A few days ago, after several “rounds of work and consultations” that began in 2016, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) decided in favor of the near-surface waste management facility project. (IGDPS) of Chalk River. The opposition to this open-air radioactive dump is undeniable: a multitude of indigenous communities, citizen groups, scientists and more than a hundred cities and municipalities spread around the Ottawa River, including Ottawa, Montreal and Gatineau.
To contextualize the issues related to this project, and understand to what extent the authorization given is highly reprehensible, even absurd, I believe it is relevant to approach it in light of a study by the Standing Committee on the Environment of the House of Commons. common areas dealing specifically with Canada’s governance of radioactive waste. Held in 2022 and concluded with a report submitted to federal elected officials, the study is absolutely relevant today.
From the outset, we recall that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) made suggestions and recommendations to the CNSC in 2019, during the peer review carried out by the Integrated Review Service mission. of the regulations. As a result, we had confirmation, despite the government pride expressed, that Canada was not beyond reproach in this matter and this justified federal elected officials looking into the issue.
Many have criticized it: the essential principle of keeping radioactive waste away from sources of drinking water is not respected and in many respects, the project is in opposition to the recommendations and directives of the IAEA, likewise with the five principles agreed to and adopted by the leaders of 133 First Nations in Ontario.
There is a lack of consideration for the possible dangers linked to the location of the project and its underground, dangers which attract less attention than the risks of contamination of watercourses, tributaries of the river, where potentially million people draw their drinking water.
Legitimate objections
In addition, Chalk River is located at the junction of geological fractures and in the Western Quebec earthquake zone, a seismic belt that covers the Ottawa Valley, the Laurentians and certain portions of Eastern Ontario. The volume of various radioactive waste that will be buried in the open air is major. Witnesses and experts raised the problem of the lack of clarity in the identification of the substances that will be introduced into the mound.
Opposition to the project is absolutely legitimate.
Several witnesses to this study aptly addressed the physical characteristics of Canadian radioactive waste, highlighting the redefinition of what is intermediate-level radioactive waste, hidden in a CNSC “river regulation” adopted in June 2020. William Turner , retired from Atomic Energy of Canada Limited and resident of Deep River, submitted a fairly specific leaflet to the committee on this issue.
Gilles Provost, scientific journalist and witness during this study, reported this in THE Duty of June 13 of the same year: “ […] we then come up against a scientific absurdity: the activity of a radioactive product, in physics, is its disintegration speed. The faster it disintegrates, the stronger its activity. This means that a radioactive product of [plus] high activity according to physics would now be low activity waste according to the new definition decreed by the CNSC! »
This new definition has concrete effects, since the Chalk River IGDPS is designed to accommodate only low-level waste. Obtained result ? Waste considered to be of medium activity by physical science will be found in the mound, since it is now considered to be of low activity.
For the Indigenous communities of Kebaowek and Kitigan Zibi, the process chosen by the CNSC constitutes a failure of its duty to properly consult.
Indigenous communities, in addition to the comments made or sent by their representatives during the parliamentary committee study in 2022 – disturbing comments evoking the “coercive” nature of the consultative approach –, rightly rely on section 29.2 of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, according to which no decision regarding the storage of nuclear waste, the installation of small modular reactors, transportation or decommissioning can be taken without free, prior and informed consent.
“ […] We could explain it to you, but you wouldn’t understand it anyway. We will give you all the information and you will not understand it. » This extract from the testimony of Reg Niganobe, head of the Grand Council of the Anishinaabe Nation and witness to the 2022 study, is shocking: when a representative of the sector expresses himself in this way, I think that the climate we wish to establish is incredibly unhealthy and contemptuous. Non-native groups have also been entitled to this type of “approach” in similar processes. Their briefs submitted as part of the committee study bear this out.
If there is indeed a political will to consider the communities affected more directly by these issues, then they must be given the consideration they deserve.
Reconciliation? Participatory consultations? Transparent processes and compliance with IAEA standards? The CNSC reports to Minister Jonathan Wilkinson and the mobilization against Chalk River will remain. The federal government would do well to change its mind… It has the authority to do so.