E-M:/ Michigan Messenger: Macomb County says nuke dump could endanger water supply

[Kay Cumbow <kcumbow@greatlakes.net>]

Although this dump is proposed for so-called "low" and
"intermediate" radioactive wastes*,  it may well be the
foot in the door to all of Canada's high level waste as well. The area is
on a list with several other areas for consideration for a high level
irradiated fuel waste dump for all of Canada. Even the Mayor of
Kincardine is on record stating such a site couldn?t be ruled out for the
Kincardine area - although he opposes such a move. The Nuclear Waste
Management Organization (an organization made up of
nuclear industries from the Ontario, New Brunswick and
Quebec provinces) has stated that the preferred method would be to
place these wastes in a deep underground geological repository.
Indeed, last year, the federal Minister of Natural
Resources, Gary Lunn called the approval of the Nuclear Waste Management
Organization's proposal to bury nuclear fuel waste "vital to the
future of nuclear energy in Canada." 

*"Low" and "intermediate" are misnomers, since
this dump will contain (among other radioactive items) such items as
heavily contaminated filters from the irradiated fuel pools, a great
quantity of metal that is irradiated with transuranics, like plutonium
and other radionuclides with very long half-lives -  as well as
other shorter lived radioactive elements. -Kay Cumbow

 
http://www.michiganmessenger.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=1290

Macomb County says nuke dump could endanger water supply 
by: Eartha Jane Melzer
Thursday (05/22) at 10:53 AM

Snip: "This is the craziest damn thing I have ever heard of,"
Water Quality Board Chairman Doug Martz said about the plan to store
radioactive waste from Ontario's nuclear power plants a half mile
underground in Kincardine, Ontario, fifty miles from Michigan across Lake
Huron. 

Snip: "We've got to store this waste anywhere from 100,000 to a
million years. The concern is that it could end up in the water," he
said. "If there is an accident I don't know a water treatment plant
anywhere that can filter out radiation." An accident at the proposed
facility could damage the drinking water for 40 million people in
downstream cities including Detroit, Toledo, Cleveland and Toronto, he
said. 
  
Snip: The resolution, ...passed unanimously by both bodies, notes that
this type of project has never been done before and would not be
permitted under Michigan environmental regulations. The commissioners
resolved that in order to protect the Great Lakes and its tributaries no
underground nuclear waste repository should be allowed anywhere in the
Great Lakes basin."