A bipartisan group of 32 members of the House of Representatives this week asked Secretary of State Rex Tillerson for an assist in the fight against a planned nuclear waste disposal site near Lake Huron in Canada.
The letter to the Trump administration’s top diplomat was spurred by new reporting from Canadian utility Ontario Power Generation (OPG) that indicates it remains committed to building the deep geologic repository at the Bruce nuclear power plant in Kincardine, Ontario.
The lawmakers noted that close to 10 percent of U.S. residents live in the Great Lakes basin, and that over 35 million people – about two-thirds of them Americans – “rely on the Great Lakes for drinking water, jobs, and their way of life.” They expressed concerns about placing low- and intermediate-level radioactive waste from three OPG nuclear power plants near Lake Huron, which separates Michigan and Ontario.
“We write to urge you to do everything in your power – through both diplomatic and legal channels – to protect our Great Lakes and to convince the Canadian government to require OPG to select an alternative site that will not place the health, safety, and economic security of Americans at risk,” says the letter, spearheaded by Reps. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) and Dave Trott (R-Mich.).
One option that has been raised is intervention by the U.S.-Canada International Joint Commission, established in 1909 to resolve disputes between the two nations over shared waterways. The State Department said in February 2016 it would not request such intervention; the agency this week did not respond to a request for comment on the matter.
The deep geologic repository has been in the works for years. It would be built 680 meters underground in low-permeability limestone less than a mile from Lake Huron for permanent storage of 200,000 cubic meters of waste now stored above-ground at OPG’s Western Waste Management Facility at the Bruce plant.
Ontario Power Generation has said the bedrock formations at its selected location would ensure the safe isolation and containment of the waste for thousands of years. However, it has not yet persuaded the Canadian government to sign off on the facility; Ottawa instead has repeatedly asked for more data.
In April, the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency requested that OPG submit additional information on its proposal. The utility on May 29 said it had delivered responses to 23 information requests from the government.
The report includes a table laying out technical and economic factors in a comparative evaluation of the Bruce site and two alternatives: building the repository in other locations, either in sedimentary rock in southwestern Ontario or crystalline rock in the center or north of the province. In all but one of the categories – environmental effects, risks to worker and public health, uncertainty, indigenous interests, and cost effectiveness – the Bruce site was listed as “Preferred.”
For example, according to OPG: the sedimentary rock alternate location would add $381 million to $493 million (CAN) in additional incremental transportation costs and $832 million in additional incremental project costs, above the $2.4 billion project baseline; the crystalline rock alternative would hike the transportation expenses by $452 million to $1.4 billion (CAN) and project costs by $2.1 billion. Both outcomes are “Unacceptable,” according to OPG’s report.
The only exception was indigenous interests, where all three options were listed as “Acceptable.”
Ontario Power Generation said in January additional expenses of up to $3.5 billion for building at an alternate location would be tied to licensing, land acquisition, repackaging and transportation, and other steps needed to establish the facility. It also said the start of operations could be delayed by three to four decades from the 10-year schedule for the preferred site.
The location in Kincardine provides “ideal geology” for underground storage of the waste, OPG said in a May 29 press statement. “Alternate locations in the Canadian Shield or Southwest Ontario, while technically feasible, would result in greater environmental effects and higher costs, as well as a project delay of 15 years or more, while offering no additional benefits in safety.”
The U.S. lawmakers weren’t buying it.
“We cannot let cost be the sole driving factor in this critical decision, as storing nuclear waste in the Great Lakes basin bears far too great a risk that would be fundamentally devastating to an entire region,” according to their letter to Tillerson. “Any contamination whatsoever would pose disastrous repercussions as all of the lakes are connected to one another, and no barrier, man-made or natural, would be able to stop a potential catastrophe of epic proportions.”
The letter was signed by House members from Michigan, Ohio, New York, Illinois, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Indiana. Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) was the sole representative from Michigan not to sign, the Detroit Free Press reported.
This is just the latest salvo from Capitol Hill against the Canadian project, including 2015 legislation in both houses of Congress urging International Joint Commission involvement in the matter. Both bills failed to make it past the committee level.
Ontario Power Generation said last month that Canadian Environment and Climate Change Minister Catherine McKenna should rule this year on approval of the environmental assessment for the repository, a key milestone in its realization.
