For the record I have known Tony McQuail

Dear Editor; For the record I have known Tony McQuail, the author of August 14th letter titled "Anti-nuclear group branches out from Huron-Kinloss" and we have found some commonality on issues associated with social justice for example. However, his letter found in the August 14th edition latches onto the "anti-nuclear" lobby's pattern of bringing nuclear weapons and items such as debt retirement to their articles. One is clearly fear mongering and does not belong in any article where a credible debate on the peaceful use of nuclear energy is on the table. Further, the debt component of his article has less to do with issues with nuclear energy and more to do with bad government policy that related to delays in bringing on the Darlington Nuclear Power Station. Suggesting that community members strike out and gather information on any item of public policy is prudent, but to intimate that organizations (such as NWMO,) who have stored and continue to store nuclear waste in a regulated and responsible manner for many years, is intentionally denying or twisting the message to mislead people is rather bizarre. The title of organization noted is the Nuclear Waste Management Organization and it is regulated by the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC). Not sure where the confusion lies! In the same article Tony uses the term nuclear dump; once again the call of the anti-nuclear groups. Any deep geological repository or high level waste storage facility is about as far away from a "dump" as one can get. As it is today the waste is will be highly regulated by the CNSC and any and all provincial and federal regulators with jurisdiction. To provide an example of how well this has been managed just take the entire accumulated waste of sixty years of peaceful nuclear activity in Canada and you will find that all the waste is held in an area that is equal in size to about seven ice hockey rinks up to about the height of the boards. This is storage is the low and medium waste and the high level waste, or fuel, is already stored above ground in highly regulated facilities. No other form of electricity production can lay claim to 60 years of safe and efficient production with such small amounts of waste. Nuclear plants in Canada have mitigated the emission of billions of tons of climate changing greenhouse gases from fossil fuel generation that would have had to be used without the success Ontario and Canada's nuclear fleet. Perhaps in the interest of complete fairness Tony's next article will discuss the $100 plus per megawatt hour that some renewables used to generate electricity actually cost as compared to Ontario's nuclear fleet that is subject to considerably less revenue per megawatt hour or that the renewables with extremely poor capacity factors are all backed by fossil fuelled power plants. At the end of the day Tony has to be respected for his social justice values, but the anti nuclear lobby is clearly out of touch with the current state of nuclear industry and its regulators.