Readers differ on idea of recycling used nuclear fuel

Re: “DGR for spent nuclear fuel is unnecessary, says professor”

The writer and I agree that the Deep Geological Repository (DGR) for spent nuclear fuel is not needed.
 
We disagree, however, on his main point. “Recycling” used fuel is a terrible idea. There’s nothing original about it. It has been tried for decades in the United States and it doesn’t work.

Dr. Edwin Lyman, the U.S. scientist who wrote about it in the “pyroprocessing files,” concluded that the process “has taken one potentially difficult form of nuclear waste and converted it into multiple challenging forms of nuclear waste. The U.S. Department of Energy has spent hundreds of millions of dollars only to magnify, rather than simplify, the waste problem.”
 
Rather than waste hundreds of millions of Canadian taxpayer dollars in a futile attempt to do the same thing in Canada, we should decide as a nation what to do with the huge stockpile of toxic radioactive spent fuel waste that the nuclear industry is considering dumping on South Bruce.
 
As a New Brunswicker, I am fully supportive of the Wolastoq Grand Council’s Resolution on Nuclear Energy and Nuclear Waste on Traditional Wolastoq Territory issued in March. The NB Power Point Lepreau Nuclear Generating Station has been making high-level waste for almost 40 years on Wolastoq traditional territory, shared with the Peskotomuhkati Nation. The spent fuel is stockpiled in aging concrete silos about 500 metres from our beautiful Bay of Fundy.
 
The Wolastoq Grand Council wants the spent fuel waste to stay here in New Brunswick, stored “in above-ground, attack-resistant, reinforced vaults, pulled back from the water’s edge, until an acceptable, permanent and safe method to destroy or neutralize the waste is found.”

The resolution also rejects the proposal to "recycle" the waste. The Chiefs of Ontario also passed a resolution this year demanding that the spent fuel waste from the Ontario nuclear reactors should not be abandoned in a DGR.
 
Let’s respect the wishes of the Wolastoq Grand Council and the Chiefs of Ontario. The spent fuel waste made in New Brunswick and in Ontario should not be abandoned in South Bruce. Taxpayer dollars should not be spent on a futile experiment to “recycle” the waste, either beside the Bay of Fundy or in South Bruce.

Sincerely,
Susan O'Donnell, PhD
Researcher and adjunct professor
Department of Sociology
University of New Brunswick
Fredericton, New Brunswick
 

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To the Editor:

Why can't they (Small Modular Reactors that recycle used nuclear fuel) also be used to power cruise and cargo ships which burn Bunker C and are highly polluting.

I did a trip up the west coast of Norway a couple of years ago. Two cruise ships pulled in to a fjord. Within a half hour, there were layers and layers of exhaust pollution hanging above the fjord.

When we left Hamburg, an inland German port, passengers buying near the port had to first sign a waiver, acknowledging the fact that they knew in advance about the pollution from the ships that are always idling when in port.

How about using them in locomotives and airplanes?

Ed Valenciuk   
Retired Canadian nuclear worker
Ilderton, Ontario