Paul Mitchell, of the Detroit Fress Press, opines that In recent months there has been an uproar over a proposed low-level nuclear waste facility being developed along the shores of Lake Huron in Canada. This facility would allow Ontario Power Generation to store low-level waste 2,000 feet below ground less than a mile from Lake Huron. New Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau recently delayed the decision on whether to move forward on this project until March 1. Nuclear power plants currently dot the lakes on both sides of the U.S... Canadian border.
Nuclear power is a key component of our national energy policy with nearly 20% of our national electricity, and around 30% here in Michigan, coming from nuclear power. Canada produces about 16% of its electricity via nuclear power with many of those plants along the shores of the Great Lakes. Yet, we still have failed to address the challenge of how to safely and permanently store the spent nuclear fuel in Canada and radioactive waste generated at U.S. nuclear plants to protect our environment, particularly the Great Lakes. Due to federal inaction and outrageous political deals, power generation companies are forced to store highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel onsite along the shores of the Great Lakes. There is a solution to this problem ... a solution for which American taxpayers and electricity rate payers have already spent tens of billions of dollars for the national nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain deep in the desert wilderness of Nevada.
The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1987 mandated such a site be built to accept waste from across the nation, and Yucca Mountain was approved by Congress in 2002 after having been studied as a possible location since 1978 and scientifically deemed to be a safe repository of this waste for at least 10,000 years. In 2008, presidential candidate Barack Obama promised to abandon Yucca Mountain in an effort to win the favor of then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid...
Original working URL: https://www.freep.com/story/opinion/contributors/2015/12/09/nuclear-waste/77009180/
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