Nearshore
Great Lakes month in review: nuclear waste, pipelines, algae
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Current State reviews this month’s biggest environmental stories from around the basin, including algae blooms, nuclear waste and oil pipelines.
Great Lakes Echo (http://greatlakesecho.org/tag/nuclear-waste/)
Current State reviews this month’s biggest environmental stories from around the basin, including algae blooms, nuclear waste and oil pipelines.
The film explores the science and controversy of Canada’s search for a Great Lakes-area underground storage site for spent nuclear fuel that could take 250,000 years to safely decay.
Company seeks permanent storage of waste from plant that generates half the province’s electricity.
In March of 2011, an earthquake and tsunami in Japan resulted in a nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant. Three of the plants six reactors melted down, and substantial amounts of radioactive material was released. That includes contaminated water that escaped from the three units. Containing that water has proven to be an ongoing problem confronting those who are working to clean up Fukushima. A Michigan State University grad works with a company that is going to try to contain contaminated water with an old technology that has never before been employed at a nuclear site.
Residents of Michigan’s Thumb region are looking across Lake Huron with some concern about a Canadian utility seeking approval to build an underground nuclear waste disposal site near the town of Kincardine, Ontario.
Ongoing concern over a proposed nuclear waste site very near Lake Huron took a new twist recently. A Canadian government review panel is exploring the viability of a new underground storage facility in Kincardine, Ontario. That’s about 111 miles across the water from Port Huron. The facility is almost a half mile underground but little more than a kilometer from the lake. It would hold low to intermediate radioactive waste.
Sewage and algae get a lot of the attention along the near shore ecosystem of the Great Lakes.
But nuclear power and waste policies are gaining renewed attention in the region.
They should. The consequences of getting them wrong demand an international spotlight.
Ontario Power Generation wants o build nuclear waste disposal facilities below the Canadian shore of Lake Huron.
Opponents say this threatens the the lake and people.
Supporters say it is needed and safe.
The United Press International (UPI) reports that the Canadian energy company, Bruce Power, has decided against shipping steam generators loaded with nuclear waste through the Great Lakes region. U.S. Rep. Candice Miller received the information from Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, UPI reported.
Michigan lawmakers want a Nevada disposal site to start accepting nuclear waste.
The state’s waste from nuclear power plants is now stored on-site, although ratepayers have paid $760 million toward a proposed national repository.