Radioactive Waste

After vowing to take on radical environmentalists determined to stop the Northern Gateway pipeline, the Harper government has released a new anti-terrorism strategy that targets eco-extremists as threats.

With his announcement this week, Public Safety Minister Vic Toews has increased the concern among environmentalists that Ottawa regards them as implacable adversaries to be monitored and battled, rather than well-meaning advocates to be consulted.

“This is just one more step in their attempt to marginalize the environmental movement and to quiet its voice,” John Bennett, executive director of Sierra Club Canada, said Friday. “It’s an indirect suggestion that somehow environmentalism is attached to terrorism and that’s just wrong.”... Read more »

Bruce Power’s licence to transport steam generators containing radiation for recycling expired Friday.

The nuclear power generator has not reapplied and said in a news release Friday it will do so “when it’s appropriate.”

It also said there is “no urgency” to ship the generators.

Company spokesman John Peevers declined to answer questions about it.

“Bruce Power continues to believe recycling offers the best environmental solution for reducing our footprint and is something we remain entirely committed to,” the company said in a statement.

If Bruce Power applies to renew its licence, the Canadian Nuclear Safety and Control Act requires the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission to hold another public hearing, the Council of Canadians said in a news release this week.... Read more »

TOKYO—Former Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan returns to the world stage this week, part of a campaign to reinvent himself as a global antinuclear activist nearly a year after he oversaw his government's widely criticized handling of the Fukushima Daiichi accident.

"I would like to tell the world that we should aim for a society that can function without nuclear energy," he said in a recent interview with The Wall Street Journal, previewing his speech scheduled for Thursday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.... Read more »

After the Fukushima nuclear accident, Canadian health officials assured a nervous public that virtually no radioactive fallout had drifted to Canada.

But last March, a Health Canada monitoring station in Calgary detected an average of 8.18 becquerels per litre of radioactive iodine (an isotope released by the nuclear accident) in rainwater, the data shows.

The level easily exceeded the Canadian guideline of six becquerels of iodine per litre for drinking water, acknowledged Eric Pellerin, chief of Health Canada's radiation-surveillance division.

"It's above the recommended level (for drinking water)," he said in an interview. "At any time you sample it, it should not exceed the guideline."

Canadian authorities didn't disclose the high radiation reading at the time.
... Read more »

Weapons-grade uranium that for years has been transported north into Canada from the United States is now being quietly returned over the same roads in a more radioactive and potentially dangerous form.

The two biggest threats posed by the transport of the material are the catastrophe that could result from an accident or spill, and the interest that terrorist organizations may have in stealing it for use in weapons of mass destruction.

A confidential federal memo obtained by The Canadian Press through the Access to Information Act says at least one payload of spent, U.S.-origin, highly enriched uranium fuel has already been moved stateside under an agreement signed last year by Prime Minister Stephen Harper and U.S. President Barack Obama.

... Read more »