Canadian Nuclear Laboratories (CNL) welcomed media to tour the proposed site of the Near Surface Disposal Facility (NSDF). If approved, the NSDF would hold up to one million cubic meters of low level radioactive waste. Members of the media were invited out to the site on Tuesday, May 24th, 2022. The public hearings for the proposed project are scheduled to start next week in Pembroke and will last roughly five days.
Meggan Vickerd, the Director of the NSDF project, says CNL plans to sort and remediate legacy waste, which has been on site in Chalk River for roughly 70-years. Back in the 1940’s and 1950’s, nuclear waste was stored in sand trenches and buried underground, which was consistent with waste management practices of the time. If the NSDF is approved, some of this low level radioactive legacy waste would be moved and safely stored in the NSDF. Vickerd says there are no plans to close the Chalk River site so they need a facility to support low-level radioactive waste.
90 per cent of the waste proposed for the NSDF would be coming from the Chalk River Labs, five per cent from Atomic Energy of Canada Limited Canada (AECL) owned sites and five per cent from other organizations such as hospitals and universities.
CNL is in the process of a $1.2-billion site revitalization and has already removed 111 buildings. Contractors are removing old buildings, analyzing the waste and determining what is considered radioactive and what is safe to reuse or dispose of in a regular landfill. Currently the radioactive waste from decommissioned buildings is being temporarily stored in land-sea containers on site in Chalk River. If the project is approved, the low level nuclear waste would be moved to the NSDF.
Vickerd says they started with 15 proposed locations in Chalk River and narrowed it down to two. The preferred location is roughly 1.2-kilometers away from the Ottawa River and the alternate location is roughly 3-kilometers away. Vickerd says proximity to the river is not the only critical factor and talked about how long it takes a drop of rain that hits the ground to travel to the Ottawa River.
In the preferred site, it would take seven to twelve years for water to move its way to the river. Vickerd says the site that’s further away from the Ottawa River would take roughly two years for groundwater to make it into the river. A water treatment plant would also be operated for rainwater that comes in contact with the NSDF site with water sampled and tested before it’s released back into the environment.
George Dolinar, the Director of Corporate Environmental Protection, says the bottom of proposed NSDF is 40-meters (roughly 131 feet) above levels on the Ottawa River. The site is located 1.2-kilometers away from the Ottawa River and would be built into the side of a hill so it would not be visible to boaters or from the Ottawa River. Dolinar talked about site monitoring which includes water samples, air monitoring, groundwater monitoring, and other environmental sampling. He also talked about the ability of the NSDF to withstand natural disasters that have never been seen before in our area.
A recent survey in Renfrew and Pontiac Counties found the majority of the 500 residents asked were confident CNL staff could safely construct and operate the NSDF. Renfrew County Council also voted unanimously in favour of having the Warden speak in support of the NSDF project at the public hearings scheduled next week.
While CNL feels they have a good case to build the NSDF, not everyone agrees. Concerned citizens groups in Renfrew County do not want the NSDF project to move forward. Reports from the Concerned Citizens of Renfrew and Area say the landfill would stand 60 feet tall, with some of the contents remaining dangerously radioactive for thousands of years.
CNL has indicated the NSDF would not be visible from the Ottawa River as it’s built into the side of a 197 meter tall hill in an engineered containment mound. CNL claims the NSDF would hold low level radioactive waste for more than 550-years until it reaches acceptable levels that would normally be found within the environment.
(written by: Rudy Kadlec)
Meggan Vickerd (left) and George Dolinar stand near the top of where the NSDF would be located. The NSDF would not be visible from the Ottawa River.
The liner system for the NSDF would include multiple natural and synthetic layers designed to work together.