Dear Editor:
Reading letters last week on nuclear waste storage really makes me wonder how engineers could be so inconsiderate to design unsafe abominations like the “Toxic waste forever” letters imply. Of course they don’t.
As a consulting engineer I have worked for decades in heavy industries and in my humble (maybe biased) view, engineers are foremost excellent environment ambassadors. Their profession requires them to protect people, with the safety of the public being mandated as job number one. When I first looked at a Nuclear Waste Storage Facility I was most struck with how little there actually is. Popular depiction paints it as massive! Of course the containment structures are properly designed for x-life and even missile attack so they are ultra-safe. How do virtually indestructible containments leak into groundwater? Our Candu reactors are old technology – think of clunky cellphones of the 90’s – but yet they have safely produced more than 60% of Ontario’s energy needs for decades. However, we now have smart phones and similarly we are developing smarter nuclear power plants. New SMR technologies in nuclear design are compact, efficient and are fail safe (ie – Isaac Newton’s gravity shuts them down).
If you believe the dire global situation we are in, then nuclear power production development has to be of primary interest. That is why provincial governments and (finally) even the feds have signed on to their rapid development. Nuclear is the largest-scale energy in Ontario that produces zero C02.
Some technologies are looking at utilizing some of the current unused energy remaining in waste uranium. Irrespective, we must “wise up,” stop whining on with old out-of-date Homer Simpson ideas and realize that nuclear energy is not an enemy but a potential strong ally in cleaning up our world.
Mike Hall,
Wellington County