Saturday, September 6, 2008

Questions for the Bruce panel

I love it now that the panel has been picked. You know their background, and you know what the panel will confine itself to. Obviously, you cannot pick any woolly scientific issues, since these people are not scientists. With this in mind, I have picked two issues which I think are within their remit, and understanding.

Grout

Bruce C will be like any other nuclear plant (such as Darlington), except it will consume trainloads of grout. You can probably take all the grout used in Bruce B (the records of which have been lost), and multiply it by two, for modern standards, and longer tunnels. Their is an environmental impact of making all that grout (tons of coal at St. Marys), transporting it, and the impact of injecting it into porous rock.

Stability of Seismic Hazard Estimate

Currently, the seismic hazard estimate is better than at Darlington. There are no scientific investigations currently in place, other than company-sponsored studies. The real question is the stability of this hazard estimate. The question to ask: "Is this seismic hazard estimate going to be stable over the next 10 years?". The environmental impact of a changed seismic hazard is immense. Many nuclear projects have been closed because they found a new fault, or the science changed. An abandoned nuclear plant is a terrible thing!

The Bruce site may be on the 'daylight line' of the Grenville Fault. This line is easily traceable over a large part of North America. Is there scientific proof for this? No. Is there proof against it? No. Will it always be a 'non-investigated' item? Who can tell, for there are a lot of data records of deep seismic reflection work, that has never been looked at.

Why is the site rock horribly fractured? This has never been looked at, but perhaps one day? The current non-interest in the site is not a stable situation. There are enough unknowns hovering around the plant to be a cause of concern.

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