To tell you the truth, for the first 30 years of the nuclear industry here in Canada, nuclear waste was not even mentioned. It was presented as a completely clean technology. It was only in 1977 that the federal government published its green paper on managing Canada's nuclear waste, the so-called Hare report. That's where the idea of a DGR, a deep geological repository, for this waste was put forward in Canada. Subsequently, there were many other hearings that commented on this.
The difficulty is with the experience that we've had worldwide. The United States has failed eight times to locate a waste repository for their high-level waste. In Carlsbad, New Mexico, a drum exploded, and plutonium dust went 475 metres up. It contaminated 22 workers, and then drifted downwind to Carlsbad. There are also the two episodes I mentioned in Germany. These experiences should teach us to be cautious. Our organization has come to the view that, certainly for the foreseeable future, we should adopt a policy of rolling stewardship. That means we should not be irrevocably burying nuclear waste underground where it's beyond human control, but rather keeping it monitored and retrievable until we know a whole lot more than we do now.