Canadians consider storing nuclear waste underground near Lake Huron

Ontario Power Generation, the Ontario-based electricity generation company, has proposed storing Canada’s nuclear waste 600 meters underground at a site next to Lake Huron.

The largest nuclear generating facility in North America, the Bruce Nuclear Generating Station, is located near the small Lake Huron town of Kincardine.

Last month, Larry Kraemer, the mayor of Kincardine, traveled to Switzerland for a conference on underground nuclear waste storage and the social and technical aspects of becoming a “nuclear host community.”

According to the Kincardine News, Kraemer said it’s in the best interest of Canadians to “find an informed and willing host community” to volunteer for the project, and to help deal with domestic nuclear hurdles in the coming decades. He said that so far no communities have volunteered for the project, which the Canadian nuclear waste authorities hope to start studying and developing within the next 25 years.

“People across the Great Lakes Basin should be concerned about this proposal for a permanent waste repository close to the shores of Lake Huron,” said Kay Cumbow, chairperson of the group Citizens for Alternatives to Chemical Contamination, and resident of St. Clair County.

Cumbow said that though completion of the project is a long way off, the proposed dump already went through a environmental assessment and is awaiting a more stringent environmental panel review by the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency.

Once the project is officially reviewed there will be a public comment period, Cumbow said, “U.S. citizens have the right to speak up and the Canadian government has said that we are welcome at the table.”