Inside the Western Waste Management Dry Storage Facility at the Bruce Power site near Kincardine, ON. (Photo by Craig Power, © 2016).Inside the Western Waste Management Dry Storage Facility at the Bruce Power site near Kincardine, ON. (Photo by Craig Power, © 2016).
Midwestern

Ontario Power Generation Supports Two Nuclear Waste Repositories

Ontario Power Generation (OPG) believes the most efficient and cost effective solution for nuclear waste means two Deep Geologic Repositories (DGR), possibly 20 km apart in Bruce County.

In December, OPG will release a response to the environment minister's order to study other options before burying low and intermediate nuclear waste in Kincardine.

OPG's Fred Kuntz says it is important to bury the low and intermediate waste quickly and not punt our responsibilities to future generations, despite the fact that a second repository for spent high level nuclear fuel is years away.

When it comes to low level waste, like the ash of incinerated clothing, and mops, Kuntz says, "If you're going to have a DGR, why not bury it. Some people have said, 'That's overkill, you don't need to, just leave it on the surface.' In keeping with OPG's safety consciousness, and always going for the lowest possible risk, and doing the most responsible thing for the environment, the proposal is to bury it [low level nuclear waste] along with the intermediate waste, which is higher radioactivity."

Kuntz adds it doesn't make sense to put the intermediate waste in a DGR along with the spent nuclear fuel because too much money has already been invested in the two separate processes to create two repositories, and the nuclear waste also comes in different shapes requiring different handling.

He adds it makes the most sense to bury all of Ontario's low and intermediate nuclear waste at Bruce Power because the waste is already stored there, so there would be less risk and cost, than trucking it elsewhere.

Kuntz adds it is less risky if the used nuclear fuel is buried elsewhere in a separate DGR at another site, instead of combining the waste in one Deep Geologic Repository

"The closest any two DGR's would be at the most would be 20kms. And so, that way, there's no overlapping or cumulative environmental effect. All of the environmental effects are being mitigated anyway, whether it's storm water run-off or all the things that you do to mitigate your environmental effects," he says.

And he says putting all of the waste at once site could create too much traffic and a backlog of waste waiting to be buried.

Kuntz also says the rock system in Kincardine is the best place to bore a DGR to stash the waste.

"Continents have moved, mountains have formed, glaciers have come and gone nine times in the last million years alone," he says. "That rock has been totally undisturbed. It has no contact with the surface, no contact with the biosphere, no contact with the lake, the air we breathe, the water we drink, it's so far down and it's so tight, it might as well be on the moon."

However, Kuntz doesn't think it's a good idea to bury the spent fuel in the same site because there is already an ongoing process to find a separate location to bury the high level waste. He says they would have to start from scratch, and waste resources, if they combined the two sites.

If the environment minister approves the plan, 200,000 cubic metres of waste would be buried 680 metres below ground at Bruce Power, and then the DGR would be decommissioned, and sealed off.

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