What's wrong with the "Deep River Project"?

Pembroke, Ontario July 14, 1996

In a July 4, 1996 press release, the Government of Canada announced that it is endorsing a plan to move nuclear fuel processing wastes from several dump sites near Lake Ontario to a giant new waste pit on the Quebec-Ontario border. This "Deep River Project" is being promoted by the Department of Natural Resources Canada as a disposal solution for nearly one million tonnes of low-level radioactive wastes currently located near Port Hope, Ontario.

The wastes would be transported several hundred kilometres north to land owned by Atomic Energy of Canada, Ltd. (AECL). They would be dumped in a 120-m deep cavern excavated in metamorphic bedrock. The proposed site is less than 500 metres from the Ottawa River.

The decision is linked to a "Community Agreement in Principle" (CAP). Residents of Deep River, Ontario would receive $8.75 million and a guarantee that 1995 employment levels would be maintained for fifteen years at AECL's Chalk River Laboratories.

The credibility and impartiality of the government-appointed "Siting Task Force" that conducted the site selection process and negotiated the CAP are in serious doubt. Advertisements in local media claimed that the project would protect health and safety. Conclusions of technical studies were altered to suggest that the fractured, porous bedrock would be suitable for a waste site. Site elimination criteria that would have excluded earthquake-prone areas (such as the AECL property) were dropped.

Claims that the 72% approval level in an October 1995 referendum indicated strong support from a well-informed community are false. Fears were raised in Deep River that a "No" vote could trigger further job cutbacks at AECL, or be interpreted as a vote of "no confidence" in nuclear power. Downstream municipalities were excluded from the referendum. Several have now requested a full public review of the proposal under the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act (CEAA).

Detailed technical studies were withheld until after the referendum. A preliminary performance assessment (PA-2) documented the unsuitability of the rock for waste containment. A single, 200-metre bore hole drilled at the site intersected nearly 4000 fractures, a significant number of which were open to water movement. The AECL property is in a zone of regional groundwater flow that would transport wastes through the rock to the river in less than 100 years. Toxic and radioactive elements would then continue to leak into an ever-widening portion of the river bottom for tens of thousands of years.

The wastes in question have consistently been mischaracterized as "contaminated soils". These are radium and uranium refinery wastes, generated by decades of producing feedstock for nuclear fuel and nuclear weapons at Port Hope, Ontario. Although low in radiation compared to reactor wastes, they contain high levels of arsenic, enough to kill every person in Canada.

Although no one disputes that the wastes are currently in danger of leaking into Lake Ontario, technical studies show that the Deep River proposal would provide no long-term health benefits. Levels of arsenic entering the Ottawa River would eventually reach hundreds of times current drinking water standards. They would even exceed levels that would enter Lake Ontario if the wastes were left where they are with no clean-up measures.

The proposal would also do nothing to remedy problems at existing leaking waste sites on the AECL property. Independent studies have shown that Ottawa River fish already have several times normal background radiation levels. Radioactive elements in drinking water for the Ottawa-Hull area, 150 km downstream, were traced to AECL waste releases in a 1993 study published by Environment Canada scientists.

Connections to AECL are hidden in the press release. AECL employees on Deep River Council helped negotiate the CAP. It would give AECL the right to put a minimum of 25,000 cubic metres of its own wastes in the pit. They might include reactor products with much higher radiation levels than the Port Hope refinery wastes, but they have been ignored in the impact assessment studies done to date.

AECL officials also rejected alternate sites and technologies such as above-ground monitored storage. They dictated a "permanent disposal" option that would preclude future clean-up and use of superior waste technologies.

Calling a massive, leaking radioactive and toxic waste dump an example of "sustainable development" is an outrageous lie. At the expense of hundreds of millions of dollars, health risks would be transferred from the present to future generations.

Taxpayers and environmentalists can at least take some small comfort that the federal government did not accept the Siting Task Force's recommendation to exclude further development of the proposal from all environmental assessment requirements. This gives some hope that the public still has a chance to prevent further damage to one of Canada's most historic and vital waterways, and avoid a colossal waste of public revenues.

Concerned Citizens of Renfrew County and Area