by Walt Robbins

Created on: September 02, 2009   Last Updated: September 03, 2009

WATER, ROCKS AND NUCLEAR WASTE

HOORAY! We hit water, and lots of it! At two hundred forty feet, the pinkish gray granite rock gave way to a reddish color and at two hundred and eighty feet our well "came in." Water was being pumped from the hole at the rate of forty gallons per minute, and had leveled off at a depth of sixteen feet from the surface. Our eastern Manitoba household would have plenty of clean, cold water.

Could there be a veritable labyrinth of rivers and streams underground, running cold and deep, through the ancient Pre-Cambrian rock of the Canadian Shield? The strangest thought of all was that we had tampered with some of the deep secrets of the world below us. Nature was permanently altered and had given to us one of her most valued treasures. For that we were thankful.

While we were well drilling on our property, Atomic Energy of Canada, Ltd., (AECL), at its nearby nuclear research station, was conducting test drilling as a prelude for an underground nuclear waste research laboratory (URL) in our municipality. It's officials initially insisted that the granite rock formation in the area had remarkably few cracks.

However, during the major excavation of the URL during the early 1980's, an extensive water-bearing fracture zone was encountered. Several cracks, including a large fracture resulted in the intake of considerable amounts of ground water. requiring pumps to run continuously.

Probably the most descriptive statement about the wet condition of the URL came from Walter Patterson, when he spoke at a 1986 nuclear waste conference in Winnipeg. Trained in nuclear physics and residing in the UK, he was involved with many aspects of nuclear technology for decades. He visited the URL underground facility as an advisor to a Select Environmental Committee of the British Parliament.

After the visit, the Parliamentarians asked his opinion of the operation. Patterson told the conferees, that for the first time on the entire Canadian trip, "I had to say I had not the faintest idea.. I do not know why they are doing what they are doing: because if this is supposed to be research for an underground repository for final disposal of spent fuel, everybody in the business knows that the one thing you have to avoid is water - and the place is soaking! Absolutely soaking! Up to here (gesturing) in water!"

My comment to reporters after I visited the URL excavation was, "if you plan to go down into that hole, be sure to take your rain boots, an umbrella and a life

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