Canada’s Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) began looking in May for a community willing to have the nuclear industry’s harmful and dangerous waste buried in its area. The NWMO is offering large economic benefits to any community willing to take large quantities of the nuclear industry's radioactive waste. The agency has claimed such a proposal would be safe for the environment and community.
“Canadian communities should beware of being taken down the garden path by the nuclear industry’s desire to bury its biggest public relations problem – radioactive waste,” said Shawn-Patrick Stensil, a nuclear analyst with Greenpeace Canada. “The commissioned analysis documents the blanks in our understanding of the threats of deep geological waste disposal that get papered over in the selling job of the nuclear industry.”
The Greenpeace study, “Rock Solid?: A scientific review of geological disposal of high-level radioactive waste” by Dr. Helen Wallace, identifies a series of risks and uncertainties that could lead to the release of radioactivity in a deep geological radioactive waste repository. The report focuses on repository proposals in Sweden and Finland. The NWMO often cites Sweden’s approach to radioactive waste disposal as an example to follow. However, the report found key reports produced by the advisory bodies in Europe make little or no reference to scientific studies.
“We are talking about trying to bury thousands of tonnes of highly dangerous waste for longer than people have existed on Earth. It would be a significant engineering feat if it worked but, if miscalculated, could release highly radioactive waste into our groundwater or seas for centuries, so far below ground that there will be nothing we can do about it,” said Stensil.
Dr. Wallace’s review of scientific journal articles concludes there is no scientific consensus on the viability of deep-level storage and the outstanding risks identified in scientific journals, including:
• accelerated corrosion of nuclear waste containers;
• heat and gas formation leading to pressurization and cracking of the storage chamber;
• unexpected chemical reactions;
• geological uncertainties; future ice ages, earthquakes and human interference;
• the different constitution of waste from future nuclear reactors and its complicated chemistry adds to the uncertainty;
• the limits of computer modeling to account for multiple factors including heat, mechanical deformation, microbes as well as gas and water flow through rock formations over long time scales;
• the potential for interpretive bias given that most studies supporting deep geological repositories are funded by the nuclear industry or supporting agencies promoting deep geological disposal.
Dr Wallace has a PhD in environmental modeling from Exeter University and is an expert on the role of computer modeling in policy decisions. She is currently Director of the science-policy research group GeneWatch UK.
Greenpeace Canada’s Don’t Nuke Green Energy campaign seeks to expose and stop subsidies and sweetheart deals given to the nuclear industry that undermine the development of green energy. Subjecting future generations and the environment to the costs and risks of radioactive waste is another way that the nuclear industry hides its true costs.
Rock Solid? Is available for download at http://www.greenpeace.org/canada/Global
How silly can Greenpeace get? Imagine appealing to Dr. ManMohan Singh to save our Monsoons?
ReplyDeleteThe year 2009-10, India suffered its worst drought in almost four decades, with monsoon rains 22% below average. As seen in the photo, Greenpeace activists then hung an 80-foot banner from the Mumbai-Thane Bridge addressed to the Indian prime minister on June 4, 2009.It requested him to save our monsoons given the drought situation. How mischievous this tactic is illustrated by their article 29th June 2009, titled “It’s anomaly reigning” posted 29th June 2009 in the Greenpeace India website - just a few days after this stunt:
“On assessing the historical data, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in its fourth Assessment Report suggested, “warming in India is likely to be above the average for South Asia, with an increase in summer precipitation and an increase in the frequency of intense precipitation in some parts.” That the Indian monsoons are going to undergo gross changes as a direct result of climate change – rainfall will increase by ~ 20 per cent overall in the summer monsoon, but the distribution of this increase will not be evenly spread across the country.”
So what's Greenpeace's actual position any way? Does global warming cause increased or decreased rainfall? They say both. This is not strange, as global warming according to its proponents can do almost everything and anything like simultaneously making sea water salty and less salty at the same time! But it does not matter really as global warming or CO2 has nothing to do with monsoon intensity. But it finds a perfect 1:1 correlation with ENSO - El Nino (La Nina) Southern Oscillation.
However, if the IPCC painted scenario had only been true, an increase by 20% in rainfall could have given India a double digit growth rate for agriculture and at least double of that in terms of GDP. Such stupendous growth could have wiped out the face of poverty within 5-10 years in our country. If this is “climate change”, Indians should be welcoming it with open arms. But alas, more than a decade has passed after the IPCC had predicted such a scenario but we find practically no such change in our rainfall long period average (LPA). The LPA, even factoring the current “exceptional” summer rainfall, remains still a tad below 100%.
This typical means justify end tactics not only eats into the credibility of not only Greenpeace but the entire NGO and environmental organizations. What public credibility has NGO/environment groups left with? If they tout they follow evidence based M&E then they should ensure their advocacy campaigns reflect this value as well.
Read more: http://devconsultancygroup.blogspot.com/2010/09/how-silly-can-greenpeace-climate.html