Ontario Power Generation refuses to budge on Lake Huron site

The new report issued by OPG outlines the reasons why the burial of low to intermediate radioactive waste from nuclear power plants at a storage facility in Kincardine, Ont. remains the preferred option.

In the report, OPG assures that the lake would not be threatened because the nuclear waste would be encased in rock. “The Bruce Site is the safest, most appropriate site for a Deep Geological Repository (DRG),” company spokesperson Kevin Powers told the Canadian press, according to EcoWatch.

Back in February, Digital Journal reported on the misleading survey put out by OPG in January that claimed more than half of people in Ontario weren’t even aware of the project. The 700-page report was part of an additional 15,000 pages of evidence in support of the project.

Actually, the conclusions reached by OPG in January have not changed one iota. “The answers to the questions we provided don’t fundamentally change our analysis or the analysis of the international scientific community,” Powers told CBC News Canada. “The Bruce Site is the safest, most appropriate site for a Deep Geological Repository (DRG).”

The OPG plans to bury about 200,000 cubic meters (261,590 cubic yards) of radioactive waste 680 meters( 2,230-feet) underground at a site on the campus of the Bruce nuclear site near Kincardine, the world’s largest nuclear power complex,

Bruce Nuclear Generating Station, Plant A, Tiverton, Ontario.

D. Gordon E. Robertson

We have already heard all the reasons why the Lake Huron site is better for OPG’s plans, including the higher cost of trucking the radioactive waste to another location, the fact that it might take 10 to 15 years to develop another site and the increased risk of a nuclear accident while trucking the waste.

But with hundreds of communities on both sides of the border adamant in their objections to locating a nuclear waste dump near a lake that provides water to millions of people, and by the way, they have spoken out about the plans and have signed numerous petitions, it is now up to Canadian environment minister Catherine McKenna. She is expected to make a decision on the OPG plan later this year.