I am a senior citizen from Thunder Bay and I have many concerns about the DGR Project, with a top priority issue being the transportation of high level radioactive waste to the Project Site. The NWMO seems to think that those of us on the Transportation route will be satisfied with the regulations within “existing transportation infrastructure”. Do they understand that currently, even though the Trans Canada Highway meets existing safety standards, it is not equipped to deal with the volume and type of traffic on our highways now.  Fatalities occur on an almost daily basis, causing the deaths of regular people using public roads for daily life.  I shudder to imagine these accidents involving high level nuclear waste cargo.

If Transportation is excluded from the Impact Assessment, will the NWMO assume any responsibility for accidents and radiation leaks which occur on the transportation route, since the waste is not yet on their project site? If an accident occurs which impacts my property values, both in the city and/or at a rural recreational property I own, my insurance policy will NOT consider this to be an insurable loss. All of us along the transportation route will assume the risk of our properties becoming contaminated and worthless, yet we were not worthy of consultation. That was saved for the very small and impoverished community of Ignace, which is actually in a different watershed than the location of the proposed Project.

Nuclear energy is the most expensive and most risky type of energy production. While the NWMO states that the Project solves the problem of disposal of nuclear waste for future generations, that is only after it has been sitting for several decades getting cool enough to transport. The more nuclear reactors humans build, the more decades of cooling with vast quantities of water needed, and more and more waste building up just as it has since the 60’s. Even though this technology has never before been used, anywhere, and an Impact Assessment not nearly completed, but more and more reactors and more DGR’s are in the planning.

There IS an alternative and it is called the Proximity Principle. The industry should use it’s know-how to develop specialized containers and secure long-term storage facilities to contain the waste safely at the sites of production, thereby eliminating many of the potential risks for radiation leakage which occur during packaging, unpackaging, repackaging, transporting over vast distances. This is the very reason why it is not transported anywhere else in the world. Waste should be stored above ground where it can be seen and its existence and properties known to future generations, with constant safety monitoring.  We can’t allow “out of sight, out of mind” to occur.

In addition, there should be a moratorium on further nuclear energy production at least until the containment facilities at reactor sites are prepared and ready to deal with additional waste.  The problem of nuclear waste is that it cannot be “solved” for the convenience of future generations as claimed by the NWMO. Because as long as you keep producing nuclear energy there will be a constant source of high level waste. There is no operating DGR anywhere in the world at this time, despite inferences by the NWMO. The waste will outlive the containers, as well as the witnesses of this shameful process. Some of parts of the nuclear waste will retain their powerful elements after a half life that is hundreds of thousands to millions of years, but the NWMO is projecting that they can finish this project in 160 years. This is not a responsible long term monitoring plan.

Nuclear power is prohibitively expensive, especially when we consider the delays and cost overruns that commonly plague reactor construction and refurbishing. When we add in the cost of managing wastes over the very long time frames and the price of cleaning up disasters like Fukushima, the financial toll of nuclear energy becomes enormous.

Nuclear energy is NOT green. Our government and industry experts perpetuate the myth that nuclear energy is “clean”. The reality is nuclear is neither clean, safe or smart; but a very complex technology with the potential to cause significant harm. New power plants, for example, generate more CO2 during construction than those built in previous decades, due to stricter safety regulations.

Nuclear energy is also responsible for greenhouse gas emissions.  It requires uranium extraction, transport and processing which produce emissions. The long and complex construction process of nuclear power plants also releases CO2, as does the demolition of decommissioned sites. And, then there is the problem of nuclear waste and what to do with it. The cheapest and safest is to leave it where it is, in facilities above ground, so it is visible and able to be monitored. And as far as the heating planet is concerned, I am concerned about how much heat is going to be generated by the millions of hot and highly radioactive fuel bundles which are going to be hidden away underground in our Canadian Shield.

I sincerely believe that the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada will understand and appreciate that Transportation is such a fundamental part of the project that without it, the project would not exist. A project of this import with potentially devastating impacts must not be Fast-tracked. I am confident that the IAAC will not support the NWMO’s desire to exclude waste transportation from this critically important process and will proceed with an abundance of caution and due diligence on a Full Impact Assessment including an independent review panel, for all aspects of this project.