TCNS — Alarm bells are ringing as radioactive waste is detected in an increasing number of Canadian landfill sites. Last year, alarms were sounded one hundred nineteen times, as opposed to only thirteen in 2009 and just three the previous year. The report comes from the Federal Nuclear Safety Commission.
Over seventy-five percent of the alarms were triggered by small quantities of short-lived radioactive isotopes from the medical industry. These substances pose ‘little or no risk,’ in the majority of cases. The report gave no data on the remainder. In documents obtained by The Canadian News Service, it was found that several radioactive devices wound up in landfills, or in the hands of scrap metal dealers. This, ‘highlights the growing concern,’ about disposal of hazardous nuclear waste. It raises questions about gaps in the hodge-podge patchwork quilt of systems at landfills nationwide that monitor and detect such types of waste from hospitals, laboratories, and industrial plants.
There is no way to tell how much radioactive waste ends up in Canadian landfills. It is unknown whether it gets there by accident or otherwise. In several provinces, there are no regulations requiring radiation detection devices at landfills or transfer stations, where truckloads of waste are stored before dispatch to a landfill or recycler. Quebec is presently implementing plans to have legal guidelines in place. This was originally targeted for January 2009.
“The gaps in the system are symptomatic of a hit-or-miss regime. The low-level radioactive waste that can legally be dumped might set off an alarm, while a genuinely dangerous device might go undetected,” according to sources.
One southern Ontario landfill operator suggested it might be easy to get around the monitors.
“Supposedly, if you have any radiation stuff, what you’re supposed to do, (and you didn’t hear this from me,) is take it somewhere else and dump it,” said the unidentified owner. “Dump it in some other place that doesn’t have the detection devices because they don’t want to deal with it.”
In February 2008 a gas chromatograph containing radioactive nickel went missing from the University of Saskatchewan’s neuropsychiatric unit. It was sent to a scrap dealer, who dispatched it to a Saskatchewan landfill. The radioactive source was considered low-risk, in no danger of leakage, and covered in layers of other landfill.
debris, according to university radiation safety officer Petisha Pratt.
She would have, ‘gone to the landfill and dug’ for it, ‘if she had known it was missing.’
“There were no health consequences; so we didn’t worry,” she said.
A radioactivity monitoring device sounded at a landfill site in Ile des Chats, Manitoba in June, 2009. Investigation revealed a load of trash that came from St. Bonaventure General Hospital. Checks revealed that a device containing radioactive barium was missing. The item was retrieved and subsequently returned to hospital authorities. — Staff Writers
Local environmental summit planned…
The Community Round Table is planning an environmental summit in order to get ‘ideas and solutions’ on environmental sustainability. This happens Nov. 10 at Lennox College, beginning at 8:30 a.m.. The forum will be a platform to discuss what Lennox residents can do to help protect our habitat.
“This is a great opportunity for citizens,” says committee chairperson Alyssa Sakalalavic. “Let’s see what we can do collectively in the community to improve the environment, and what we can do together to send a message that we’re concerned about it.”
The event follows a community summit held last year. Discussions begin with some opening remarks, after which community members will break off into groups to discuss topics including the natural environment, energy conservation, garbage and recycling programs, and other issues involving water and air.
“People will be able to choose which of the sessions they would like to go into,” says Sakalalavic. “Then they can brainstorm possible strategies. Little things people can do to help.”
“Everyone from elementary age schoolchildren to senior citizens are invited, and encouraged to attend,” she said.
On the evening prior to the summit, the roundtable will present Leonardo DiCaprio’s ‘The Eleventh Hour.’ The film examines how human activities affect the environment, the way people live, and what can be done to change negative environmental impacts. With more than fifty environmental experts, world leaders and activists interviewed, Ms. Sakalalavic says it should help to generate ideas for the Saturday summit. The film will be presented at the Lennox Library auditorium at 7 p.m. Friday.
— Les Purvis
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“Huh! I should go to that summit and tell them the cougars are really just barn cats that drank from a radioactive puddle, and what with the isolation, and, ah; a little too much inbreeding...”
His old man chuckled. Bru grinned at the concept of radioactive pussycats, big enough to eat a horse.
“These are the dingbats who’re suggesting that we should brush our teeth in a glass of water,” said Chuck. “They’re saying we shouldn’t flush our toilets. ‘If its yellow, let it mellow, if it’s brown, flush it down.’ The dummies figure that way the rich can keep their yachts, the assholes can keep their Hummers, and the government can keep sucking the cocks of the big corporations.”
He thought for a moment.
“I should go to that summit and tell everyone to buy a hemp wallet,” he grumbled. “A hemp fucking shopping bag, and that way, Chemical Alley will be able to keep pumping out the filth and the plastic shopping bags for years to come.”
Brubaker despised the official line, that ‘if everyone except us made a few little changes,’ yet recently it was announced that the province had met its target of a reduction in electricity demand. He figured it was because the working poor got cut off due to non-payment of bills. People like his brother’s family in London. Sometimes they went eight months without hot water, using candles to light the place. He had no idea how they cooked when the hydro was cut off. His little nephews were five and eight years old, and there was his step-niece Magpie, fifteen just this month. Willy and Sue worked their asses off, and could never catch up, let alone get ahead. At some point they missed a payment on the auto insurance…insurance yanked…picked up in a speed trap, Sue got a $5,000 fine.
They were well and truly fucked now, eh?
“It just doesn’t bear thinking about,” he told Butt Plug, who had the annoying habit of jumping up on the kitchen table and plopping his ass down right in the middle of the page you were reading.
“Meow?” inquired the cat, purring and rolling around on his back.
“Shoo, you little cocksucker,” said Bru in a passable impression of Mike Smith, the ‘Bubbles,’ of the infamous ‘Trailer Park Boys’.
“Get outa here, you little motherfucker.”
In the next room Big Frank just shook his head. Finally the cat allowed himself to be persuaded to leave.
Will Smith was yelling in his puppy-dog whine. The movie ‘I, Robot,’ was playing. It was based on a book by one of Brubaker’s favourite authors, Isaac Asimov.
“Why do robots always have to talk so gay?” asked the old man.
“It’s part of the scariness. That way you know they’re truly evil,” suggested Bru. “Just wait until some aliens come down and try to anally probe them guys. Then the sparks will fly.”
The phone rang and Brubaker picked it up.
“This is Sergeant Oberon of Lennox Police Services. May I please speak with Mister Charles Henry Brubaker?”
“Aw, fuck,” said Bru.
“We’re sending a car around for you, Bru. We just want to ask a few questions. You’re better off to cooperate,” and then the sergeant abruptly hung up.
At that exact moment, a pounding came loud and insistent at the front door, so Bru didn’t get to call his lawyer or anything.
“Don’t answer that,” he told the elder Brubaker. “I have to go change my socks.”
Then he nipped downstairs on a hunch, and quickly put fresh batteries in his slender, pocket-sized tape recorder. He slipped it into his waistband on an angle; with the microphone part up near the right hip. A quick swatch of duct tape, four inches long for security. He knew the controls by feel. A man can only take so much. As the Boy Scouts say, ‘Be prepared.’
Chapter Thirty-One
The obligatory police interrogation scene…
Core Values Page 30