LETTER

 

-----  Chalk River Nuclear Waste

 

In 1943, the year I was born, plans were made to build the Chalk River Nuclear Reactor. An isotope made at Chalk River would be needed to treat me.

In 1952, the year of the biggest nuclear accident in Canadian history, we camped, fished, swam and drank fresh cows’ milk within sight of Chalk River smoke stacks. 

When my three sons were small, I noticed a hard lump in the front of my neck. The MD said it was thyroid cancer, easily treated in women, and I would be fine. It took me a year to bounce back from the largest allowable dose of radiation to destroy my thyroid gland. 

Along our half-kilometer of shoreline, three km. below the nuclear plant, there were few cottages in the early days and cottagers came from the US and various locations in Ontario and Quebec. No statistics are available for cancers. Three of my beach neighbors developed thyroid cancer, one ovarian as well as thyroid cancer. My oldest friend next door had four types of cancer. Now there are many others.

Cottagers know that the earth moves near Chalk River. I remember waking up to dishes rattling on a number of occasions and feeling the ground move under my tent. We also feel the ground shaken by blasts from Petawawa Military Base. Training flights roar overhead and guns sound. In the past, windows have cracked. Why would anyone build a nuclear reactor, or an above-ground mound for nuclear waste, in an earthquake zone, on a fault line, by a military base, below Des Joachim Dam and beside a major river? 

Why would anyone build a permanent mega-dump, the size of 400 Olympic swimming pools, that may eventually be abandoned and could be easily damaged? Waste from accidents and uses of the past is still buried in sand and still leaching into the river. Isn’t cleanup a priority before a more permanent and safe solution is figured out?

Why would anyone endanger the health of Canadians further when there has been so much devastating damage done already?

Georgina Bartos

Ottawa