Maybe we're looking at the problem transporting nuclear waste to a recycling faciilty from the wrong angle. The Green Party's economic plan says we need to "get the prices right." Megan told me today on the phone that Ontario Power Generation charges Bruce Power by volume to store its waste. After going through the recycling process Bruce Power will have less waste by volume to store...even though it's the same amount of radioactive waste. We allowed Bruce A to come back online. We knew that the steam generators would be deemed waste and moved to the Western Waste Management Facility. The storage costs must have been known. They must have been factored into all the calculations that put us in the position we're in now.

The storage fees that OPG charges must be huge for Bruce Power to be willing to go through what they're currently dealing with. I'm not saying they're caught between a rock and a hard place. I'm not even saying they're choosing the right option. But what I'm wondering is this: Maybe we've simply assigned the wrong price to the cost of storage. Maybe if storage were cheaper there would be less incentive for Bruce Power to transport nuclear waste over the ocean twice.

I've left a voice mail with the Ontario Power Generation to ask how much cheaper it will be for Bruce Power to store waste from the steam generators before processing and after processing. I also want to know more about how WWMF expands its waste facilities and how it assigns a cost to what's incoming. Why does volume-based pricing make sense to OPG? What is the cost of building a recycling facility like the one in Sweden? With these new types of recycling facilities (such as the one in Sweden) do we still have the right price on the cost of storing nuclear waste?