How To: Stop Worrying & Love Nuclear Waste
From http://ejlavoie.wordpress.com
A monograph in 7 chapters
By Edgar J. Lavoie
Used fuel bundle. Image from NWMO.ca
1 ̶ Love It or Ship It
There are just over 2 million fuel bundles sitting outside Canada’s nuclear power reactors.
That’s right ̶ “outside”. Which is a good thing, because they are used fuel bundles. They are waste. Garbage. And each reactor has a temporary storage facility for this waste. “Temporary” can mean up to several decades. Note: nuclear waste experts use the term “interim”, not “temporary”.
This interim waste is carefully and lovingly monitored by on-site personnel to ensure that nothing explodes and that no one nearby is exposed to unreasonable amounts of lethal radiation. So far, so good.
But what NWMO wants is a long-term storage solution for this nuclear waste. “Long-term” may mean up to a million years. After all, after the reactor at Chalk River is absorbed by Greater Ottawa, or the one at Darlington becomes a suburb of Toronto, who wants a garbage dump in his backyard?
The NWMO solution (NWMO is Nuclear Waste Management Organization) is to ship this garbage to Northern Ontario. (Well, there is one community in northern Saskatchewan that is also a candidate host community. The rest of Canada is not interested.)
So NWMO is tasked by our federal government to find a willing host community. Greenstone is not a candidate community. Yet. But things change. Two weeks ago, NWMO visited Greenstone as guests of Bruce Hyer, MP for Thunder Bay-Superior North. Hyer is hosting a series of town hall meetings in his riding to inform people about the scenario (I almost said “scam” ̶ bad on me) proposed by NWMO.
As of today, candidate host communities in Hyer’s riding are Manitouwadge and Schreiber. Red Rock expressed interest, but NWMO deemed it a poor candidate because it has lousy rock. Nipigon, in a moment of clarity, opted out. Several other communities in NWO are still interested.
Which tells us that the smartest people in Canada do not necessarily live in Ontario. And possibly Saskatchewan.
Bruce Hyer’s position is that he is listening to all three sides ̶ those that support shipping nuclear waste to this riding, those who have still to form an opinion, and those who hate the idea.
At the Geraldton meeting, Hyer did state one point of view ̶ he feels that the issue is not merely a single-community issue; it is a regional concern. People at the meeting agreed.
What exactly is this stuff?
Darlington Nuclear Generating Station. Wikipedia commons.
2 ̶ Handle It Gingerly
The stuff, not the issue.
The two NWMO reps at Bruce Hyer’s meeting were named Pat and Mike. I am not kidding. This is not an Irish joke. The only thing Irish about Pat was that he was taciturn ̶ beyond uttering his name, he uttered nothing. The Irish thing about Mike was that he was garrulous. No, that does not mean he favoured a garru.
In fact, if all you knew was that one was preternaturally quiet and that the other was phenomenally talkative, you wouldn’t even suspect them of being Irish. Which they weren’t, as far as I know.
My point is, Mike was the one who fielded all questions and provided all answers. Hyer moderated the Q & A. And all the information in these posts comes from Mike and the literature he handed out. Well, literature may not be the word. But it was literate stuff, with words like “interim” and “deep geological”. And “repository”. There were a lot of repositories stuffed into sentences. And no, repository is not a synonym of “suppository”.
Back to the question: What is this stuff?
At the centre of this issue are bundles 50 cm long and 10 cm wide, weighing 24 kilograms. Over 2 million of them. A fuel bundle has uranium dioxide pellets arranged in metal tubes called rods. A single bundle in a nuclear reactor can provide electricity to 100 homes for a year. A reactor has oodles of bundles (I don’t want to sound too scientific). When used fuel bundles are removed, they are still highly radioactive, so they are stored in pools ̶ yes, like swimming pools ̶ near the reactor. Water is an excellent barrier. Mike said you can even walk around the edge of this interim repository without lighting up.
As these used fuel bundles sit in the pools, the radioactivity drops sharply. The level drops 99% in ten years. To make way for more bundles, they are usually relocated to dry storage facilities (more interim repositories) on site. These repositories may be concrete containers or silos or vaults. Concrete is an excellent barrier between you and that permanent glow to your skin. Mike said you can safely place your hand on one of these containers and all you will experience is a mild heat.
The heat is evidence of continuing radioactivity. Radioactivity will continue, and will continue to decrease, over a period of hundreds of thousands of years. To be safe, let’s say a million years.
Now, 2 million bundles is the accumulation to date in Ontario, Quebec, and New Brunswick. By the time a centralized permanent repository is sited, constructed, packed with used fuel bundles, and sealed off, there will be over 4 million bundles.
But. If water is such a good barrier against radiation, why not keep the pools in place forever? Well, there’s the lesson of Fukushima.
You will remember that on March 11, 2011, a tsunami destroyed Japan’s Fukushima nuclear generating station. The disaster caused three of the six reactors to melt down, and demolished the pool and dry storage facilities with their used fuel bundles. Three days later, eastern Russia reported radioactive isotopes, and two days after that, the western seaboard of the United States ditto. Ocean currents have carried that deadly radioactivity all across the Pacific Ocean.
That’s not to mention what happened in Japan itself.
The cleanup continues.
We can conclude that interim repositories have, by definition, a short life.
And they are subject to the vagaries of man, God, and nature.
So, the managers of nuclear waste have enunciated certain criteria for a permanent repository:
- One centralized location
- Absolute isolation of the used nuclear fuel
- Search for a willing host community
- Continuous monitoring
- Retrievability of the waste if conditions change
Mike swore up and down by this strategy. How far would you swear?
3 ̶ Bury It
Cart all the stuff to one place and bury it. Deep.
That will fulfill the first two of the aforementioned criteria.
Will the Nuclear Waste Management Organization consider any other alternative? Mike said nope.
NWMO and our federal government have decided that this stuff must be buried deep, deep, deep. So deep that far, far into the future, no one will ever know it is there.
This is what nuclear waste managers and their scientists and engineers call “deep geological disposal”. We folks who will be living next to the deep geological repository, we call it dumping radioactive waste into a mine shaft and sealing it up.
All 96,000,000+ kilograms. 96,000+ tonnes.
That’s about twice the weight of the Titanic. Which is also down deep. Never to be retrieved.
The way NWMO describes the quantity is, imagine 12 hockey rinks, chock-full of used fuel bundles, from ice level to the top of the boards. Try playing hockey then, eh? Impossible. You’d be flailing away in a pool of hot water.
Remember, this stuff gives off heat. For hundreds of thousands of years. So that cavern at the bottom of the mine shaft will have to be ventilated. For hundreds of thousands of years. But. That’s not part of the plan.
The plan calls for locating a geological formation 500 metres beneath the surface. The rock must be solid ̶ no fractures ̶ and it must be dry ̶ no moisture. Then three shafts will be sunk: the service shaft will convey people, equipment, and materials; the main shaft will convey the used fuel containers; the ventilation shaft will, at first, provide fresh air to the miners et al, and later, exhaust the repository’s heat to the atmosphere.
The plan calls for an elaborate network of tunnels and caverns (called “placement rooms”), and the 4+ million bundles, pre-sealed in leak-proof containers, will be squirreled away, and then every cubic centimetre of open space will be packed with custom-mixed clay or concrete. Allow a few years to retrieve those bundles if that should be your desire. But. That’s not part of the plan.
Then there are the surface facilities. The bundles will be arriving by truck or train and will be repackaged before they are transferred to the underground repository. The facilities will include such things as an aggregate plant and a concrete batching plant and a sealing materials compaction plant as well as lifestyle elements such as a cafeteria and a first aid station and bus shelters. I guess even buses need shelters.
NWMO image of potential repository. Click to enlarge. From NWMO.ca
NWMO estimates that the deep geological repository will be constructed over 10 years by employing from 400 to 1,200 workers per year.
It will take about 40 years to fill the repository. If you include the transport workers, the operation will employ from 700 to 800 persons annually.
For the next 70 years, between 100 and 150 personnel will “monitor” the repository. I say “monitor” because I’m not sure what they will be measuring, and even if they know what they will be measuring and they don’t like it, what are they going to do about it? Retrieve the bundles? But. That’s not part of the plan.
Then the repository will be decommissioned and closed. The process will take 30 years and employ 200 to 300 workers. That means that the shafts will be backfilled and sealed off. The surface facilities will be razed and the area landscaped. And here’s a quote from the literature: “It is anticipated that permanent markers would be installed to inform future generations of the presence of the sealed repository.”
The markers would have to withstand the advance of a continental glacier. But. More on that later.
Now, I ask you ̶ what could possibly go wrong?
4 ̶ Fuhgeddaboutit
At the Geraldton meeting, someone suggested that another solution would be to reprocess the nuclear waste rather than to bury it. Render it non-radioactive. Other countries do it. Someone else (well, that was me) suggested that a near-surface repository would be more appropriate.
Mike replied that NWMO was not considering any other alternatives. Fuhgeddaboutit.
So, since 2010, NWMO has been searching for what they call a willing host community. We folks in the North, we call it a pathetically desperate community, so poor in goods and in imagination and in spirit that it will do anything to make a buck.
Yes, there are one helluva lot of jobs on offer.
Let us, however, examine the concept of a deep geological repository.
Mike said that the reason the repository had to be deep underground was (a) to be out of reach of seismic activity, and (b) to be unaffected by “a glacial event”.
The audience (well, maybe that was me) pointed out that seismic activity (i.e., an earthquake) occurs all the time in the Canadian Shield. Most of them are never “felt”. A felt earthquake would usually register 3.5 or better on the Richter scale.
I confess that I have resorted to Google for the following information. The Geological Survey of Canada states that there are about 11 earthquakes a day in Canada, or 77 a week, and that only 1 of the 77 would be “felt”.
Still, to believe we in the North live in an earthquake-free zone is foolish. And if you are styling yourself as an expert in deep geological repositories, you are either disingenuous or deceptive.
In the first two weeks of this month alone, there have been 4 “significant” earthquakes in Canada, ranging from magnitude 2.5 to 4.7, and they were all “felt”. One them occurred 44 km northwest of Hawkesbury, Ontario, in the Canadian Shield.
You heard of those two miners last May in the First Nickel mine near Sudbury. They experienced a “seismic event” deep underground. They died.
To state that all we need be concerned about are seismic events in the zone less than 500 metres from surface ̶ to state that is to be either ignorant or deceitful.
On the other hand, damage to a near-surface repository can be more easily repaired.
I could have spent hours exploring data on seismic activity in Canada and elsewhere. I learned that shallow-focus earthquakes originate 70 kilometres or less underground. Yes, I said kilometres. And that deep-focus earthquakes can occur up to 700 km underground. But enough. Today I have to deal with “a glacial event” also.
Mike clarified that NWMO was imagining the advance of another continental glacier, perhaps 40,000 years down the line. The literature speaks of an ice sheet that may be 3 kilometres high.
NWMO’s scientists and engineers are telling them that the placement rooms will withstand the weight of a continental glacier. Pardon me if I’m skeptical.
I sharpened my pencil and figured out that an ice sheet 3 km high will exert, at ground level, a pressure of 3,071 metric tonnes per square metre. Do I need to repeat that? Okay, 3,071 metric tonnes per square metre.
I am tempted to say that any cavern will be utterly obliterated by an ice sheet, and the former contents squirted hither and thither through the zillions of rock fractures.
Ice sheets are formidable natural phenomena. The whole of Northern Ontario is still recovering from the last ice sheet. It’s called “post-glacial rebound”. The Shield is springing back up, milli-milli-millimetres every day, as the land recovers from the compressive weight of that sheet.
Another reason for finding a “dry” geological formation is that water, although an excellent barrier to radioactivity, is also an excellent conductor. The Pacific Ocean is now a repository of Fukushima’s nuclear waste.
The project will create innumerable ports of entry for surface water. Over time, as “corrosion-resistant” containers become corroded, and seismic events and glacial events compromise said containers, said containers will leak. At some point in the next few hundred thousand years, groundwater will become contaminated.
First, to locate the dry fracture-free geological formation, drills will bore countless holes. And permit the entry of moisture.
The three shafts from surface will permit the entry of water.
And all the clay and concrete you purpose to cram into said holes and shafts will, at some future point, degrade and permit the entry of water.
But, you might object, the containers are retrievable!
Fuhgeddaboutit.
5 ̶ Getting It There
The nuclear waste will be shipped by road or by rail. And Mike, the NWMO spokesman, said that the public will be protected during the transport ̶ 100% guaranteed.
Experts talk like that. And I believe Mike is 99.99% accurate.
At the nuclear generating plant, the used fuel bundles will be packed into solid stainless steel boxes, 192 bundles per box, weighing 35 tonnes. These boxes, like Superman, are invincible except for . . . well, you know. There’s always that crack in the armour.
My reading of the literature does raise one teeny note of concern. The process is absolutely safe “during normal transportation and accident conditions”. NWMO’s own words.
Tests show that a box can be dropped 9 metres onto steel-reinforced concrete without a dent.
A box can survive an 800-degree Celsius furnace . . . for 30 minutes.
And a box can sit in 200 metres of water. No problem.
But can a box be dropped onto rocks from a bridge 50 metres high? Think: the Steel River Bridge.
And can a box survive a Lac-Mégantic-type inferno . . . for several days? Rail tanker cars now ferry crude oil regularly from west to east across our region. An accident is waiting to happen. And if a train with dirty crude and a train with dirty nuclear waste should happen to meet? It doesn’t bear thinking about.
And if a box is dropped into, say, just 20 metres of water? Say it is dropped from the Nipigon River bridge, and currents and ice nudge it out into Nipigon Bay. Does the Nipigon fire department have the technology to recover this 35-tonne box?
But I’m being silly. These scenarios are not “normal accidents”. And unusual accidents rarely happen. Just ask the residents of Lac-Mégantic. Forty-seven citizens dead. Half the downtown destroyed.
Are these scenarios “credible threats”, to use the terminology of the literature?
Naw.
Example of a used nuclear fuel shipping cask being shipped by rail. Wikipedia commons.
As for the radiation threat from a broken container, scientists tell us we can comfortably accept an annual dose limit of 1 milliSievert. That is what we absorb from 10 lung X-rays, or 10 dental X-rays, or 10 flights on Air Canada. (What is the connection between air travel and radiation? I haven’t the faintest. But it’s in the literature.)
Now, just standing around, twiddling our thumbs, we are likely to pick up 1.8 mSV from normal environmental radiation. And a nuclear energy worker can accept an annual dose of 50 mSV. I believe we Northerners are as tough as any Darlington yuppie.
And if pellets from the bundles are scattered during an accident, the person picking them up will be outfitted with protective gear.
All that being said, what wrong with shipping nuclear waste to our homeland?
From a public safety point of view, not much.
Yes, there is a teeny-weeny credible threat, but not much.
The question is, should this stuff be shipped long-distance at all for any reason?
You see, concerns about shipping are a red herring.
If you focus on concerns about shipping, you are forgetting the flaws in the concept of deep geological disposal.
We have other fish to fry .
Image from a police helicopter the day of the derailment in Lac Megantic Quebec. Wikipedia commons.
6 ̶ Monitor Schmonitor
Okay. I have found out what will be monitored at the site of the deep geological repository. Here is the list:
- Groundwater;
- Surface water;
- Air quality (above and below ground);
- Temperature;
- Excavation stability;
- Seismic and vibration;
- Radiation;
- Chemistry; and
- Meteorology.
No metrics, no measurable limits of what will and will not be tolerated. Just the list.
Groundwater: There’s not supposed to be any groundwater present, remember? How soon we forget. Some sensible scientist is anticipating the incursion of groundwater. Good on him. So, what happens then?
Surface water: What’s this about? Every hole, every shaft is sealed up. There is supposed to be not a single fracture in the rock (good fairy tale, that). What will they do? Hold an umbrella over the port of entry?
Air quality: Above ground? What’s that about? Below ground? Unless a miner or worker gets trapped in a tunnel that’s sealed up, what’s that about?
Temperature: Now we’re talking. Used nuclear fuel (i.e., waste) gives off heat. That deep repository’s ventilation shaft will be plugged permanently. Heat is bound to build up underground. So, what is the acceptable level of heat? 100 degrees Celsius? 300? 600?
Suppose, just suppose, it is 300 degrees C. What if the temperature hovers around 298 for a year? For a century? For a hundred thousand years? What is the plan? Sink another ventilation shaft? Retrieve the used fuel? No, no, not that. That waste will never be retrieved. That’s the plan. What if the temperature is 600 degrees? Same plan. No retrieval and relocation, because that is the plan. There’s no safer place to put it anyway, so we’re told.
Excavation stability: When a roof collapses, what is the plan? Evacuate all contents?
Seismic and vibration: An earthquake. Lord knows what will be happening deep down there. So . . . fuhgeddaboutit.
Radiation: Oops. If there’s radiation, something’s gone wrong. How wrong can it be before someone does something about it? We need metrics.
Chemistry: Yep, those bundles are chemically toxic. Gonna have to do something if chemicals get into the groundwater. Okay, there should be no groundwater. But . . . there will be groundwater. So . . . sue the engineers . . . who died a hundred thousand years ago.
Meteorology: Weather. Climate change. Not sure what this means. Or how it will affect the repository. Maybe this is a reference to “a glacial event”.
Now, for the 40 years of on-site operation (when the repository is being filled), there will be monitoring. That period is followed by 70 years of more monitoring when the repository is partially sealed. That is followed by 30 years of decommissioning when the repository is permanently closed and sealed.
No country with nuclear waste has yet found a long-term solution. But don’t despair. -Google image
And if anything should go wrong during this 140-year period, what will be done? And who will make the decision? Who will be the supervisor who will say, Okay, folks, back to square one? Got to get down and dirty and dig it all up. That’s 16 billion dollars down the drain, but the Harper government will find that cash somewhere, after it erases the deficit. Who will say that?
What is the postclosure plan? Here’s where the experts get creative. They will drill a borehole and drop a monitoring device down the hole with “a long-lived battery and data logger”. No information on how deep this hole will be, but it is safe to assume that it will not be 500 metres deep. Then the hole will be sealed. “After a period of time, the borehole is drilled, and the monitor and data logger removed for analysis.”
Okay, some of the values will be monitored (maybe groundwater, temperature, and radiation) at that particular point in the geological formation. But, what’s happening a few metres over? Or under the repository? Monitoring may have to be “adapted”. That’s a favourite word of NWMO. When one encounters a problem, adapt. Which means, back to the drawing board. Start from scratch? As if.
Again, that . . . supervisor (excuse me, I almost said “sucker”) with the responsibility of saying “Dig it all up, guys!” will have to be wearing armour . . . like Batman. That’s when the politicians and the bureaucrats will be saying, “Hey, those guys back in The Age of Idealism, they set the limits too high. Let’s be realistic!”
That will be the day when “passive monitoring”, as NWMO calls it, will become “no meaningful monitoring”. Which it was all along anyway.
Where does that leave us today? It leaves us with 4+ million tonnes of nuclear waste from our nuclear generating plants. I found one line that said 4.6 million tonnes. That’s just from the existing plants, and the planned expansions to those plants. This does not account for any new plants that may come on line.
We have to have a plan to deal with this mountain of waste on a long-term basis.
Fortunately, my brief study of this problem has enabled me to formulate a plan.
Get ready.
7 ̶ Love It, Don’t Ship It
As I said, at the town hall meeting in Geraldton on November 12, the audience suggested two alternatives to deep geological disposal: reprocessing of used nuclear fuel, and near-surface disposal. Mike, the NWMO rep, rejected both out of hand.
Neither our federal government nor the Nuclear Waste Management Organization will consider anything other than deep burial. You might begin to suspect that there is no dialogue occurring here. Decisions have been made. We just have to concur.
You might also suspect that NWMO is not always honest. NWMO promises “an open and transparent consultation process”. Well, they are openly declining to consider alternatives. To “consult” transparently means to “inform”. NWMO says “you may become engaged in the decision-making process”. Right. All you have to decide is whether to agree.
There is, they believe, somewhere out there in the Canadian Shield, one “willing host community”. They are openly offering mind-boggling financial incentives. If they weren’t open about it, we’d be tempted to call them bribes. There’s a rumour going around that communities still in the selection process are getting heaps of money already.
I am concerned about the possibility of any centralized deep geological repository anywhere in this country. It is not acceptable that one community can succumb to their blandishments and commit us, and generations to come, in perpetuity, to this mind-boggling mistake.
“The used fuel will also be retrievable at all times.” Right. And if you believe that, there is a bridge in Brooklyn I’d like to sell you.
“Postclosure monitoring . . . presents a unique challenge . . . “ Total honesty there. It can’t be done . . . effectively . . . meaningfully . . . for hundreds of thousands of years. Not in a deep geological repository.
Of the five criteria that would govern the process (listed in Chapter 2), one survives the honesty test: “Centralized location”. Bad idea. But honest.
I do not doubt NWMO’s sincerity. And I very much admire their focus on the long-term. They stress the process is “a multi-generational approach”. A purely political approach would not look beyond the next few election cycles.
The site selection (the search for a willing host community) will wind up by 2025. For the next ten years, the facilities will be constructed. Then come the operational phase (40 years), the extensive monitoring phase (70 years), and the decommissioning and closure phase (30 years). Then comes eternity.
And the funding will be in place, provided by the waste makers. One booklet says “$16- to $24-billion”. Mike said it could be $32-billion. The “waste owners” are making regular contributions to a trust fund.
At this point, all eyes are on the one community that will step up. The one willing to become the Nuclear Waste Capital of Canada for all time.
But, folks, the nuclear waste is sitting now in interim storage, and it will continue to accumulate.
Why not, you ask, leave it in interim storage? Think: Fukushima. Such repositories are not designed for the long-term.
Why , you ask, plan for the long-term? Let future generations worry. Well, that’s not a nice thought. Shame on you.
Do you want to go down in history as a citizen of The Age of A-holes? The “A”, of course, stands for “adaptive”, as in the name Adaptive Phased Management, which is NWMO’s term for this process. “Adaptive” means the process will be adapted to changing conditions. If something doesn’t work, it will be corrected. No, “adaptive” does not mean “corrective”. Everything that is done, or will be done, is already the correct thing. “Phased” means 140 years of phasing out. Then eternity. That’s good management.
A lot of bad things can happen to interim storage if left for the long term: tsunamis (think: Fukushima), “glacial events”, social breakdowns. “Social breakdown” is not mentioned in the literature I read, but Mike mentioned it. Think: apocalypse.
Think of rising sea levels, of nuclear war, of a lethal global epidemic, of a giant asteroid striking Earth . . . You’ve heard of all the scenarios. There will come times when no one will give a passing thought to temporary nuclear waste repositories, assuming they even know of their existence and location. They certainly won’t be monitoring them.
If a deep geological repository is out, what is left? I don’t know a thing about reprocessing, so I looked at near-surface storage. This usually means on-surface storage, or storage a few tens of metres below the surface (shallow geological disposal).
Through a process of deep geological thinking, I have formulated a superficial (but serious) plan for permanent disposal.
You know, right now, as you read this, very few people are thinking anything about nuclear waste. In Nakina and in Geraldton, 7 people attended the town hall meetings. In Longlac, 6 attended. Mind you, Greenstone is not a candidate community, but still, who wants a Nuclear Waste Capital of Canada within 5,000 kilometres of here? **From Editor: In Manitouwadge, which is a candidate, less than 20 people attended.
At one point, Mike and Bruce burst into laughter. It seems that someone at the Nakina meeting suggested lining up the waste containers on either side of the 401 in Southern Ontario. That way, millions of eyes would be on them, monitoring, daily, for eternity.
I merely grinned, because I take the proposed solution semi-seriously.
I do believe in continuous monitoring. I propose that each of the waste owners finds a prominent hilltop near their station. Ensure that the foundation is solid and safe from surface water and flooding. Locate all the station’s used fuel bundles in sturdy, corrosion-resistant containers (maybe the same ones planned for rail transport). Space them so that people can walk between them. Maybe have some wide open spaces for special events or purposes. And build a glass dome over the works.
If an act of man or an act of God compromises the integrity of the containers, they can be repaired immediately. Or relocated. If a catastrophic event threatens the repository in that location, the contents can be relocated. If an ice sheet approaches from the north, say, the containers can be transported quickly to the south. (In that scenario, Canadians would be fleeing south too.)
If, in fifty or a hundred thousand years, the containers become too corroded, replace them with new ones. Besides, there’s a very good chance that advances in science and technology will have found ways to neutralize the radioactivity.
Two more things required: continuous monitoring, and permanent markers.
I take Mike at his word that one can safely put his hands on such a container and merely experience a pleasant sensation of warmth. There’s no safety issue. So my plan calls for people ̶ especially children and adolescents (train them early, eh?) ̶ to migrate to and under the glass dome, 24-7. They will want to go there. And stay as long as they can. They will beg to go there. And in some cases, have to be forcibly removed.
Because. The Dome will be a mecca for intellectual development, for physical exercise, and for spiritual comfort. The life of the community might even revolve around it.
How, you ask, will the Dome accomplish that? Well, use your imagination. I can imagine a computer café and video arcade. I can imagine regular parkour competitions. I can imagine an arboretum, thriving in the continuous warmth and bouts of sunshine, with furry creatures hanging out.
One last thing: no one must ever forget the location and primary purpose of that repository. I’d say stucco neon signs all over the Dome, but some day the power may go out. Permanently. I’d say carve the messages in stone monuments and surround the Dome. But, over time, monuments crumble.
My suggestion is to run ads on CBC television. Continuously. Supplement the ads with documentaries. Partner with film companies to produce films featuring Bruce Willis engaged in fire fights under the Dome. CBC is the solution.
Because. If the CBC ever ceases to exist . . . so will Canada. And then truly, no one will care. For eternity.
Now, smile a little.
Admit it.
You can live with nuclear waste.
And love it.
(P.S. Do you know how seriously Canada’s parliamentarians are taking the proposal to dump all of the country’s nuclear waste on one little community? There is only one parliamentarian who is concerned: Bruce Hyer, Member of Parliament for Thunder Bay-Superior North. He is the only parliamentarian trying to get a public debate going. And once he knows how we, his constituents, feel, he will take a position on the issue. We are making history here. Other countries are looking into alternatives. We can be world leaders here ̶ for better or for worse. Yes, each one of us can make a difference.)
[That’s all, folks. These chapters are a series of daily blog posts starting 20 November 2014. http://ejlavoie.wordpress.com – E.J. Lavoie]
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