14 DAY TRIAL // Canada now sits on quite a lot of nuclear waste. Luckily, it appears that the country has figured out the perfect way to get rid of it.
Long story short, it plans to build a nuclear waste storage facility in the town of Kincardine, and have some 200,000 cubic meters (7,062,933 cubic feet) of radioactive waste spend the following many years in this location.
According to Oil Price, the storage facility would be built on the Canadian side of Lake Huron, and opposite to the thumb of the state of Michigan.
The people who came up with the proposal for this project say that the nuclear waste would be stored at a depth of about 2,200 feet (670.5 meters) below the ground, in a thick layer of limestone. What's more, it would be capped by a layer of shale.
Otherwise put, the chances that the facility would ever constitute a threat to the environment are slim to none.
Environmentalists disagree and argue that, all things considered, it could happen that Lake Huron would become contaminated.
“The placement of this nuclear waste storage facility is of great concern given its location near Lake Huron and the importance of the Great Lakes to tens of millions of U.S. and Canadian citizens for drinking water, fisheries, tourism, recreation and other industrial and economic uses.”
“Special consideration must be given to the potential environmental impacts of such a large radioactive waste site on the shores of our region’s most important natural resource,” US Senators Debbie Stabenow and Carl Levin argue in a letter that they have recently sent to US Secretary of State John Kerry.
Interestingly enough, people living in the town of Kincardine appear to support this project. Their chief reason for doing so is thinking that, should the facility be built, they would benefit from the creation of new job opportunities.
Plans to build the nuclear waste storage facility have not yet been officially approved, and many hope they never will be. More information on the topic is expected to be made available to the public in the weeks to come.