Dear Editor,
Buz Trevor is absolutely correct in saying that my suggestion – keeping high-level nuclear waste where it is for the foreseeable future – is not a solution to the nuclear waste problem (Letter to the Editor, Dec. 5).
The fact of the matter is, we simply do not have a solution to this problem. As Nobel-prize-winning physicist Hannes Alfven wrote, in connection with the nuclear waste problem, you cannot claim that a problem is solved just by pointing to all the efforts that have been made to solve it.
The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission recently announced that they have come to the same conclusion – nuclear wastes will be left at the reactor sites indefinitely, until a proper solution can be found.
That’s because US authorities have tried eight times to locate a safe burial site for nuclear wastes, and they have failed all eight times. The most recent failure was the Yucca Mountain site, despite over $10 billion spent researching it.
The Ontario Royal Commission on Electric Power Planning concluded in their 1978 report
A Race Against Time that “all spent fuel should be stored at nuclear generating station sites, either in circulating water storage bays or in dry storage” and “We prefer on-site (i.e. generating station site) spent fuel storage to a centralized facility. We believe that a central facility would presuppose the reprocessing of spent fuel.”
Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) has also pointed out that keeping the nuclear waste on-site indefinitely is a perfectly viable option – it was one of the three options NWMO laid out in its initial documents. NWMO has never indicated that this would be a reckless or hazardous approach compared to other options.
People should not be fooled into thinking that we have no choice when it comes to the long-term management of nuclear waste.
