Letter to the Editor:

Proposed Nuclear Waste Repository - Ignace

NOCANDU, the Northern Ontario Coalition Against Nuclear Dumping Underground, has issued a “Panel Report Criteria for Safety and Acceptability Review” based on the safety and acceptability criteria set out by the Environmental Assessment Panel Review for the concept of deep geological burial of nuclear waste. 
The Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO), as a proponent and an industry lobby group, is not the organization recommended by the Environmental Assessment Panel Report. It is not at arm’s length from industry, is not directly accountable to Parliament and is regulated by a weak and complicit regulator, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC).
Rather than implement obvious long-term solutions such as “Rolling Stewardship” at the place of production, the NWMO plan seeks to impose a wide variety of serious risks on the population across the province and particularly across the Nelson Watershed to Manitoba and north. 
The review explores why the NWMO’s chosen option is untenable and dangerous to the public safety, security and the intergenerational source water supplies within the Nelson Watershed. 
The review challenges the safety and wisdom of NWMO plans to site a nuclear waste disposal vault in an earthquake zone. The risk of earthquake and catastrophic contamination of the Nelson Watershed is very high especially when considered over the 50,000 generations (1,000,000 years) that the high-level radioactive waste will need to be managed. The actual earthquake risk was realized and confirmed by the February 1984, earthquake in the Sioux Lookout and Lac Seul areas, a stone’s throw from the planned dump site, which were shaken awake in the middle of the night with numerous reports of impacts and damages. 
The NWMO project explicitly goes against the AECL recommendations not to site a nuclear waste fuel disposal vault within or near an earthquake zone. That is a fatal technical flaw in their plan that has no solution other than abandonment of the project. 
A serious question to the regulator, the CNSC, is “Why has the CNSC not redirected the NWMO to conform to the AECL recommendations not to site a nuclear disposal vault in an earthquake zone?” 
The NWMO has failed to implement a “Regional Consensus Model” with all communities across the watershed to ensure a fair, inclusive and unbiased forum for every community to be secure in the far-reaching decisions being made and instead, the NWMO instituted a strategy of targeting weak communities, payola, propaganda, secrecy and surprise. 
The NWMO cannot justify the social and technical risks, the health and safety risks or the costs as well as the environmental sacrifice areas they are intending to create. The review concludes that the work and concept of the NWMO is socially and technically unacceptable and fails all acceptability criteria. 
The review is available at: wethenuclearfreenorth.ca/scsa/
Remi Lorteau and Greg Hlady 
Northern Ontario Coalition Against Nuclear Dumping Underground