- Andreas Carlgren
On Monday, Council of Canadians chairperson Maude Barlow wrote Swedish minister of the environment Andreas Carlgren asking him to intervene and revoke a permit issued to Studsvik, a company in Nykoping, Sweden, that is set to receive radioactive waste from the Bruce Power nuclear plant in Ontario. In order for that nuclear waste to get to Nykoping, it has been proposed that it be shipped on the Great Lakes. Studsvik has a permit from the Swedish Radiation Authority to receive and decontaminate the waste.
In the letter, Barlow states, “With Studsvik’s plant in Nyköping, the recycling of this radioactive waste will further pollute the waters of the Baltic Sea, which is already known as one of the most radioactive seas in the world… This is the first of several shipments that threaten the North Sea, the North Atlantic Ocean, Canadian and US lakes and other bodies of water.”
Today, Ny Teknik, a Swedish publication read by technicians, engineers and decision-makers (with a circulation of 150,000-plus), reports, “The shipment of 16 used and radioactively contaminated steam generators from Canada to Studsvik in Sweden has long been debated in Canada and the United States. Now the question lands on the Swedish Environment Minister’s desk. Maude Barlow, chair of Canada’s largest environmental and human rights organization, the Council of Canadians, asks in a letter to Environment Minister Andreas Carlgren that he intervene and stop the shipment of 1600 tons of radioactive scrap metal from the Bruce Power’s nuclear power plant on Lake Huron in Canada to the Studsvik Nuclear in Nyköping.”
Opposition against these shipments on the Great Lakes is growing. In April, twenty European civil society organizations sent a letter to Canadian, US, UK, Danish, Norwegian and Swedish governments demanding a stop to Bruce Power’s plan to ship radioactive waste.
Barlow’s letter can be read in English, Swedish and French at http://canadians.org/media/water/2011/13-Jun-11.html.
