Now Playing: The Little Reactor That Couldn’t

Back in the late 1950's, ideas for the use of small nuclear reactors for various purposes were in vogue. During that period, when I worked for the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, I heard speculation over the possible use of atomic energy to run our autos, heat our houses, lift our rockets to the heavens. Many of these ideas were so wild, they were quickly dropped. However, some small reactors were designed and used for university research projects, medical and industrial isotope production and even nuclear submarine propulsion. 

Small nuclear reactors can range in power output from less that one up to several hundred megawatts.

More recently, prospects for a so-called nuclear renaissance have revitalized speculation about the design and use of small reactors in Canada.  For example, in an interview with CBC News, in February, 2009, Premier Brad Wall said  “... he hoped Saskatchewan could play a role developing small reactor technology. He went on to say the provincial government might be able to devote some resources to research and development in that area.”  

         
A report by Saskatchewan’s Uranium  Development Partnership, (UDP) included an upbeat statement that  “because they require little or no refueling and produce both heat and electricity, small reactors could eventually compete with small-scale diesel, oil and gas generation as a power alternative in remote sites.”  The report went on to state that, “Saskatchewan has the opportunity to participate in this market by partnering with a commercial technology developer on a demonstration project.”

Ah, but–the history of small reactors in Canada includes some very expensive “lemons,” something that should give pause to anyone seriously contemplating getting into that kind of business.

As an example, one of those not so successful small reactor efforts was the SLOWPOKE 3, a brainchild of Atomic Energy of Canada, Ltd. (AECL).

The Slowpoke became an issue for me in 1986, when I was a spokesperson for the Concerned Citizens’ of Manitoba  (CCM.), Canada, a nuclear waste watchdog group.  After years of our lobbying, the Manitoba provincial government was poised to pass a bill which would prohibit the burial or long-term storage of high level nuclear waste in the Province.

AECL officials were quite upset over the upcoming legislation, one of their concerns being that the bill contained a clause which prohibited the storage of high-level nuclear waste originating from outside the Province for more than seven days. This, according to the AECL testimony, would result in its inability to store the waste from its new "Safe Low Power Kritical (sic) Experiment," (a.k.a. SLOWPOKE) at its Whiteshell, Manitoba based nuclear research station.

The SLOWPOKE 3 was to be a small (10 Megawatt) heat and isotope producing nuclear reactor that AECL was actively marketing around the world, even though it was still in the early stages of untested design. AECL maintained that the pending legislation would force it to set up waste storage facilities elsewhere at additional cost, and that Manitoba would lose "commercial benefits" from the SLOWPOKE 3 program.

It appeared that AECL planned to retrieve the waste from all the SLOWPOKE 3 reactors that it expected to sell in Canada, and abroad, and bring it to Manitoba for storage!  Nevertheless, the Manitoba legislation was enacted into law.

However, that did not stop AECL from promoting its mini-nuke.

I recalled reading an article in the Lac du Bonnet, Manitoba, Leader of June 15, 1982, headlined "Nuclear Furnaces Could Soon Be Heating Your House." It went on to describe the small, unattended, SLOWPOKE reactor which could heat a building and require refueling only once every five years.

"Safe Low Power Kritical Experiment!"  It was fascinating that AECL chose to use the word "Safe," to describe its new "baby" reactor. It left me with more apprehensions than I already had about its large power reactors, with the acronym, "CANDU," which lacked that vital word “Safe.” Would they now change CANDU to "SCANDU"?

Also, I wondered why the use of the word "experiment." After all, who wants to buy a radioactive "experiment" to heat their community centre or other buildings?

A demonstration 2-megawatt version of the SLOWPOKE 3 reactor began very low-power operation at AECL's Pinawa, Manitoba, Whiteshell research station on July 15, 1987. But well before that small demonstration model was up and running, the Crown Corporation was already actively marketing the non-existent 10 mw version in such places as China, Korea, Europe and Canada's own Northwest Territory.

By January, 1988, AECL had signed a memorandum of agreement with Hungary for a potential SLOWPOKE 3 sale.

A May 29, 1986, Winnipeg Free Press article headlined "Radioactive Waste Repository for Manitoba Planned by Agency," really caught our attention. AECL’s idea was to remove spent fuel from each SLOWPOKE 3 reactor every five to eight years. The thirty or forty fuel bundles would be placed in concrete cylinders at its research facilities at Pinawa, Manitoba and Chalk River, Ontario. Eventually, it was reported, the waste would go into the (still non-existent) permanent underground waste repository.  CCM took the position that the Province should not permit storage of SLOWPOKE 3 waste and that (it should) ". . . block the buildup of anything which tends to take us closer to a nuclear waste repository in Manitoba."

CCM considered that if AECL started bringing its foreign customers' SLOWPOKE 3 excrement back to Canada, it would be well on the road to the full-scale commercial international radioactive waste dump about which CCM had been warning the public for so many years.

According to the article, Provincial Environment Minister Gerard Lecuyer was surprised by this development and indicated that ". . his initial reaction was one of opposition."

CCM's interest in the SLOWPOKE 3 grew further as a result of another article in the Winnipeg Free Press on July 24, 1987, which reported AECL's Metro Dmytriw as saying that the Corporation had received an initial inquiry about the purchase of one from an interested party in Manitoba.

According to that article, Dmytriw also suggested that a SLOWPOKE 3 nuclear reactor might be a replacement for Winnipeg's aging central steam heating plant. The article pointed out that AECL had held no discussions with the city nor did city officials express any interest in the idea at the time.

Other groups had also been criticizing the SLOWPOKE 3. The Montreal Gazette, May 22, 1986, reported Norm Rubin of Energy Probe in Toronto as saying . . .(the idea is) "crazy." Rubin wondered how, in the event of an accident, a hospital or shopping mall could be evacuated, especially since the SLOWPOKE 3 would operate "unattended" for some periods of time.

The same Gazette article included similar concerns expressed by Gordon Edwards, President of the Montreal-based Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility. Both Rubin and Edwards pointed to the unsolved nuclear waste problem as a good reason for not proceeding with the development and marketing of the SLOWPOKE 3 nuclear reactor.

Aside from the waste, safety, and economic questions surrounding the SLOWPOKE 3, CCM expressed concern over reactor security. An unattended reactor operating in a small community or a building in a large city could present unparalleled opportunities for anyone who might want to steal high-level nuclear waste. (The design called for spent fuel rods to be stored within each reactor, until removed to some other location.) 

Other possible acts might include sabotaging the untended reactors themselves, or pumping out the water (which becomes more radioactive as the reactor operates), into a municipal system. Unforeseen and unanticipated damage and acts of terrorism are a real possibility when one considers the many unstable political situations around the world.

Even large power reactors have their security problems. According to the October 2, 1987 Critical Mass Energy Project's newsletter, Public Citizen, in the US, "Dozens of security breaches occurred at nuclear plant sites in 1986. These include vandalism and sabotage directed at reactor operations; use of firearms on plant sites by unauthorized persons; and increasing drug use among nuclear workers." Also, some workers have been found, literally, asleep at the switch.

My personal involvement with the SLOWPOKE, became even more intense when my wife, Phyl, and I moved from Manitoba to Québec, in 1988.

We had just arrived at the  home of friends in the town of Beebe, in the Eastern Townships of Québec. It was March 15, 1988, and we were on a house hunting expedition.

Somewhat tired from the day's journey, which included a six-hour long delayed flight from Winnipeg, and a long drive in a rented car through a heavy snow storm from Montréal, we looked forward to some relaxation and good conversation that evening.

Our friends, however, stood by quietly watching, as we stared incredulously at the March 14 edition of the Sherbrooke, Québec, Record, which was propped up on their dining table.

Plastered across the front page was a story about AECL's plan to construct and operate a ten megawatt SLOWPOKE ("Safe Low Energy Critical Experiment") nuclear reactor at the  Centre hospitalier universitaire de Sherbrooke (CHUS), the large University Medical Centre located in Québec’s Eastern Townships.

I quickly scanned the story, which someone had leaked to the newspaper, revealing AECL's plan to build the reactor for the stated purpose of heating the hospital.

AECL was to own and operate it, and the hospital would pay the heating bill. Most importantly, the reactor, the first of its kind, was planned to serve as a demonstration based on the two megawatt version (which we knew was still nowhere near full power)at the Whiteshell Nuclear Research Establishment at Pinawa, Manitoba.

"I don't believe this," and "You've got to be kidding," were but a few (printable!) comments made by the two of us, as we read the lead article.

Our activities in Manitoba were well known to some of the environmental and peace activists in the Townships area. We had made contact with them during the 1985 controversy over a possible U.S. nuclear waste dump in northern Vermont, very close to the Canadian border.

When some of them heard that we were moving into the area, we were asked to join them in dealing with the new-to-Sherbrooke SLOWPOKE 3 issue.

Thus, a short time after our arrival into what we had hoped would surely be a relaxed new start in retirement life, Phyl and I were involved in strategy meetings with peace and ecology groups, a meeting with AECL and hospital officials, news conferences and media interviews.

It was as if we had never left Winnipeg.

Since my concern about the so-called SLOWPOKE 3 reactor had already started to grow over the past several years in Winnipeg, it seemed somehow appropriate to be involved in this new controversy.

The more I learned about the new mini-nuke, the less I liked it: It would use highly-enriched uranium which must be imported from other countries. It would create high-level radioactive waste, which would contain weapons usable plutonium. It would be marketed anywhere in the world. It would operate unattended for periods of time, leaving it vulnerable to those with malicious intent. Also, it would routinely emit radioactive gasses into the environment.

Yet, the plan now was to place such a machine in, of all places, a large teaching hospital, where, as is true of anything else designed by humans, accidents could, and did happen.

When Phyl and I finally moved from Winnipeg, we had put our belongings in storage as we continued to search for a house in the Eastern Townships. As it turned out, we did not find a house we liked before we sold our place in Winnipeg. So, we rented a furnished mobile home in a farming area near the town of Beebe.

We brought the essentials for living with us in our camper van which pulled our old 1960s'tent trailer from Winnipeg to the Townships.

However, I had packed one box of assorted files on nuclear waste issues in the tent trailer. Now, I am not especially a mystic, but it turned out that one of those files was full of papers on the SLOWPOKE reactor! It contained information which later proved to be very useful in shaping future events.

However, it now seemed as if our dream of "peace, quiet and contemplation" in the rolling hills of the Eastern Townships was not to be. [Our histories showed that we were probably never cut out for that kind of a life anyway!] For us, it would be the "Year of the SLOWPOKE."

The minutes of a February 16, 1988 meeting between AECL and the CHUS Hospital Board of Directors include an AECL quote that ". . . an appropriate strategy produces very little public reaction."

This time, however, AECL's "appropriate strategy" obviously did not take into account that someone(s) high up within the hospital's staff itself might have more than a few misgivings about the venture and would leak the information to the media.

The Townships Peace Group asked us to attend a May 2, 1988 meeting at the CHUS with hospital officials, AECL representatives, and persons concerned about the SLOWPOKE project.

We were already seated at the board room conference table when the AECL contingent arrived. Several AECL officials present from the Pinawa, Manitoba, Whiteshell Nuclear Research Establishment (WNRE), were visibly shaken when they saw us there. Of course, they did not know that we had very recently moved from Winnipeg to Québec. "What are you doing here?" asked one of them. "We live here." I retorted. I'll never forget the
astonished look on their faces.

The Robbins, former Concerned Citizens of Manitoba stalwarts, were probably the last two people they wanted to see that morning!

They were no doubt unhappy about the presence of others who also were at the meeting, including Gordon Edwards, well known nuclear critic from Montréal, and Max Krell, a local university professor, (and a very concerned nuclear physicist).

The hospital officials and AECL reminded me of a group of kids who had just got caught with their hands in the cookie jar. I imagine that they all realized at that moment, that their "appropriate strategy" might have just gone down the tube!

Although good manners were observed throughout, it became quite obvious that the citizens' representatives were not going to buy in on the proposal.

It did not take long for a coalition of peace and environmental groups and other concerned individuals to take shape in the Eastern Townships. The group used the same initials used by the hospital, i.e., the "Coalition CHUS" (Continue Hydro, not Uranium for our Safety, or, in French, Continuer l'Hydro non l'Uranium pour notre Sécurité.)

After the initial flurry of organizational and media activity, Phyl and I settled into a relatively benign role of "behind the scenes" support to the mostly French speaking coalition. But I had one more moment in the spotlight, which Phyl provided for me.

She had carefully reviewed the contents of the SLOWPOKE file that we had brought with us from Winnipeg, and had found an amazingly frank, and startling statement by John Hillborn, the inventor of the SLOWPOKE reactor, concerning the possibility of nuclear accidents.

In a June, 1981 paper he co-authored for the Second Annual Meeting of the Canadian Nuclear Society in Ottawa,(AECL document No. 7438), Hillborn said that, "It is now well known that people will accept frequent, small disasters more readily than rare catastrophes."

Airplane crashes were used as an example. The paper continued,
"Although we may have to endure the legacy of Three Mile Island for many years, a decentralized system of small reactors which effectively eliminates the possibility of a single big accident may have a significant advantage in licensing, insuring, and gaining public acceptance. Eventually the public may accept accidents to small reactors to the same extent that they accept fires, explosions, and airplane crashes, as long as the consequences are not obviously worse. It would be unrealistic however, to expect many communities to welcome nuclear reactors within their boundaries until there are severe regional shortages of gas and electricity."

On June 22, 1988, I read this statement, without comment, at the Coalition's first press conference. The media jumped on it. The following day the quote was used in the lead editorial in the Sherbrooke Record . Hilborn's statement became one of the Coalition's, and the media's favorite items. It was an excellent example of the fact that one of our most powerful weapons against AECL was its own prose.

I was not alone in finding Hilborn's statement to be a chilling one, with its assessment of public reaction to "small" nuclear catastrophes. The 1980s witnessed bitter and protracted conflict and public concern over radioactive spills from discarded medical equipment in scrap yards, radioactive soil in housing developments, radioactive materials dropping from space
satellites, and missing quantities of plutonium.

The fact that there is no safe level of radiation was understood by the public. Increasingly, evidence points to negative health effects from the most negligible levels of radiation. And the public has become aware of the consequences from nuclear radiation in whatever forms and amounts. Even the negative side of natural radiation has become more evident. There is nothing to suggest that the public will, in Hilborn's terms, easily accept "small" nuclear disasters.

Coalition CHUS continued to raise questions about the safety of the reactor. An exchange of correspondence between an official of Canada's Atomic Energy Control Board (AECB) and myself, revealed that the so-called "nuclear regulators" had no(!) safety information on the reactor. Their October 5, 1988 letter to me stated that "It is likely that the 10-mw reactor will be significantly different from the (2-mw) SDR." The letter also noted that "At this time the AECB does not have any detailed design information on the proposed 10-mw installation."

Not only was the 10-megawatt SLOWPOKE 3 an "experiment" in the true sense of the word, even its supposed prototype 2-mw version, at the WNRE, was still in its embryonic stages. AECB had reviewed that reactor and requested that AECL take a number of significant steps to improve its safety.

As the SLOWPOKE issue developed and the Coalition CHUS quickly grew during the Summer and Autumn of 1988, Phyl and I continued to provide it with advice, moral support, and assistance in developing letters and fact sheets


I was absolutely astounded at the energy and the effectiveness of the anti-SLOWPOKE coalition. Something was happening all the time. Meetings, mailings, radio and TV coverage, debates, button and t-shirts sales --- just about every legitimate, democratic, non-violent form of protest and expression was taking place.

By October, 1988, the movement had acquired a life of its own. There were so many media events, activities, and speakers' appearances going on that it was difficult just to keep track of them all.

As Coalition CHUS rapidly expanded, Phyl and I continued work in our behind the scenes role to supply information and ideas. For example, in one of her fact sheets Phyl included information about AECL's own stated policy of excluding pregnant women and small children from tours and open houses at the WNRE, which contained the 2 megawatt "prototype" of the SLOWPOKE.

Pregnant women and small children visit the CHUS medical centre every day for medical treatment. Would not a ten megawatt reactor at the hospital provide at least equal, if not greater risk? The point was not lost on the nurses at the hospital. Their union passed a unanimous resolution opposing the reactor, declaring it a public health risk.

By November, 1988, coalition support was estimated at twenty-five thousand, with almost ten organizations a week joining our forces. Much of the opposition came from the hospital staff itself. Politicians were falling over themselves to come onside.

The handwriting on the wall was writ large and clear. On December 20, 1988, we received the best Christmas present of all: the hospital Board of Directors announced its withdrawal from the SLOWPOKE project, a decision taken in spite of AECL's initial offer to absorb the five-to-seven million-dollar capital cost. Coalition CHUS had done its work well.

AECL folded its tents and left Sherbrooke. It had lost another round in its struggle to market its mini-nuke.

AECL's public relations and sales forces had again failed to convince any community that they had invented the perfect nuclear heating machine; one which they promoted as being inherently safe, and which would operate in the midst of a populated area without negative consequences, for at long as 30 years -- - even though the design of the reactor had not yet been finalized or approved!

Undaunted, the federal Crown Corporation continued to seek a location for a full-scale demonstration SLOWPOKE 3 to enhance the reactor's credibility in the eyes of potential foreign customers. But no one was buying. After two more failed attempts (one at a G.E. plant in Peterborough, Ontario, and another lengthy one at the University of Saskatchewan), the marketing project stalled.

A few years later, the two megawatt "prototype" at WNRE (which had never operated at full strength) was shut down. By November 1991, and forty-five million dollars later, the entire SLOWPOKE 3 project was consigned to oblivion.

In a 2007 article on “ Nuclear Smoke and Mirrors,” Jim Harding, a retired University of Regina, professor of environmental and justice studies commented on some of the Canadian reactor designs.

He wrote that “... the list of botched AECL designs is lengthy. There was the Organic Cooled Reactor in Manitoba, which was an expensive dead end. There was the Candu Boiling Light Water Reactor in Québec, which (without even including design costs) was a $126 million disaster. Then there was the Slowpoke Energy System, for which design work cost $45 million, which didn’t work properly. Next came the Candu-3, for which design work cost $75 million, which no one wanted. And the Candu-9, with design costs still secret, which was a no-go in South Korea. More recently AECL built the Maple Reactor at Chalk River, which threatens to become another technological and financial fiasco since the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) is refusing to even license it for operation”.   

The moral of this story is that there is no such thing as an inherently safe nuclear reactor.  Those who contemplate going down that road should carefully assess the lessons from the past.  If they do so, they might very well choose other, more preferable alternatives.
                                   
Walt Robbins

Great Canadian Nuclear Waste Saga

 

WATER, ROCKS AND NUCLEAR WASTE
Mood:  don't ask
Topic: Stop Underground Burial

 

 

HOORAY! We hit water, and lots of it!  At two hundred forty feet the pinkish gray granite rock gave way to a reddish color and at two hundred and eighty feet our well "came in." Water was being pumped from the hole at the rate of forty gallons per minute, and had leveled off at a depth of sixteen feet from the surface.  Our eastern Manitoba household would have plenty of clean, cold water.

Could there be a veritable labyrinth of rivers and streams underground, running cold and deep, through the ancient Pre-Cambrian rock of the Canadian Shield?  The strangest thought of all was that we had tampered with some of the deep secrets of the world below us. Nature was permanently altered and had given to us one of her most valued treasures. For that we were thankful.

While we were well drilling on our property, Atomic Energy of Canada, Ltd., (AECL), at its nearby nuclear research station, was conducting test drilling as a prelude for an underground nuclear waste research laboratory (URL) in our municipality. It’s officials initially insisted that the granite rock formation in the area had “remarkably few cracks.”  However, during the major excavation of the URL during the early 1980's, an extensive water-bearing fracture zone was encountered.  Several cracks, including a large fracture resulted in the intake of considerable amounts of ground water. requiring pumps to run continuously.

Probably the most descriptive statement about the wet condition of the URL came from Walter Patterson, when he spoke at a 1986 nuclear waste conference in Winnipeg.  Trained in nuclear physics and residing in the UK, he was involved with many aspects of nuclear technology for decades. He visited the URL underground facility in as an advisor to a Select Environmental Committee of the British Parliament. After the visit, the Parliamentarians asked his opinion of the operation. Patterson told the conferees, that for the first time on the entire Canadian trip, "I had to say I had not the faintest idea.. I do not know why they are doing what they are doing: because if this is supposed to be research for an underground repository for final disposal of spent fuel, everybody in the business knows that the one thing you have to avoid is water -- and the place is soaking! Absolutely soaking! Up to here (gesturing) in water!"

My comment to reporters after I visited the URL excavation was “if you plan to go down into that hole, be sure to take your rain boots, an umbrella and a life raft.  When you think about nuclear waste going into that wet hole, it gives you the chills.”  

Over the ensuing years, our own personal well drilling experience in 1980 has always been in the back of my mind whenever the subject of deep underground “disposal” of irradiated fuel waste comes up.  Common sense informs us that ground water can eventually corrode waste canisters and carry lethal radioactive substances into the environment above. Given the toxic nature and longevity of the irradiated fuel wastes created by the operation of nuclear reactors, few would disagree that the presence of groundwater presents a serious problem for the integrity of an underground nuclear waste repository.  

And, what about these lethal substances?  

According to Wikipedia, “Certain radioactive elements (such as plutonium-239) in ‘spent’ fuel will remain hazardous to humans and other living beings for hundreds of thousands of years. Other radioisotopes remain hazardous for millions of years. Thus, these wastes must be shielded for centuries and isolated from the living environment for millennia. Some elements, such as Iodine-131, have a short half-life (around 8 days in this case) and thus they will cease to be a problem much more quickly than other, longer-lived, decay products but their activity is much greater initially.”   

Hundreds of thousands and millions of years?  It may be easier to wrap your mind around the concept of a billion or trillion dollars!

In the U.S., Yucca Mountain, Nevada was chosen as the preferred site for an irradiated nuclear fuel waste repository.

One of the reasons the Nevada location was originally selected was because of its arid, desert location.  Yucca Mountain (geologically, a tuff formation) would be nice and dry.  Or so it was thought.

The October 15, 1994 issue of the Las Vegas Sun, reported that “. . Radioactive water from past nuclear testing has penetrated to layers below the proposed storage site. Scientists studying Yucca Mountain as a place to store the nation's high-level nuclear waste have found evidence that surface water from the days of atmospheric nuclear testing probably seeped to layers beneath the proposed repository site,”  The Department of Energy spokesman, Greg Cook was reported as saying ". . . the finding is obviously of concern to us because ground water intrusion within the repository would make it more difficult to contain for 10,000 years the 77,000 tons of spent fuel from commercial nuclear reactors that the government wants to entomb there."

Carl Johnson, a geologist for the State of Nevada Nuclear Projects Agency, which monitors the federal Yucca Mountain studies, said that ". . . the finding means 'at least one very fast pathway' exists for ground water to move from the surface to below the repository site." Johnson said that ". . . samples collected from a bore hole on the southeast side of the repository site, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, contained tritium and chlorine-36 isotopes, residuals from nuclear weapons testing. That means the water seeped from the surface to a depth of 1,450 feet within the 49 years since the first US nuclear weapons test was conducted in New Mexico and probably since nuclear testing began in Nevada in 1951."

Over the years, billions of dollars have been poured into the Yucca Mountain Project.  In 2009 it experienced major cuts to its budget at the hands of the Obama Administration.  It’s future as a nuclear waste repository lies in doubt.

The latest Canadian proclamation about the suitability of an underground repository (this one for low and intermediate level radioactive waste) comes from Ontario Power Generation (OPG).  Its plan is for a deep geological repository (DGR) at the Bruce nuclear facility near the shore of Lake Huron.  

In media reports, OPG has stated that "There is a consensus in our research that shows the natural barriers will help protect the repository," and that "The limestone bedrock formations that are there have an extremely low rate of permeability. Also, there is a cap of shale 200 meters (about 656 feet) above the repository area that would act as a protective layer."  

That rhetoric is an echo of earlier optimistic  “dry rock” expectations.  What will they find in the limestone excavation?  Based on the URL (granite) experience, and the Yucca Mountain (tuff) one, can we anticipate water logged caverns feeding into Lake Huron?   

But the biggest question of all is what will the industry-dominated Canadian Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) turn up in its ongoing search for a willing community to “host” a repository for Canada’s irradiated nuclear fuel waste?  Even if some community in Canada does volunteer for the “undertaking,” any water found within its underground natural barriers would still be a major deterrent.

“Water, water, everywhere.” It’s been nearly 30 years since the Underground Research Laboratory was excavated and over 20 years since the Yucca Mountain project was started.  The time has come to look for other methods  to manage irradiated nuclear fuel waste.  In the absence of an acceptable solution, the most rational and logical first step is to phase out its production.

Walter Robbins
September, 2009

http://www.nukeshaft.ca











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Nuclear Expansion: The Road To Oblivion?
Mood:  a-ok

NUCLEAR EXPANSION: THE ROAD TO OBLIVION?

Like the tobacco companies of yore, the nuclear establishment is currently aggressively marketing its dubious products. Most recently, the industry has been bombarding the public with ads to the effect that nuclear energy is clean, safe and environmentally friendly; depicting it as an important tool in dealing with climate change and global warming. Nothing could be further from the truth.

This paper summarizes the downside of expanding nuclear power, which requires processes which cause noxious emissions as well as highly irradiated toxic fuel waste, uses non-renewable and ever more costly uranium deposits with increasing amounts of energy inputs, emits radioactive tritium into the air and water, contributes greatly to the Canadian national debt, is the basis for nuclear weapons proliferation, and is a desirable target for terrorism. It is a technology that must have an impossible-to-achieve perfect record of zero tolerance for serious accidents over an entire reactor life cycle, as there is no safe level of ionizing radiation.

Yes, nuclear energy does boil water which is converted to electricity, that is when not in a shut- down state for frequent maintenance. Yes, there are much safer, cheaper and environmentally friendly alternatives. Yes, our politicians are idiots if they pursue the nuclear option.

Please feel free to use this commentary and the material below to help prevent nuclear expansion and to promote nuclear phase-out along with a rapid increase in safe renewable energy alternatives, conservation and efficiency.

Walt Robbins

March, 2007 

 

Did you know that nuclear energy is responsible for the release of large quantities of greenhouse gasses and other noxious emissions?

     According to a December 14, 2006 report by the Pembina Institute, no other energy source combines the generation of as wide a range of conventional pollutants and waste streams-including heavy metals, smog-and acid-rain precursors and greenhouse gases. It notes that “...total greenhouse gas emissions associated with uranium mining, milling, refining, conversion and fuel fabrication in Canada are estimated at between 240,000 and 366,000 tonnes of CO2 per year.”

Did you know that harmful emissions from the nuclear industry will continue to increase as supplies of rich uranium ore decrease?

     According to scientists Jan Willem Storm van Leeuwen and Philip Bartlett Smith, “...at the present rate of use, worldwide supplies of rich uranium ore will soon become exhausted, perhaps within the next decade. Nuclear power stations of the future will have to rely on second-grade ore, which requires huge amounts of conventional energy to refine it. For each ton of poor-quality uranium, some 5000 tons of granite that contain it will have to be mined, milled and then disposed of. This could rise to 10,000 tons if the quality deteriorates further. At some point, and it could happen soon, the nuclear industry will be emitting as much carbon dioxide from mining and treating its ore as it saves from the so-called clean power it produces thanks to nuclear fission.” The researchers estimate that “The use of nuclear power causes, at the end of the road and under the most favourable conditions, approximately one-third as much carbon dioxide emission as gas-fired electricity production.”

Did you know that nuclear power production could well go into energy deficit as rich ore quantities are consumed?

     According to Energy writer David Fleming in Prospect magazine, “...it would be putting more energy into the process than it could extract from it. Its contribution to meeting the world's energy needs would become negative! The so-called reliability of nuclear power, which its proponents enthuse over, would therefore rest on the growing use of fossil fuels rather than their replacement.”

Did you know that nuclear reactors routinely emit other noxious substances, one of the worst of which is radioactive tritium into the environment?

     According to Dr. Gordon Edwards of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility, “Tritium poses an ever-present radiological hazard to CANDU (reactor) workers. It is also an environmental contaminant which pollutes the drinking water of many communities situated near CANDU reactors. In addition, atmospheric emissions of tritium are readily inhaled -- and also absorbed directly through the skin -- by residents living near CANDU reactors.”

 

 Did you know that you, the taxpayer, are footing much of the bill and incurring much of the national debt, for Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd’s (AECL’s) nuclear expansion?

     According to a recent Energy Probe study, federal subsidies to AECL since its inception in 1952 amount to $74.9 billion of today’s (2006) Federal Government debt (about 12 per cent of the entire outstanding amount).

Did you know that no acceptable solution for the permanent disposition of irradiated reactor fuel waste as yet exists in Canada?

     According to the Canadian federal environmental assessment panel (Seaborn) report released in March, 1998 after an eight year intensive public process “... the (AECL) concept in its current form for deep geologic disposal does not have broad public support, and does not have the required level of acceptability to be adopted as Canada's approach for managing nuclear fuel wastes."

Did you know that Canada’s nuclear industry-based Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO, in November, 2005, after a three year study, continued to endorse the permanent underground burial of irradiated nuclear fuel wastes?

      According to Elizabeth May, former Executive Director of the Sierra Club of Canada and currently leader of the Green Party of Canada, “...the NWMO has taken its mandate and skewed it to allow them to make decisions that are industry-biased, and not based on health, safety and security measures.”

Did you know that if all of Canada’s current nuclear waste is transported to a centralized location for storage or permanent burial, shipments by rail, highway and waterway, would be continuous, and over many years, possibly decades?

     According to Nuclear Waste Watch, ( a network of thirty environmental, social and other groups across Canada) "the potential recipient and transport route communities should all have veto power, and should receive funding from proponents for independent research and community education."

Concerns expressed by many groups opposed to nuclear waste transportation include property value losses along the transportation corridor, the routine radiation exposure during handling and transit, worst case scenario radiation exposure, health and environmental costs, and more potential for accidents and terrorist acts resulting from greater shipment frequency and duration of shipments.

 

 

Did you know that no safe level of ionizing radiation exists?

     According to a 2005 report of a US National Academy of Sciences panel (Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation--BEIR VII), investigating the dangers of low energy, low-dose ionizing radiation, “..it is unlikely that a threshold exists for the induction of cancers... Further, there are extensive data on radiation-induced transmissible mutations in mice and other organisms. There is therefore no reason to believe that humans would be immune to this sort of harm.”

 

Did you know that terrorists could use nuclear reactors and nuclear waste as weapons of mass destruction?

     According to journalist Jeffrey St. Clair, shortly after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the U.S., it was widely reported that al-Qaeda had given serious consideration to crashing commercial aircraft into several nuclear plants on that day. In his September 14, 2002 Counterpunch article (The Fire Next Time), he reports that al-Qaeda operatives Ramzi bin al-Shaibah and Khaled al-Sheikh Mohammad told Al-Jazeera interviewer Yosri Fouda, that future attacks on Western nuclear facilities could not be ruled out.

But the real Achille’s heel at a nuclear plants is the adjacent spent fuel facility, which contains major concentrations of highly radioactive material. They lack the heavy duty containment safeguard provided for the reactor, and could be considered "sitting ducks" for disastrous terror attacks. Large explosions, along with major fire resulting in radioactive release from spent fuel would have serious health, social and economic consequences for people in the surrounding geographical area. It should be noted that many of our nuclear facilities are in close proximity to the Great Lakes. Any ecological disaster resulting from terrorism could affect water quality in both Canada and the United States.

Did you know that more nuclear reactors can lead directly to greater nuclear weapons proliferation?

     According to Dr. Helen Caldicott, as a result of the projected “...renaissance of the nuclear power industry, twenty-five countries and consortia will have access over a period of two decades to Generation IV reactors fueled by plutonium.” In her book, Nuclear Power is Not the Answer, Dr. Caldicott reminds us that “Canada supplied India with a CIRUS heavy water reactor for making nuclear energy. . . It was this reactor that gave India the plutonium it used in its first 1974 nuclear weapons test.”

     

 

NO MORE NUKES
Mood:  irritated
Now Playing: Same Old Song
No More Nukes

February, 2006

On a road trip across the United States last Spring, it became increasingly evident to me that an energy revolution is in progress there. It was not just the visibility of the many wind farms that are springing up, or more hybrid cars and various energy saving initiatives. It was the fact that state and local governments along with NGO’s are seriously and actively working to reduce energy consumption and develop renewable alternatives. They are not just talking about it; they are doing it!

Back in the Summer of 2001, widespread blackouts were predicted for energy greedy California. They did not occur and in that period alone, spearheaded by a range of incentives from their state government, Californians reduced their consumption of electrical energy by as much as 5500 megawatts.

I’m sure that Ontario Power Authority (OPA) and the Ontario Government are well aware of the many such developments in North America and around the world. In spite of the fact that some countries, such as China, still opt for the construction of large scale, centralized electrical energy plants of one kind or another, the real trends are in the opposite direction. And even China is starting to look at the new realities of the 21st century.

A decentralized electrical energy system in Ontario would not only reduce the impact of power disruptions, it would increase and spread-out the economic benefits across the province. In addition, failure to adopt clean-coal technology for existing plants to help manage the transition, can only be viewed as myopic.

All of the great advantages of a cutting edge decentralized system of renewable energy and conservation are well documented in the Ontario Clean Air Alliance (OCAA) study which is very critical of the OPA plan, especially as it relates to the possible construction of more nuclear plants.

Nuclear energy is a very expensive way to boil water, as the resulting never-ending debt load carried by Ontarians demonstrates. I hate to think of what another round of that kind of fiscal irresponsibility would bring to all of us.

Ontario is moving away from its historical role as a high-electrical consumption, industrial manufacturing bastion to a very different kind of economy; essentially a knowledge-based, low energy consumption one. As OCAA points out, Ontario’s electricity demand growth has been “moderating” for the last half century.

As for impacts on air quality, nuclear reactors themselves may not produce the various noxious substances in our air, but they do produce high-level radioactive waste which will be deadly to living things for hundreds of thousands of years. In my view, the industry-based Nuclear Waste Management Organization’s proposals are badly flawed. Ultimately, if implemented, they will return us to the late 1970's and early 80's when many Ontario communities were terribly disrupted in a fruitless search for a nuclear dumping ground.

Furthermore, uranium mining, milling and refining processes, with their mountains of hazardous tailings, do contribute to poor air quality. And, it has been estimated that as a non-renewable resource, uranium will not only cost more, but, in time, the amount of energy needed to get it to reactor fuel rod status will likely exceed the energy actually produced by the reactors. Not much of a bargain for society there!

Designing and keeping those reactors running properly and safely requires near “heroic” efforts. Only one bad slip, and the game is over. No other energy technology can make that claim.

Given all the concerns over factors such as costs, safety, security, radiation health, waste management, it is difficult to understand why the Ontario Government and the OPA are so entranced with nuclear energy, an old technology which would be long gone, if not propped up
by enormous public subsidies.

And, given the great importance and high priority of this issue, the current level of consultation undertaken by the Government of Ontario is woefully inadequate. Nothing short of formal public hearings within the scope of provincial environmental laws and regulations are an absolute requirement.

http://www.web.net/~robbins

Transport of Nuclear Waste: Horrors To Come?
Mood:  incredulous
Topic: Radioactive Roads
As I sit here in my home office on the west side of the city of Kingston, Ontario, I can hear the sounds of passing freight trains on one of the main Canadian east-west rail corridors. At this point, the trains pass close to the spot where the St. Lawrence River Seaway widens into Lake Ontario. When all is quiet late at night, I can sometimes hear the faint sounds of the big trucks roaring along the only major east-west four lane highway across eastern Ontario; "the 401." On rare occasions, I can even hear the low, resonant sounds of a ship's horn on the seaway.

If the nuclear industry gets its way, some day soon, highly radioactive and toxic nuclear wastes from reactors in the provinces of Qu?bec and New Brunswick could move along on this and other transportation corridors, heading west toward a yet to be designated central storage or repository site. West, because it is very unlikely that such a central facility would ever be constructed in any of the provinces to the east of Ontario, the province which produces most of Canada's nuclear reactor waste.

These shipments will be continuous and over many years, possibly decades.

With the exception of permanent on-reactor-site-storage of spent (irradiated) nuclear fuel, the legislative options under review by the nuclear industry's Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO), must involve the use of these major Canadian transportation corridors; possibly a combination of all three: rail, road and water

The heavy casks could not likely be transported by air for some obvious reasons, not the least of which would be the risk of a high impact crash in a populated area, resulting in explosions, fire, and widespread dispersion of the radioactive cancer-causing agents in nuclear waste.

However, past experience suggests that one should never underestimate the willingness (as well as the arrogance) of the nuclear industry to expose Canadians to the risks of air transport of nuclear waste as it did in the year 2000. Although our Campaign STOP (Stop Trafficking of Plutonium) did help prevent test shipments of mixed plutonium oxide (MOX) fuel from the U.S. and Russia from crossing the 1000 Island Bridge near Kingston, Ontario, it was finally flown right over the heads of many of us. The MOX story is chronicled in the 2004 update of The Great Canadian Nuclear Waste Saga on this web site.

As I indicated in my previous commentary on nuclear waste and terrorism, some of the NWMO commissioned discussion papers deal with nuclear waste security in rather general and overly reassuring terms. None of these papers directly identify, in any degree of detail, possible kinds of terrorist scenarios and how Canada could develop plans to deal with them. Mostly, the papers cite administrative requirements and regulations of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, almost as if the rule book itself will provide a wall of protection.

Most of the NWMO information relating to transportation can be found in the following documents, all of which chant the nuclear industry "low risk" mantra:

Discussion Paper Number 6-8 is called Review of the fundamental issues and key considerations related to the transportation of spent nuclear fuel, by Gavin J. Carter of Butterfield Carter and Associates, L.L.C. This paper concludes that "There are a number of extensive technical papers that support the conclusion that spent fuel transport is a low risk activity."

Discussion Paper Number 6-6 is titled Status of Transportation Systems of High-level Radioactive Waste Management, by Wardrop Engineering, Inc. This paper declares that "...because of the rugged design of the licensed transportation casks in Canada, it is unlikely that an accident would result in a serious release of radioactive material."

Discussion Paper Number 6-7 is called Status of Storage, Disposal and Transportation Containers for the Management of Used Nuclear Fuel, by Aamir Husain and Kwansik Choi, Kinectrics, Inc. This paper emphasizes the "rigorous requirements" that must be met by the transportation containers.

Not everyone agrees with the rosy risk and consequence assessments outlined in the NWMO discussion papers on nuclear waste transportation. The NWMO, as an integral part of the nuclear industry, appears to have limited its consulting contracts on this issue to firms which are well versed in "nuke-speak." One could legitimately ask, where are the papers from those who might take a different view of the issue of nuclear waste transportation safety?

Internet search reveals that some very serious questions about the safety, security as well as social and economic aspects of transporting irradiated nuclear fuel do indeed exist! Some of the issues they highlight are as follows:

. Property value losses along the transportation corridor
. Routine radiation exposure during handling and transit
. Worst Case Scenario radiation exposure, health and environmental costs
. Likelihood of increased transportation accidents resulting from greater shipment frequency and duration.
. Need for full-scale testing of shipping cask ability to withstand such extreme events as very high temperature fire, major collisions involving other dangerous goods, or massive terrorist attack from truck bombs or aircraft.

To move nuclear waste on a large-scale basis, in my opinion, would be an irrational act. In the event that such a program is undertaken, it must involve considerable consultation and input from all the communities affected along the selected transportation corridors.

The policy statement of the Nuclear Waste Watch, ( a network of thirty environmental, social and other groups across Canada) states that "the potential recipient and transport route communities should all have veto power, and should receive funding from proponents for independent research and community education." In my view, such veto power must be absolute and non-negotiable.

But let us hope that cooler heads prevail and affected communities will not be subjected to the concerns and anxiety over continuous shipments of nuclear waste; that the waste will remain in its present locations, hardened against terrorist attacks, that Canada will join in the ongoing international research efforts to render the waste inert and harmless through such processes as accelerator transmutation.

The truth of the matter is, that there is no solution to the problem of nuclear waste at this time, and until there is, it would be the height of folly to commit to a long-term, mass transportation program of the kind discussed in the nuclear industry (NWMO) discussion papers.

Trewalt
February, 2006

Nuclear Waste Burial Threat to Future Generations
Mood:  chillin'
Topic: Stop Underground Burial
Nuclear Industry still hell-bent on deep underground burial of irradiated fuel You have got to hand it to the Canadian Nuclear Industry. It doesn't give up easily. Having failed to gain access to a site for a permanent underground nuclear waste dump in the late 1970's and early 80's, it is getting ready to take another kick at the can using its very own Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) as its agent. Presented as a gift to the nuclear industry by the fiercely pro-nuclear Government of Canada , NWMO was created in 2002 under the Federal Nuclear Waste Act. After massaging the issue for the past three years, in its draft final report, Choosing the Way Forward, the NWMO concluded that the growing stockpiles of irradiated nuclear fuel from Canada's reactors should ultimately wind up in a deep rock underground tomb. What a surprise! NWMO has taken us right back to the late 1970's. There appear to be only two significant changes in the NWMO report as compared with the earlier effort spearheaded by Federal Crown Corporation, Atomic Energy of Canada, Ltd.(AECL). The first is an expansion of the kinds of geological rock formations deemed suitable for the dump. AECL initially restricted its dump site search and research to special "plutonic" granite formations. Much scientific hoopla was touted for this choice. But, later, after disrupting many communities in the Canadian Shield in its pluton search effort, AECL announced that a dump could go into any type of granite rock formation. Now the NWMO has gone a step further by including so-called "Ordovician Sedimentary" rock, which can be found in many parts of Canada, including Ottawa, Kingston, and the Bruce Peninsula in Ontario. Such locations are now considered suitable candidates for potential nuclear waste dumps. Such an expansion of potential sites would vastly increase the chances of NWMO finding some needy community willing to sell its soul and its safety to the nuclear industry for big bucks. Seems that science has taken a back seat to the industry which desperately needs to appear to have solved the nuclear waste problem. The new motto should be "Any old rock will do -- just let us in!" The other change is the establishment of a longer time line for the upcoming effort. NWMO's time frame could extend as far as three hundred years for final closure of an underground dump, whereas AECL thought that goal could be achieved in a much shorter time period. As with all good bureaucracies, NWMO is taking out a nice long insurance policy on its own survival as an organizational entity. The so-called "Option 4 'Adaptive Phased Management' (APM)" discussed in the NWMO report is simply a dressed-up version of AECL's original nuclear waste burial program. Option 4 combines elements of the on-reactor site option, the centralized storage option and the underground burial option. In fact, nearly all the elements of APM can found in an October 1978 AECL publication, Management of Radioactive Fuel Wastes: The Canadian Disposal Program, J. Boulton (Editor), numbered AECL-6314. The Boulton report encompassed "Pre-disposal Technologies," including wet and dry storage at reactor sites, as well as the possibility of the need for a central storage facility. That report stated that "A central storage facility could be located at the site of a generating station or at a fuel management site which may also include immobilization and disposal facilities." These "pre-disposal" storage options would be needed for "several decades." The Boulton report goes on to describe the ultimate underground dump in grim detail. As expected, the NWMO rejected the continued on-reactor-site storage of the waste. Expected, because such a decision could be fatal to the nuclear industry. It would be tantamount to a declaration that there is no solution to the nuclear waste problem (which at present happens to be true!). The industry's efforts to promote more nuclear energy, with the resulting production of more nuclear waste, would undoubtedly meet with more than a little skepticism from the Canadian public if the waste remained at the reactor sites indefinitely. So, NWMO's recommendations are quite in sync with the nuclear industry's current aggressive reactor marketing schemes. As for other approaches to nuclear waste management, NWMO dismissed the promising option of transmuting nuclear waste to low-grade or even inert substances because it "...is not yet sufficiently advanced for implementation and long-term management of the residual materials would still be required." It cites a report from French nuclear authorities that "industrial implementation of transmutation cannot be seen until the years 2040-2050 at best." And yet, NWMO is perfectly willing to wait some three hundred years before a dubious underground repository is permanently closed. On this very subject, NWMO simply ignored some of the best information given to it by its own consultants' discussion papers. In NWMO Background Paper: 6.5 Technical Methods: Range of Potential Options for the Long-Term Management of Used Nuclear Fuel, by Phil Richardson & Marion Hill, Enviros Consulting, it is stated that "It is recognized internationally that the possibility that P&T (partitioning and transmutation) could become a readily available and very attractive treatment option in several decades time, (and) could be a reason for choosing storage rather than disposal." Damn good reason! Furthermore, in NWMO Background Paper: 6-1 Technical Methods: Status of Reactor Site Storage Systems for Used Nuclear Fuel, by SENES Consultants Limited, it is stated that the dry storage facilities of irradiated fuel at Canada's nuclear power sites currently have a design life of 50 years and that "...the actual life of dry storage containers is thought to be 100 years or more." Put two and two together, and you have a compelling case for continued on-site storage, with augmented security, coupled with some serious research and development into transmutation technologies, (which is being pursued in many countries around the world, but not in Canada). The Canadian Nuclear Industry wants to sell, sell, sell more reactors, and it can't wait several decades for what could turn out to be a real scientific solution for the waste, as contrasted with the crude "out of sight-out of mind" option chosen by its Nuclear Waste Management Organization. Among other liabilities, the Adaptive Phased Management Monstrosity proposed by the NWMO would put decades of continuous nuclear waste traffic on highways, rail lines, and even seaways - major Canadian transportation corridors; a terrorists' dream scenario! Finally, during the late 1970s and early '80s, in its search for a nuclear waste dump site, the nuclear industry inflicted a great deal of sociological and psychological damage upon the citizens of many communities throughout the Canadian Shield in Ontario and Manitoba. The NWMO proposal virtually insures that that unhappy chapter of Canadian history will be repeated.