When we come to the Nuclear Waste Management Organization, this organization will be spending an anticipated $26 billion to dispose of Canada's high-level radioactive waste from the commercial nuclear power plants. However, if they, for example, were to choose a site and emplace the waste, as they did in Germany, and then discovered that the site was unsuitable, they would be faced with a tremendous dilemma, because if they have to take the waste out again and start all over again, obviously the costs mount greatly. That's what happened in other countries, as you said.
In Hanford, Washington, for example, and at Sellafield in northern England, the costs of cleanup have amounted to the equivalent of $100 billion. That's just to deal with the cleanup of that waste. Remember that cleanup doesn't mean that we're eliminating it, simply that we're storing it in a better condition.
This is a problem that is going to plague our grandchildren's grandchildren, whether we like it or not. It's not something that we can rid of by snapping our fingers.
When you reprocess the waste to recover plutonium, many studies have shown that, in fact, you generate even more complicated waste. You do not reduce the volume of the repository, nor do you reduce the overall volume of the actual waste, because you add to the volume of waste with contaminated equipment, etc. Reprocessing is not a solution to the waste problem, although the industry portrays it as such.
One of the things I'm concerned about is that the industry is looking for government funding in order to help their industry survive and to help Canadians. However, I think this committee should recommend research that is specifically aimed at protecting the health and safety of Canadians from the by-products of this industry.