Re: “Don’t mislead on waste plans: Canadian Nuclear Society,” (The Hill Times, April 5, p. 8).

Neil Alexander and Guy Hotte claim that Kevin Philpupillai’s March 13 story is misleading, but they are also quite misleading.

We understand the planned deep disposal and have followed closely previously failed attempts to secure a repository. We know that Finland is opening what might be the first functioning such disposal in the world. We have followed the research concerning containment vessels for the waste. Not only do we want safe stewardship of the waste—maybe more than the nuclear industry—but we would like honesty.

No one is proposing to “dig that big hole and throw all the waste in.” However, here is where reality comes in: the “carefully placed used fuel in a network of engineered placement rooms” is no longer in solid rock. It is in disturbed, hollowed-out, and tunneled-through rock.

They must think that the public is stupid. Radioactive waste is not like cadmium, niobium, arsenic or any other pollutant. It is forever changing, and what is put into storage today will not be the same as it will be in 100 years.

It is unbelievably presumptive for anyone to say that a Deep Geological Repository (beside the Great Lakes) will never be breached in the lifetime of the human race.

Dale Dewar
Wynyard, Sask.