Jeremy L. Dillon
RW Monitor
11/21/2014
The Joint Review Panel overseeing the environmental assessment of Ontario Power Generation’s planned deep geologic repository in Ontario closed the record this week for public comment and information. The move starts the countdown for the submittal of an environmental assessment report to the Canadian Minister of the Environment with its recommendations for the path forward. The Panel had previously said it would submit the report within 90 days, but due to the large public comment interest, it announced it would submit its report no later than May 6, 2015. Following the submittal of the report, the federal government then has to decide to give the go-ahead, which would allow the review panel to issue a license to prepare the site and construct the facility.
OPG reiterated its confidence this week in the safety case it made for the project. “We are happy to see the [Joint Review Panel] close the record,” an OPG spokesman said in an email to RW Monitor. “It’s been a long public process and we are confident in the safety case of the DGR. Our EA concludes that there will be no significant impacts to the environment. Our studies have been peer reviewed by national and international scientists and geologists. Two leading Environmental Agencies in the U.S. reviewed our studies (Environmental Protection Agency-Federal and the Department of Environmental Quality in Michigan), and they both concluded that there would be no adverse impacts to the environment.”
The proposed repository would be located beneath OPG’s Bruce nuclear facility in Kincardine, Ont. OPG plans on storing low and intermediate waste from its Bruce, Pickering, and Darlington power stations at the proposed repository, which would be located 680 meters (approximately 744 yards) below the surface in an isolated rock formation of shale and limestone. The project has drawn the ire of citizens on both sides of the border because of its proximity to the Great Lakes, one of the world’s largest sources of fresh water. Michigan’s congressional delegation wrote to President Barrack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry last year to intervene and block the project, and this past summer, they introduced a resolution in the Senate against the project.
