Nuclear waste loonies in Windsor

I was waiting for this. The federal report on the storage of high-level nuclear waste mentioned everybody and their dog as candidates for a deep waste anti-mine. Now a local desperate candidate has whipped up the conspiracy theory that Windsor, Ontario (low on the list of best places to visit!), has been singled out for nuclear waste.

Of course, nearly any town in Ontario could do this, but Windsor is the first! People should be more concerned about real plans! One day, I would be proud to get money for a decent effort, but I haven't seen it yet. I would also like a decent effort for a new nuclear plant (ditto!). Speaking of which, there must be dozen people in Canada, who could lead a new plant, but they are all very retired. I know there is now an effort to knock at their door, and I hope, for their health, that they have a good chuckle! That only leaves me!! :) (and right now I'm at the cottage, enjoying the fall colours).

Fault discovered beneath nuclear waste dump!

No, it isn't up at the Bruce! It's the poor, hard-hit Yucca-yucca site that the US has pinned so much hope on, merely because it's in the middle of all those old nuclear bomb sites.

They have had the difficult task of showing that the area is a perfect glass marble, and will remain pristine for a million years! Well, nothing and nobody is that perfect! I wonder how this will affect all those new nuclear plans....

Hanford starts up again

I like to have fun with Ontario's plans to stack nuclear waste into an active fault, but the truth is that our waste is nothing compared to the US. They've got liquid plutonium, for God's sake! The worst crap is up at the Hanford nuclear dump. I've been following this for years, but this article says they've started again on their pie-in-the-sky dream to turn all of this into beer-bottle glass. They are umpteen years late, and billions over budget. Just shows that nuclear spans the full spectrum of human behaviour! (ie. STUPID!!) :)

Geology of Bruce, Ontario

Since the cash has started to fly, I would open up the session by telling what I know about the site. I won't cite references because there aren't any! This is the most unstudied area I know. All information is safely hidden in-house.

I first became aware of the site, when I first joined the big company, 28 years ago. At the time, they were building a water intake tunnel, which was so leaky you had to wear a heavy raincoat to go into it. I was terrified, and never took up the opportunity to visit. To dig that tunnel, they had to use trainloads of grout, and they still ran into a huge cavern. Now there's a dog-leg in the tunnel, in order to go around it.

At the time I was taking stress measurements all over Ontario, and I always found high stresses and solid, tight rock. I could not believe there could be such an area where the rock was so bad, so I made a study of it. I wrote some of the results in Paleocollapse.

As such, I formed a hypothesis, which was testable:

Hypothesis One: The paleocollapse was caused by the dissolution of the deep salt beds under the limestones. There should be standard, solid limestone under the former salt beds.

Over 28 years, I learned a lot, so now there is this:

Hypothesis Two: The salt beds and carbonates were laid on the soft hanging wall of the Grenville Front (megathrust). This eventually resulted in extensive fracturing, and the dissolution of the salts.

Both hypotheses can be tested by drilling a deep hole, which is now being done in-house. I just worry that all the results will be spun towards #1. They have to proceed, no matter what, because they have left no alternative. They hearings will conclude that they should proceed, on the proviso that if they find something politcally unacceptable, they will stop. No scientific criteria will be set.

For interest, look at the Google picture. All of the paleocollapse is below a cliff that runs NE, parallel to the Grenville Front. The area NE of the plant shows the sinkholes, and is exactly like an air photo I once saw that was done before the plant was built.