CRED is a member of the SMRs Information Task Force. Here’s our latest bulletin:
Promoters and vendors of new nuclear reactors appear ready to move ahead with the generation of new varieties of long-lived radioactive wastes without having the science or social license to safely manage those wastes for hundreds of thousands of years.
The current $26 billion plan for the long-term management of Canada’s highly radioactive nuclear fuel waste is based solely on the used fuel from CANDU reactors owned by Ontario Power Generation, Hydro Quebec and New Brunswick Power. The plan, 45 years in the making but still at the concept stage, is facing strong and growing opposition by potentially affected Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities.
The current designs for a deep geological repository would not accommodate the radioactive wastes from SMRs given their very different dimensions, heat generation, burn-up rates, chemistry, and levels of radioactivity compared to the CANDU wastes the industry has spent decades studying. For SMR wastes, the transportation systems, the spacing of the wastes for storage, and the safety case – including the risks of unanticipated chemical reactions and nuclear criticality – will all be fundamentally different.
Read the full bulletin, in both official languages, HERE.