either “landfill” or “mound” as descriptors is more accurate.

One more observation.  What does that lifeline shown in the top right corner of the ad symbolize?  To me, it looks as if CNL wants someone to rescue its project from drowning.

W. Turner, 

Deep River, Ont.