Deep Geologic Repository? Willing to Listen feat: Sheila Whytock

We CANDU It

Nuclear waste. The bogeyman of industrial wastes and yet it has been fully contained for the 60 years of commercial power plant operation without a single fatality worldwide over that time period. Compare that to fossil fuels which kill over 3 million per year from waste that is simply dumped into the atmosphere and is rapidly heating our planet such that it might not be conducive to human civilization in a few hundred years.

How bad is nuclear waste and what are we going to do with it? Relative risk assessment is not a strong point for the minds of homo sapiens. Deep geologic storage of nuclear waste involves many barriers. Solid ceramic used fuel pellets are housed inside a zirconium fuel rod in a steel cask, surrounded by a copper cannister, surrounded by bentonite clay surrounded by rock which takes water 3 million years to move 1 meter through it buried half a kilometer deep.

I am joined by Sheila Whytock who is a nuclear operator at Bruce Power and leads the community group “willing to listen” which seeks to engage the community with the Deep Geological Repository research process.