The Canadian Press reports, “The municipality of Saugeen Shores, which includes the picturesque lakeside towns of Port Elgin and Southampton about three hours west of Toronto, is showing interest in becoming home to (a nuclear waste site that would store underground about two million highly radioactive bundles). Neighbouring Brockton (which includes Walkerton) is also looking to get on board as part of an initiative to involve the entire county, which is already home to the Bruce nuclear power plant in nearby Kincardine. …The region is attractive as a waste site because 40 per cent of used nuclear fuel in Canada is already housed above ground at the Bruce generating plant (on the eastern shore of Lake Huron).”
Saugeen Shores is located directly by Lake Huron, while Brockton is located about 40 kilometres from the water.
“But (Saugeen Shores) Coun. Thead Seaman (said) councillors will likely doom the idea soon. ‘The public doesn’t want us to even receive more information,’ Seaman said. ‘So, we’ll just shoot it dead in the water and that will be the end of it.'” And while the Walkerton mayor is apparently open to the idea, Walkerton councillor “Chris Peabody said Walkerton’s tainted water tragedy a decade ago should be reason enough to stay out of the radioactive-waste business. …’I would (also) question the wisdom of putting all of Canada’s nuclear waste beside or close to Lake Huron under some of Canada’s best farm land.'”
“The project involves finding a willing and suitable host for a six square kilometre bunker built half a kilometre below a square kilometre of field. The facility would warehouse millions of high-level nuclear-fuel rods that remain dangerous indefinitely. In return, the waste agency is dangling a huge economic-development carrot, promising the creation of hundreds of jobs for the community and thousands more for the region over many decades.”
“To date, three communities in Saskatchewan — English River First Nation; Pine House and Creighton — and six northern Ontario communities — Ear Falls, Ignace, Nipigon, Schreiber, Hornepayne and Wawa — have been through initial screening.”
To read about opposition to a nuclear waste dump near Pinehouse, Saskatchewan, please see, http://canadians.org/blog/?p=10147. For more on a petition opposing the site in Wawa, Ontario, see http://canadians.org/blog/?p=12521. As noted above, the Bruce Nuclear Generating Station area is also the site of the Western Waste Management Facility (WWMF). The WWMF stores all the low and intermediate level nuclear waste from the operation of twenty Ontario Power Generation (OPG) nuclear reactors in eleven buildings there. A Deep Geologic Repository for nuclear waste is also being considered for this location on Lake Huron, with public hearings to begin in 2012, http://canadians.org/blog/?p=6647.
The Council of Canadians rejects nuclear power because it poses an unacceptable risk to people and the environment. It is neither clean, safe, peaceful, nor economic. Staff and chapters are currently campaigning against the proposed shipments of nuclear waste from the Bruce Power nuclear plant on the Great Lakes, the disposal of nuclear waste in Saskatchewan (as noted above), the building of two new nuclear reactors on the north shore of Lake Ontario east of Toronto, and has expressed opposition to the relicensing of the Point Lepreau Nuclear Generating Station in New Brunswick.
