Ship happens?

If you believe the folks at the Bruce nuclear power plant in Ontario, there's little to fear from the proposed shipment of 16 steam generators contaminated with radioactive waste.

Under a plan proposed by the company, the generators — each the size of a school bus and weighing in at 100 tons — would be shipped through three Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence Seaway and across the Atlantic to Sweden, where the metal would be recycled and the remaining radioactive material returned to Canada. Both legs of the trip would include Lake St. Clair and the Detroit River.

Duncan Hawthorne, the CEO of Bruce Power, made the whole issue sound almost trivial during a recent hearing on the matter in Ottawa. "There would be a greater radiological impact of someone with a pacemaker falling over the side of a boat and drowning," he testified, according to a report from CBC News. "He would introduce more radioactive material into the lake than one of our steam generators."

As for opponents of the plan, they are the usual anti-nuclear suspects "who oppose everything we try to do," says John Peevers, spokesman for Bruce Power.

Except that it's not just the no-nuke crowd waving red flags here. For starters, there are seven U.S. senators from Great Lakes states — including Michigan Democrats Carl Levin and Debbie Stabenow — who have signed a letter expressing their concerns about the plan.

"It is our understanding that the proposed shipment of 16 radioactively contaminated nuclear steam generators would require several exemptions from international radioactive shipping standards because the shipment would exceed the amount of radioactivity allowed for a single shipment and would not comply with current shipping container requirements," the senators wrote in an October letter to the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, which would have to give its stamp of approval for the plan to proceed.

"We urge you to comply with both the letter and the spirit of he law and reject any proposal that does not protect the Great Lakes or comply with U.S. and international standards," the senators concluded.

But those seven solons are far from alone. When the nonprofit environmental group Great Lakes United produced a resolution calling for a halt to the proposed shipments, they received the support of a broad coalition that includes: seven aboriginal organizations, 38 local municipal authorities, seven professional organizations, 14 peace and justice organizations, 23 environmental organizations and 30 nuclear watchdog groups.

So opposition to the plan is certainly broad.

Opponents want the contaminated generators to be kept on site. That's what the company originally planned to do, according to an earlier environmental impact assessment it filed. That plan, which has already been approved, is far preferable, says scientist Gordon Edwards, president of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility.

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