The Nuclear Waste Management Organization continues to arrange “dialogues” with interested people (like me) across Canada. However the situation does not change. The quantity of nuclear waste from our nuclear reactors continues to grow and the plans to deal with it remain as they were when the Seaborne Panel addressed this in the 80s. Bury it somewhere. That panel recommended that an arms-length organization be set up but the government went ahead with NWMO whose directors are all from the nuclear industry. To put us farther away from the powers that be the sessions are run and controlled by a consulting company, Stratos.

I was fortunate to have Dave Martin of Greenpeace and Norm Rubin of Energy Probe as well as the mayor of Dryden at my table. Also in the room were Blair Seaborne, Brennain Lloyd of Northwatch and Theresa McClenaghan of the Canadian Environmental Law Association. Some of the anti-nuclear people want the waste buried as safely as possible with an agreement that there be no arrangements or acceptance for the burial of waste from “new build.”

The mayor thinks that her community or another in Northern Ontario may be approached to take the waste. She emphasized that this is going to be very divisive for any economically depressed area and there are many in the North.

My position is that there should be an opportunity for us to urge the government of Canada to reject all uranium mining and activities leading to more nuclear reactors in Canada and elsewhere. I worry that the NWMO “plan” for nuclear waste will be used as a basis for more reactors.

My short intervention on the connection between nuclear power and nuclear bombs and between radiation and cancer was cut short by the Stratos chair.

NWMO should not be lying to the government that the nuclear waste problem can be solved or that they are the best people to do it.