CBC News reports today that the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission is expected to make its decision on the shipment of radioactive steam generators on the Great Lakes by November 11.
However, the Owen Sound Sun Times reports that Bruce Power spokesman John Peevers says, “We really haven’t been given any timetable” for the decision from the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission on the plan to ship radioactive steam generators on the Great Lakes. The article adds, “Officials at the CNSC could not be reached for comment Monday.”
It does seem possible though that the shipments could be delayed. The company says that it could take “as much as 22 days” to truck the 16 steam generators from the nuclear plant down a highway, through Owen Sound, then to the harbour where they would be loaded on to ships. Peevers says, “The St. Lawrence, we’re told, is open roughly and generally until Dec. 21st based on weather and past history, so it’s something we’ll have to look at pending the decision.”
GROWING OPPOSITION
The Montreal Gazette reports today that, “The local band council in Kahnawake made good on its word yesterday and banned the transport of nuclear-waste materials through the (narrow) St. Lawrence Seaway section that runs through the Mohawk community. The resolution, although not binding, signals the band council’s opposition to an Ontario nuclear power plant’s plan to ship 16 radioactive steam generators through the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence Seaway to a recycling facility in Sweden.”
The Mohawk Council of Akwesasne also oppose the shipments.
And the Beyond Nuclear website notes that, “Seven U.S. Senators from Great Lakes States — Russell Feingold (D-WI), Robert Casey Jr. (D-PA), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), Carl Levin (D-MI), Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), Richard Durbin (D-IL, Assistant Senate Majority Leader), and Charles Schumer (D-NY) — have written to the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Pipeline and Hazardous Material Safety Administration (PHMSA) and the Canadian federal government, expressing serious concerns about a proposed shipment of 16 radioactive steam generators from Bruce Nuclear Power Plant in Ontario to Sweden for ‘recycling’ into consumer products.”
“The shipment, on board a single ship, would violate International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) limits for the quantity of radioactivity aboard a single vessel. …Beyond Nuclear, along with a coalition of environmental groups, has called upon PHMSA to conduct a full environmental analysis on the proposed shipment, in order to fulfill its National Environmental Policy Act federal legal obligations, before permitting the shipment to enter U.S. territorial waters on the Great Lakes…”
Read the letter at www.canadians.org/water/documents/Feingold-letter-US-senate-1010.pdf.
THE COUNCIL OF CANADIANS
To read about our intervention at the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission public hearings, please go to http://canadians.org/campaignblog/?p=4770. To sign the petition opposing the shipments, please go to http://canadians.org/campaignblog/?p=4410.
The articles noted above can be read at http://www.owensoundsuntimes.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=2785958, http://www.cbc.ca/politics/story/2010/09/28/bruce-power-nuclear-wast-environmentalists.html?ref=rss, http://www.montrealgazette.com/technology/Kahnawake+bars+nuclear+ship/3623813/story.html and http://www.beyondnuclear.org/home/2010/10/1/7-great-lakes-states-us-senators-object-to-radioactive-steam.html.
