Trucks carrying highly radioactive nuclear waste from Canada may soon be rolling through northeast Ohio. They’ll be bound for a disposal site at an old cold-war atomic bomb plant in South Carolina.
A decision was made at the 2007 Washington DC Nuclear Summit to “re-patriate” weapons-grade
Canadian anti-nuclear activist Gordon Edwards say that’s now to go to the Carolina site. “They have a particular facility where they actually used to separate plutonium. And that’s where the high level radioactive liquid from Chalk River is going.”
Half a dozen U.S. and Canadian environmental groups tried to block the shipments but lost in federal court. Trucks are expected to roll in the next few weeks.
The U.S. Department of Energy has not commented on routes of the waste trucks. However, the Peace Bridge at Buffalo, NY has been a point of entry in the past for nuclear material transfers from Chalk River to Savannah River, with the highway link to South Carolina then involving I-79 and/or I-77 --as stated in a May, 2013 Nuclear Regulatory Commission document. The document also indicates this is an approved route through May, 2018.