Dear Editor,

Something’s happening across the river, about an hour upstream from the Pontiac and we should take notice.

Starting in the 1950s, ever since the nuclear research facility at Chalk River has been operational, low intensity nuclear waste has been buried in the grounds near the facility at Chalk River. That’s pretty much how we humans have been dealing with garbage ever since the dawn of civilization; we have buried it. That’s how we dealt with corpses, human waste, the smelly garbage and when the industrial revolution came about, we buried those substances that proved difficult to get rid of.

So, not surprisingly, that’s also how the industry got rid of its unwanted chemical residues (such as the 22,000 tons of toxic chemicals buried in Love Canal near Niagara Falls, NY).

In Canada, we were no better. Our military was busy burying industrial solvants near CFB Valcartier and allegedly burying drums of the Vietnam war era Agent Orange at CFB Gagetown, NB. Besides, we only need to remember the toxic ghost of the Sydney Tar Ponds.

Let’s not be mistaken; unearthing the nuclear waste which had been haphazardly buried in the fields around the Chalk River facility for half a century is the right thing do to. The problem is that the intent is to re-bury the same waste in a new one million cubic metre capacity above ground facility at Chalk River, a mere kilometre or so from the Ottawa River; the source of drinking water for the municipalities of the Pontiac situated along the river, not to mention that it is the source of drinking water for Ottawa-Gatineau, Montreal, Laval, Trois-Rivières, Sorel, Quebec City, Rimouski and a host of municipalities and villages along the St. Lawrence River.

In the 1950s our understanding of the dangers of radioactive materials were at best very basic. Case in point, the big stores in London, NY and Montreal (and other big cities worthy of that name) had machines called Pedoscopes and Fluoroscope, using X-rays, that were used by shoe sales personnel to see how the bones of a shopper’s foot squeezed into a shoe. The last of those machines was taken out of the stores in the 1970s.

A good number of nuclear scientists, engineers and technicians and their families work and live in Chalk River. It is thus easy to understand how reluctant any one of them would be to suggest in front of their peers that those assigned to manage and maintain the storage facility should be uprooted and moved to a much safer location, several hundred kilometres away from the pre-eminent waterway of Ontario and Quebec. To re-bury the low level nuclear waste at the Chalk River site is certainly the most cost effective option, but that should not be the primary factor in the choice of the storage facility.

If you are trying to visualize what this storage facility will look like, just think of it as a giant above ground swimming pool on steroids. Of course, and the bottom tarp is made of a strong, thick and presumably resistant high density polyethylene plastic. The engineers in charge of the design have tested the membrane for a few years in controlled laboratory conditions to simulate the 500 or so years of degradation during which it will be holding the nuclear waste out of our crucial water supply.

Numerous sheets of these polyethylene membranes will be installed side by side and heat or sonic welded on site during the installation. The engineers claim that the containment vessel will be safe and durable.

Please allow me to be cynical. We, Quebec folks, we know something about membranes. We have poured millions of dollars into the maligned roof of Montreal’s Olympic stadium. At first, the firm Socodec (a subsidiary of Lavalin) was awarded in 1987 a contract to install a German made kevlar membrane which had been selected as the perfect material to cover the Big O.

That membrane tore up 17 times before being removed in 1991. Since 1998, the Big O has been covered with a giant Teflon covered fibreglass tarp. That one too tore up in 1999. There are now plans in the works to replace it with a yet to be announced new iteration of the roof.

Do you recognize Lavalin as in SNC-Lavalin? It is the firm which has been linked to financial wrongdoings regarding bribes paid out in order to get contracts in Libya. Just recently, in a completely separate affair, Normand Morin, a former Vice-President of SNC-Lavalin, pleaded guilty to funnelling $83,534 to the Liberals and $13,552 to the Conservatives. By pleading guilty, he ensured that we would never get to know which Member(s) of Parliament benefitted from the money.

The Liberal government claims that it cannot get involved and put an end to this half baked nuclear storage idea. Should we wonder why?

Claude Bertrand

Candidate for the 2019 federal elections

Green Party of Canada