BLOG 8 - The Minister's Second Escape Route- A Modern Look at an Alternative Means for ILW, Need and Cost

McKenna’s Great Lakes Nuclear Waste Dump Dilemma

Blog 8: The Minister’s Second Escape Route – a Modern Look at an Alternative Means for ILW, Need and Cost

August 17, 2017: This is the last in a series of eight Blogs by Rod McLeod, retired lawyer, formerly Ontario Deputy Minister Environment (with the Liberals), and earlier, Deputy Minister Public Safety (with the Conservatives) after a time as Chief Crown Prosecutor and, latterly, 25 years of environmental law practice, and currently a Board member of SOS Great Lakes.

Background: Premier Wynne’s Government owns Ontario Power Generation Inc. (OPG).  Kathleen Wynne, as head of the Government, has allowed OPG to continue to plan to build a nuclear waste dump on the shore of Lake Huron, the central of the five Great Lakes that provide drinking water to 40 million people in Canada and the U.S. This Deep Geologic Repository (DGR) would hold 400,000 cubic metres of Intermediate and Low Level Waste (I&LLW). ILW can include reactor parts and other decommissioning waste that will remain dangerously radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years. When that material leaks, as every other Deep Geologic Repository (DGR) in the world has, the rogue emissions will enter the Great Lakes, potentially causing unimaginable damage to the largest supply of fresh water in the world.

McKenna’s Dilemma:  Allowing this dump on the shore of Lake Huron is a dangerous and unnecessary gamble with our drinkingwater and would be in stark contrast to many very important environmental protection principles and initiatives, on which the Trudeau Government was elected in 2015. At the same time she may be reluctant to be seen to be opposing the ever-popular vote-getting ‘’green” nuclear energy industry led by OPG.

Please click here for Blog 1 where I tell you a little about SOS GREAT LAKES and explain the significance of an April 2017 Report from her Expert Panel (EP). The EP proposes major changes in Canadian Environmental Assessment (EA) to restore faith in the EA with new fairer processes. It can and should help her with her upcoming decision to reject or accept the conditional first step approval for OPG’s plan granted by the Harper-appointed Joint Review Panel (JRP) at Kincardine. (Her decision is currently scheduled for fall 2017.)

In Blog 1, I stated my thesis: the Minister’s independent EP’s April 2017 Report provides her at least two ways out of this dilemma. Both require courage but with the help of her EP she may even be able to escape while continuing full support of nuclear energy, at least its green production cycle.

If after considering the totality of major errors and legal breaches described in Blogs 2 to 7, she still chooses not to see that “enough is enough”, I invite her to consider these three other very important issues not covered in earlier Blogs: Alternatives Sites, and Alternative Means, and Need\Cost. They are obviously inter-related and can lead her to her second escape route.

First, the law.  CEAA, related Federal Guidelines, and their own Terms of Reference (TOR) were all breached by the JRP by allowing OPG to fail, and failing themselves, on all three of these related issues.

Alternatives

OPG has been asked at least 7 times to comply with the requirement of the governing statutes, guidelines and their TOR to identify, study and report on technically and economically feasible Alternate Sites. They have refused to do so, in each case, rewriting the question to avoid the one asked.

One of their later efforts was, at best, a bad attempt at humour, by providing a map of Ontario with GPS locations chosen that are widely scattered with no apparent coherent strategy. These include one in Lake Erie, one in the United States and one in downtown Toronto.

Enough said.

Alternate Means

With respect to this parallel requirement of examination of technically and economically feasible alternate means, it is important to remember this OPG proposal is for Intermediate Level and Low Level Waste (I&LLW).  (HLW is not covered by the JRP decision and comes later.)

First, re ILW, which is still highly radioactive for more than 100,000 years, much of the rest of the world now uses monitored surface storage in enhanced containment or monitored near surface storage in appropriate host rock, in either case, away from fresh water.

Countries using these options include the Czech Republic, Finland, France, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden the UK and the US. They do this in the reasonable anticipation of technological advancement in recycling ILW. 

Why not Canada?

And, OPG could do it right there for Bruce ILW, provided (1) it uses enhanced packaging and (2) it does so temporarily awaiting technological changes that permit recycling.  Or, OPG could decide, as they should, that the ILW should be dealt with in the same fashion as HLW, well away from fresh water.

For LLW, (such as mops, rags, clothing) OPG, latterly, has finally acknowledged that deep burial is not necessary. Yet, in the proposal approved by the JRP, and now before the Minister, OPG used the large volume of LLW to justify their plan to create the DGR on such a large scale. Now, we can see that by emphasizing that the buried waste to be buried in the DGR was predominately LLW, the public has been deceived into thinking that the overall Kincardine waste burial plan was benign and nothing to worry about. Not true.

Need/Cost

OPG has now admitted that a DGR for LLW is unnecessary.  The disposal of HLW is to be dealt with at a later time by the NWMO.  That issue was not before the JRO, not before the Minister of the Environment and not dealt with here in these blogs.  For ILW, there are two alternative means:  1) deal with it conjunction with HLW away from fresh water; or 2) store it temporarily in enhanced containment units pending technological change permitting recycling.

Why are Ontario taxpayers being asked to spend $2.4B, and climbing, for a hole that is not only dangerous to our drinking water supply, but unnecessary?  OPG, however, is unwilling to disclose how it arrives at this amount and it is much lower than cost

estimates for European DGRs.  A recent report suggests a range of $18-24B a DGR in sedimentary rock in Europe.  As we have seen time and again with OPG’s cost projections, the real costs are always significantly higher. 

It is difficult to imagine that an impact assessment, of the type recommended by the Minister’s EP, by people with the skill sets recommended by the EP, and applying the considerations recommended by the EP, would make the same mistakes on these three issues.

Why should the Minister?

Rod McLeod, Director, SOS GREAT LAKES

Blog 7 - Safety

Blog 7 - Safety

The Minister was Entitled to Decisions on a very Long List of Safety Issues But Instead Got Major Gaps Created by Excessive Downloading of Responsibility and 100 Conditions of Approval.

August 10, 2017. This is the seventh in a series of Blogs by Rod McLeod, retired lawyer, former Ontario Deputy Minister Environment (with the Liberals) and, earlier, Deputy Minister Public Safety (with the Conservatives) after a time as Chief Crown Prosecutor and, latterly, 25 years of Environmental law practice, and currently a Board member of SOS GREAT LAKES.

Background:  Premier Wynne’s Government owns Ontario Power Generation Inc. (OPG). Kathleen Wynne, as head of the Government, has allowed OPG to continue to plan to build a nuclear waste dump on the shore of Lake Huron, the central of the five Great Lakes that provide drinking water to 40 million people in Canada and the U.S. This Deep Geologic Repository (DGR) would hold 400,000 cubic metres of Intermediate and Low Level Waste (I&LLW). ILW can include reactor parts and other decommissioning waste that will remain dangerously radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years. When that material leaks, as every other Deep Geologic Repository (DGR) in the world has, the rogue emissions will enter the Great Lakes, potentially causing unimaginable damage to the largest supply of fresh water in the world.

McKenna’s Dilemma:  Allowing this dump on the shore of Lake Huron is a dangerous and unnecessary gamble with our drinking water and would be in stark contrast to many very important environmental protection principles and initiatives, on which the Trudeau Government was elected in 2015. At the same time she may be reluctant to be seen to be opposing the ever-popular vote-getting ‘’green” nuclear energy industry led by OPG.

Please click here for Blog 1 where I tell you a little about SOS GREAT LAKES and explain the significance of an April 2017 Report from her Expert Panel (EP). The EP proposes major changes in Canadian Environmental Assessment to restore faith in the EA with new fairer processes. It can and should help her with her upcoming decision to reject or accept the conditional first step approval for OPG’s plan granted by the Harper-appointed Joint Review Panel (JRP) at Kincardine. (Her decision is currently scheduled for fall 2017.)

In Blog 1, I stated my thesis: the Minister’s independent EP’s April 2017 Report provides her at least two ways out of this dilemma. Both require courage but with the help of her EP she may even be able to escape while continuing full support of nuclear energy, at least its green production cycle.

Her first way out is the totality of the major errors and legal breaches described in Blogs 2 to 7.

Today I deal with issues missed or improperly downloaded to others rather than decided by the JRP, especially in relation to safety.

Examples of issues missed or bungled include:

·      The proponent and the JPR failed to consider cumulative effects of multiple events occurring simultaneously in combination or, one after the other, including the possible cumulative effects of two DGRs ( the I&LLW one under review and a HLW DGR under consideration by the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO), potentially close by;

·      Inadequate allowance for the total damaging effects of the radionuclide content of waste; 

·      An apparent lack of understanding of the overall geomorphology;

·      Limiting the substance of mitigation and safeguards to existing and enhanced practices, without emergency planning being laid out in relation to a full range of initiating events of varying degrees of significance;

·      No evidence that the responsible authorities that were identified are able to or have agreed to respond to the range or severity of emergencies on the site; Environment Canada notes that no spill response plan was submitted, nor was downstream effect mitigation or accident probability discussed;

·      Evacuation through one or two shafts in case of emergency underground was not suitably explained for short or long term duration events, including all events radioactive and non-radioactive. This insufficiency is more acute when one considers that the plan for the second 200,000 cubic metres is the more toxic decommissioning waste.  The EIS and hearing evidence indicated that no further evacuation shafts are to be planned;

·      Population evacuations were not investigated for unplanned event scenarios for radioactive or nonradioactive release situations, or for other events involving fire, explosion, contamination of air, land and or water;

·      Administrative and organizational scenarios were not prepared for EMS over each identified scenario or other scenarios, including transfer of responsibility (change) over time from one party or jurisdiction to another, temporal response chain or other required action through OPG, private contractor, municipal, county, provincial, federal or other response mechanisms for events including fire, explosion, decontamination, or emergency medical procedures;

·      There was no evidence of consultation with the public by OPG, the Municipality, the Province, the Federal Government or the Regulators with respect to an emergency plan. The plan that does exist will not protect the health of the most vulnerable residents in Inverhuron;

·      OPG provided no description of the combined Emergency Management systems that would be required across the DGR, Western Waste Management Facility, Hydro Corridor and Bruce Nuclear Site, or how emergencies affecting water would be handled;

·      No emergency plans were included in the EIS. There was no demonstration that agreements have been reached, or processes defined or established for immediate or follow-on mitigation, repair, clean up or restoration due to potential malfunctions, accidents, malevolent acts, or unplanned events affecting one or multiple valued ecosystem components;

·      Contingency planning was wrongly limited to unplanned incidents, accidents and malevolent acts in the “pre-closure period”, and through recommendations to be addressed by OPG and/or the federal regulator in the future.

Summary of Blog 7

The JRP failed to require OPG to fulfil the requirements of the Governing Documents with respect to multiple safety issues as evidenced by the examples cited above. The Governing Documents required the JRP to make decisions on these issues.  Instead, the JRP downloaded many of these decisions on these safety issues, including “Go or No-go” decisions to either the CNSC or OPG itself leaving the Minister with a Report so incomplete as to be, virtually, no Report on these required issues.

The Totality of Errors and Legal Breaches in Blogs 2 to 7

The Minister’s first route to avoid turning this dilemma into a disaster is to look at the totality of the major errors and legal breaches in:

·      Blog 2: Lack of true, untainted community acceptance;

·      Blog 3: Failure to obey the law and custom re relations with the U.S. and border States;

·      Blog 4: Abandoning evidence-based science by skipping a vital, established international scientific protocol;

·      Blog 5: Multiple failures to follow human health statutory protections and the absence of the guardian of drinking water quality;

·      Blog 6: Refusal to follow the foundation principles ofenvironmental assessment, precaution and sustainability; and,

·      Blog 7: An incomplete, deficient report with 100 conditions that wrongly delegates multiple safety decisions, which were the responsibility of the JRP to make, even to the point of delegating them to the Proponent!

An environmental (or impact) assessment panel such as that envisaged by the Minister’s April 2017 EP,  populated as they recommend, with the appropriate skills they recommend and applying the impact considerations they recommend, in a quasi-judicial manner, could make a mistake, but would not, under any circumstances, come anywhere close to the totality of errors and legal breaches of the law disclosed here.

The Minister should not disavow her own EP and the 2015 environmental platform on which her Government was elected. The totality of errors and legal breaches by OPG and the Regulators compel her rejection of the JRP report. To do otherwise would amount to the Minister giving her blessing to these many grievous errors.

Rod McLeod, Director, SOS GREAT LAKES

Blog 6 - Sustainability and Precautionary Principles

Failure/Refusal to Apply the Statutorily Required Sustainability and Precautionary Principles of EA

August 3, 2017: This is the sixth in a series of Blogs by Rod McLeod, retired lawyer, former Ontario Deputy Minister Environment (with the Liberals) and, earlier, Deputy Minister Public Safety (with the Conservatives) after a time as Chief Crown Prosecutor and, latterly, 25 years of Environmental law practice, and currently a Board member of SOS GREAT LAKES.

Background: Premier Wynne’s Government owns Ontario Power Generation Inc. (OPG).  Kathleen Wynne, as head of the Government, has allowed OPG to continue to plan to build a nuclear waste dump on the shore of Lake Huron, the central of the five Great Lakes that provide drinking water to 40 million people in Canada and the U.S. This Deep Geologic Repository (DGR) would hold 400,000 cubic metres of Intermediate and Low Level Waste (I&LLW). ILW can include reactor parts and other decommissioning waste that will remain dangerously radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years. When that material leaks, as every other Deep Geologic Repository (DGR) in the world has, the rogue emissions will enter the Great Lakes, potentially causing unimaginable damage to the largest supply of fresh water in the world.

McKenna’s Dilemma:  Allowing this dump on the shore of Lake Huron is a dangerous and unnecessary gamble with our drinking water and would be in stark contrast to many very important environmental protection principles and initiatives, on which the Trudeau Government was elected in 2015. At the same time, she may be reluctant to be seen to be opposing the ever-popular vote-getting ‘’green” nuclear energy industry led by OPG.

Please click here for Blog 1 where I tell you a little about SOS GREAT LAKES and explain the significance of an April 2017 Report from her Expert Panel (EP). The EP proposes major changes in Canadian Environmental Assessment to restore faith in the EA with new fairer processes. It can and should help her with her upcoming decision to reject or accept the conditional first step approval for OPG’s plan granted by the Harper-appointed Joint Review Panel (JRP) at Kincardine. (Her decision is currently scheduled for fall 2017.)

In Blog 1, I stated my thesis: the Minister’s independent EP’s April 2017 Report provides her at least two ways out of this dilemma. Both require courage but with the help of her EP she may even be able to escape while continuing full support of nuclear energy, at least its green production cycle.

Her first way out is the totality of the major errors and legal breaches described in Blogs 2 to 7.

Today I deal with Failures/Refusals to apply the Foundation Principles, - the Sustainability and Precautionary Principles.

Precautionary Principle

At best, the JRP paid lip service only, as evidenced by:

• skipping the science;

• failure to examine alternative sites and means;

• accepting a high level  of risk given the failure of every other DGR in the world;

• the failure of the New Mexico WIPP facility (Waste Isolation Pilot Project) in February 2014 was particularly important. WIPP was the only operating DGR in North America. It was proffered by OPG, in the 2013 part of the JRP Hearings, as OPG’s model for a successful DGR. OPG, CNSC and the JRP even visited it. But, in early 2014, WIPP had accidents on two separate occurrences resulting in its highly publicized closure.

Sustainability

The consideration of sustainability is a requirement of the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act (CEAA 2012) in the development of projects that have the potential to affect human health, social and cultural well-being, our economy, and the environment. How then could OPG state, and then the JRP conclude, on page 41 of its final report , that the application of sustainability principles was not readily applicable to this project’?

In January 2009 the Canadian Government approved the Environmental Impact Statement Guidelines (EIS) and Terms of Reference (TOR) for the Joint Review Panel (JRP) for DGR 1 in Kincardine. The EIS Guidelines identified the information OPG had to provide to prepare the EIS including the detailed analysis of the potential environmental effects of the proposed project. The JRP Agreement established the terms of reference for the JRP, and how it would function in its consideration of the licence application to prepare a site and construct a facility. The CEAA 2012, EIS Guidelines, and JRP’s TOR each specifically state the requirement that the proponent and the panel consider sustainable principles in designing and evaluating the DGR.

CEAA 2012 (Section 4) says, “The purposes of this Act are … to encourage federal authorities to take actions that promote sustainable development in order to achieve or maintain a healthy environment and healthy economy.” Elsewhere, the CEAA 2012 defines sustainable development as “development that meets the needs of the present, without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”.

TOR (Part IV) describes the scope of the Environmental Assessment to be produced by OPG and this must include a consideration of the “capacity of renewable resources that are likely to be significantly affected by the Project to meet the needs of the present and those of the future”.

The Federal EIS Guidelines (Section 6) define sustainable development as “(…) development [which] seeks to meet the needs of present generations without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”. And, Section 15 “Capacity of Renewable Resources”, required that the EIS describe the effects of the project on the capacity of renewable resources to be significantly impacted by the DGR, i.e., how resource use, productivity, or carrying capacity might be affected.

OPG demonstrated none of the requirements that had been mandated by the CEAA 2012 and TOR to achieve sustainable development:

• OPG dismissed the idea of a requirement of their proposal to advance a healthy environment and healthy economy;

• OPG did not allow for the right of future generations to meet their own needs for health, clean water, and clean air across a broad geographic region and for hundreds of generations;

• OPG did not evaluate the capacity of renewable resources to retain their value or ability to be sustained despite the project;

• OPG did not consider that damage to non-renewable resources that could result in a totally unsustainable environment.

OPG presented insufficient, incomplete, and misleading information on the capacity for the DGR to be a sustainable industry, skipped key steps in the evaluation process, and ignored likely and potential negative effects on the broad range of interrelated ecosystems (including the human population and the whole of the Lake) that could render those systems unsustainable at any time in the term of use. It did not evaluate cumulative effects of potential damage. It did not investigate a time frame of resilience. It did not address the ways in which alternative sites and means might reduce the impact of the radioactive waste disposal to create a model of greater sustainability, with less risk of damage to its context.

The Chair of the JRP, Stella Swanson, further compromised the requirements of the CEAA 2012 by stating explicitly in the Socio-Economic Special Session that socio-economic concerns that could affect the sustainability of the region in the short and long term would not be sufficient to dismiss the DGR Project.

The Minister’s first route to avoid turning this dilemma into a disaster is to look at the totality of the major errors and legal breaches in Blogs 2 to 7.  When she does she will see a picture that is so wildly out of sync with her Government’s 2015 Election platforms and her recent EP report, rejection of the Kincardine JRP Report should be an obvious decision.

Rod McLeod, Director, SOS GREAT LAKES

PS We have now seen major errors and legal breaches in five subject areas: Blog 2 Community Acceptance, Blog 3 International Obligations, Blog 4 Abandoning Science, 5 Human Health and 6 Failure to Apply the EA Foundation Principles of Precaution and Sustainability. The reader may find the JRP’s decision suspect on anyone of these but I am asking the Minister to look at the totality including Blog 7 to come.

Blog 5 - Human Health

Why Would She Allow Repeated Failures to Meet Federal Government Minimum Human Health Protection Guidelines?

Where was the Minister Responsible for Drinking Water Quality in Ontario?

July 27, 2017.  This is the fifth in a series of Blogs by Rod McLeod, retired lawyer, former Ontario Deputy Minister, Environment (with the Liberals) and earlier, Public Safety (with the Conservatives) after a time as Chief Crown Prosecutor and, latterly, 25 years of environmental law practice, and currently a Board member of SOS GREAT LAKES

Background: Premier Wynne’s Government owns Ontario Power Generation Inc. (OPG).  Kathleen Wynne, as head of the Government, has allowed OPG to continue to plan to build a nuclear waste dump on the shore of Lake Huron, the central of the five Great Lakes that provide drinking water to 40 million people in Canada and the U.S. This Deep Geologic Repository (DGR) would hold 400,000 cubic metres of Intermediate and Low Level Waste (I&LLW). ILW can include reactor parts and other decommissioning waste that will remain dangerously radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years. When that material leaks, as every other Deep Geologic Repository (DGR) in the world has, the rogue emissions will enter the Great Lakes, potentially causing unimaginable damage to the largest supply of fresh water in the world.

McKenna’s Dilemma:  allowing this dump on the shore of Lake Huron is a dangerous and unnecessary gamble with our drinking water and would be in stark contrast to many very important environmental protection principles and initiatives, on which the Trudeau Government was elected in 2015. At the same time she may be reluctant to be seen to be opposing the ever-popular vote-getting ‘’green” nuclear energy industry led by OPG.

Please click here for Blog 1 where I tell you a little about SOS GREAT LAKES and explain the significance of an April 2017 Report from her Expert Panel (EP). The EP proposes major changes in Canadian Environmental Assessment to restore faith in the EA with new fairer processes. It can and should help her with her upcoming decision to reject or accept the conditional first step approval for OPG’s plan granted by the Harper-appointed Joint Review Panel (JRP) at Kincardine. (Her decision is currently scheduled for fall 2017.)

In Blog 1, I stated my thesis: the Minister’s independent EP’s April 2017 Report provides her at least two ways out of this dilemma. Both require courage but with the help of her EP she may even be able to escape while continuing full support of nuclear energy, at least its green production cycle.

Her first way out is the totality of the major errors and legal breaches described in Blogs 2 to 7.

Today I deal with the requirements of the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act (CEAA) and related federal guidelines relating to Human Health in an Environmental Assessment such as this one.

Dr. Stella Swanson, Chair of the Joint Review Panel (JRP) said this in 1991:

“One of the central problems in the debate about the nuclear fuel cycle is ignorance. Scientists simply do not know what the effects of chronic exposure to low-level radiation are, either in people or in other biota. We can guess, based on extrapolations from victims of high-level radiation such as atomic bombs and nuclear reactor accidents like Chernobyl. We will only begin to know for sure after several more decades have passed and a large population of exposed people has been studied. In the meantime, we have to ask: 'Do we really want to live in this uncertainty? What risks are we willing to accept as a society?’ ”

Failure to Provide Baseline Health Data

Federal Environment Impact Study guidelines (EIS) require that the proponent’s EIS must:

“(. . .) describe the current health profiles of the communities likely to be affected by the project. The proponent should examine the aspects of human health that are defined by the World Health Organization, and include consideration of physical health and wellbeing, and associated emotional, social, cultural, and economic aspects.”

The proponent’s EIS must provide information on population health of the communities in the regional study area. A description of community and public health services available to the residents of communities and to Aboriginal people in the regional study area must also be included.

Baseline health data in OPG’s EIS contained several omissions and errors:

·      Cancer incidence rates specific to the Regional Study Are were not available.

·      Aboriginal baseline data was incomplete; there was no evidence on which OPG could assume Aboriginal baseline data was the same as other residents.

·      Seasonal residents’ baseline health was not assessed. Seasonal residents make up 30% of the population in Saugeen Shores and 20% of the population in Kincardine. OPG assumed that the existing overall health of seasonal residents is the same as that of local residents. There is no evidence on which to base that assumption.

·      Baseline data for the incidence of thyroid cancer and leukemia, cancers historically most clearly linked to radiation exposure, were not listed in the EIS submitted by OPG.

Incomplete baseline data would not be acceptable for a prospective randomized trial, the gold standard for evidence in scientific research. For this project, in what amounts to a massive clinical trial testing the safety of a DGR, the standard should be no less. Should an adverse health outcome be identified in the future, how would it be known if its etiology preceded the construction of the DGR? For a project of limited physical and temporal dimensions this might be excused but certainly not for an enormous project with attendant perpetual risks.

There is evidence in the public record for the project that the local Medical Officer of Health, Dr. Lynn, appeared in an OPG ad that promoted the safety of the DGR, an ad that was paid for by OPG. This raised ethical concerns and gives the appearance of bias towards the proponent by the Medical Officer of Health.

Responsibility for Drinking Water Quality

At the Minister’s Expert Panel (EP) hearings in November 2016, a citizen asked who was going to protect her drinking water which she gets from Lake Huron. One of the panel members asked, rhetorically, ‘Where was the Ontario Minister of the Environment?’ Silence. As the Minister responsible for drinking water quality, one would have, ordinarily, been present when drinking water quality was such an obvious concern of the public. Not so here. He was a Minister in the Government which wholly owned the proponent OPG who in this hearing was the putative polluter.

But he was not the only absent Minister. Drinking water issues relevant to human health also require the attention of both the Federal and Provincial Ministers of Health.  In 2013 and 2014 both the then Ministers of Health from Ottawa and Queens Park were noticeably uninvolved.

Today, now that there has been more adverse publicity about the idea of putting a nuclear waste dump so close to one of the Great Lakes, millions of Canadians and Americans are concerned about human health effects, given the worldwide failure record of DGRs. Have we heard anything from the current Canadian or Ontario Ministers of Health? No. Will we?

Have we forgotten about Walkerton already? And Flint?

The Minister’s first route to avoid turning this dilemma into a disaster is to look at the totality of the major errors and legal breaches in Blogs 2 to 7.  When she does, she will see a picture that is wildly out of sync with her Government’s 2015 Election platforms and her recent EP report. Rejection of the Kincardine JRP Report should be an obvious decision.

Rod McLeod, Director, SOS GREAT LAKES

PS We have now seen major errors and legal breaches in four subject areas; Blog 2 Community Acceptance, Blog 3, International Obligations,  Blog 4 Abandoning Scienceand Blog 5 Human Health . The reader may find grounds to reject the DGR in any one of these but my caution is look at all Blogs 2-7 for the totality.

Blog 4 - Abandoning Science

McKenna Used to Say Evidence-Based Science was the Best Protection for the Natural Environment. Why Would She Accept so Much Less Now?

July 20, 2017. This is the fourth in a series of Blogs by Rod McLeod, retired lawyer, former Ontario Deputy Minister, Environment (with the Liberals) and earlier, Public Safety (with the Conservatives) after a time as Chief Crown Prosecutor and, latterly, 25 years of environmental law practice and currently a Board member of SOS GREAT LAKES.

Background: Premier Wynne’s Government owns Ontario Power Generation Inc. (OPG).  Kathleen Wynne, as head of the Government, has allowed OPG to continue to plan to build a nuclear waste dump on the shore of Lake Huron, the central of the five Great Lakes that provide drinking water to 40 million people in Canada and the U.S. This Deep Geologic Repository (DGR) would hold 400,000 cubic metres of Intermediate and Low Level Waste (I&LLW). ILW can include reactor parts and other decommissioning waste that will remain dangerously radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years. When this material leaks, as every other Deep Geologic Repository (DGR) in the world has, the rogue emissions will enter the Great Lakes, potentially causing unimaginable damage to the largest fresh water supply in the world.

McKenna’s Dilemma: allowing this dump on the shore of Lake Huron is a dangerous and unnecessary gamble with our drinking water and would be in stark contrast to many very important environmental protection principles and initiatives, on which the Trudeau Government was elected in 2015. At the same time, she may be reluctant to be seen to be opposing the ever-popular vote-getting ‘’green” nuclear energy industry led by OPG.

Please click here for Blog 1where I tell you a little about SOS GREAT LAKES and explain the significance of an April 2017 Report from her Expert Panel (EP). The EP proposes major changes in Canadian Environmental Assessment to restore faith in EA with new fairer processes. It can and should help her with her upcoming decision to reject or accept the conditional first step approval for OPG’s plan granted by the Harper-appointed Joint Review Panel (JRP) at Kincardine. (Her decision is currently scheduled for fall 2017.)

In Blog 1, I stated my thesis: the Minister’s independent EP’s April 2017 Report provides her at least two ways out of this dilemma. Both require courage but with the help of her EP she may even be able to escape while continuing full support of nuclear energy, at least its green production cycle.

Her first way out is the totality of the major errors and legal breaches described in Blogs 2 to 7.

Today, I look at the risk to the natural and human environment from the failure of OPG, and all the Regulators on the Kincardine DGR, to follow established scientific protocol to obtain evidence-based science on the geology and proposed methodology.

In the 80s and 90s Canada’s plan for nuclear waste was science-based R and D. It was focused on burial in granite rock in the Canadian Shield in Northern Ontario or possibly Manitoba, away from the population. It confirmed that granite could be considered as viable host rock for the burial of waste. In the early 2000s, OPG, owner of most of the nuclear waste, looked to Southern Ontario close to the Bruce Nuclear Plant as a nicer, more convenient alternate site. This raised the eyebrows of some scientists and concerned citizens, but for some unknown reason, it apparently did not concern the Regulators who were charged with science-based decision making and public safety.

The Regulators framed the JRP’s Terms of Reference (TOR) in such a way as to:

• Permit OPG to by-pass an international protocol for construction of DGRs, to which Canada was a party.  This protocol required, as a mandatory first step for any DGR proposal, the construction and use of an Underground Research Laboratory (URL) to seek and obtain evidence-based science of the geology and proposed methodology. The federal government had started the process under this protocol in granitic rock in Pinewa, Manitoba, but by-passed this step at the Kincardine site in sedimentary rock, 900 meters from the Great Lakes.

• This effectively saddled the JRP and public with unsubstantiated ‘science’ which they were compelled to use to evaluate whether the DGR in Kincardine was feasible from a construction and geological standpoint.

Underground Research Laboratory (URL)

The concept of a DGR from a technical and scientific viewpoint is predicated upon the understanding of how the host rock will perform to contain and isolate radioactive waste from human life and biota for very long time frames. The DGR project and the level of certainty that it must demonstrate in every aspect of its design, construction, emplacement, decommissioning and monitoring is absolute: nothing can be done by our actions that would put at risk future generations of people that we would not accept being done to us, to our children or to the environment in our times. The baseline for demonstrating this is the rigorous application of the scientific process.

This process involves, at its most fundamental level, systematic observation, measurement, experiment and the formulation, testing, and modification of hypotheses. Key to the demonstration of proof for the DGR project is the URL and the active and open exchange of knowledge gained from research and development.

Today, 15 countries are actively participating in the scientific and international effort to locate DGR facilities in suitable rock by studying 31 sites. It is difficult, exacting work; every facility must undertake the URL process and all have committed themselves to this universal standard.

With the standard URL process, the first step by a proponent is the URL, long before it looks for a willing host or takes any other step.  Here, OPG seized the opportunity of the friendly local Mayor and lax Federal regulators to by-pass the URL and move directly to acquire adjacent municipal support through the cash for support hosting agreement.

If OPG had followed the standard URL process, they could have used the willingness of the local Kincardine politicians to use the very same site to do the URL before any other step. If the URL confirmed the geological/scientific advisability of OPG's plan they could have got on with the plan and prepared and filed their EA. If it did not, the issue would have been moot.

Situated next to the largest source of fresh water in the world, in untested sedimentary limestone, on the site of the largest nuclear power facility in the world, and in a populated, rapidly evolving and ecologically sensitive environment, a DGR at Kincardine is a startling choice to proceed in the absence of the research and scientific testing a URL would have provided. This proposed DGR on the shore of Lake Huron is the only known exception, worldwide.

The absence of this knowledge base from a URL scientific verification destabilized the entire site selection and EA process. Detailed, comprehensive, science-based, verifiable understanding of the viability of the geology, the construction, operation and decommissioning for DGR storage in the host rock is fundamental. All of this was essential to determine the safety case for the project, the effect on the environment, and cost benefit relative to other options. If not addressed, the failure to do so has the effect of devaluing and transferring unresolved issues and factors into the privatized commercially driven process of phased construction, implementation and decommissioning.

The TOR made no mention of the URL process. In the result, the OPG Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) was deficient from its start. Instead of accepting that deficiency as it did, the JRP should have declined to recommend that the DGR proceed until it was rectified. The absence of a URL phase from the verification process affected the content, methodology, and quality of the subject matter concerning every aspect of the OPG DGR project.

This error was particularly significant in light of Kincardine being the first location worldwide for an attempt at a DGR in sedimentary rock.

In January 2016, in Bure, France, a tunnel in a URL in sedimentary rock, collapsed, killing a worker and injuring others.

The ‘Science’ of OPG, Environment Canada, CNSC and the JRP.

In public documents and statements, OPG has claimed their site selection was based on “science, only science”.

On the Canadian CTV National TV program hosted by Lloyd Robertson April 1, 2017, a senior OPG official held up shiny cylinders of limestone (sedimentary rock) for a close look by the camera and described how, with 8 boreholes, the whole DGR construction, operation, and use could be predicted.  He stressed how “hard” it was.

Beyond these borehole results, some not going to the full depth of the 680 meters where the waste would be stored, their ‘science’ was largely computer modeling.  For anything that they found uncertain or speculative, they applied a construction methodology called, “adaptive phase management” (another name for improper delegating “go/no go” decisions to others including the proponent and its friendly regulator, CNSC).

In any event, the ‘scientific case’ was a long way short of being evidence-based or scientific.

The Minister’s first route to avoid turning this dilemma into a disaster is to look at the totality of the major errors and legal breaches in Blogs 2 to 7.  When she does she will see a picture that is wildly out of sync with her Government’s 2015 Election platforms and her recent EP report. Rejection of the Kincardine JRP Report should be an obvious decision.

Rod McLeod, Director, SOS GREAT LAKES

PS We have now seen major errors and legal breaches in three subject areas: Blog 2 Community Acceptance and Blog 3 International Obligations and Blog 4 Abandoning Science. The reader may find the JRP’s decision suspect based on even any one of these but I am asking the Minister to look at the totality of errors including those in Blogs 5, 6 and 7, coming to you soon.