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Paroles prophétiques sur des déversements nucléaires
Wednesday, November 23, 2005 Tom Spears, The Ottawa Citizen (version originale anglaise)Citizen reporter Doug Fischer found the following on page one of the September 27, 1945, Ottawa Evening Citizen.
Promises Nothing From Atomic Plant Ever Going To Get Into Ottawa River.
No by-product of the Chalk River atomic plant is going to get into the Ottawa River, and there’s no use discussing it any further, Dr. C.J. MacKenzie, head of the National Research Council said yesterday.
He was asked what would be the effect, supposing that some radioactive elements got into the Ottawa River from the Chalk River plant.
“They just are not ever going to get in,” he replied.
Suppose, asked The Evening Citizen, there was a river somewhere in the world where atomic byproducts might get in.
“Nothing serious would happen,” said Dr. MacKenzie. “It would be like any pollution. Sewage gets into the Ottawa River, but never enough to kill anybody. Acids from pulp and paper plants enter the river, but not in sufficient quantities to kill anybody.
“Pollution of any river is a matter of proportion. You put enough rain water, off the muddy streets of Ottawa into the Ottawa, and you will have pollution.
“All rivers are polluted, and it would be a matter of degree.
“Assuming some of the byproducts you mention did get into a river, I don’t suppose they would hurt very much unless they were there in very large quantities. But if you ask me about the Chalk River plant, and the Ottawa River, the answer is that there just isn’t ever going to be anything from that plant get into the Ottawa River.”
Oops. Never say ‘never,’ doc. Little dribs and drabs of strontium and stuff are indeed leaching through soil and into the Ottawa from the Chalk River plant today.
His incredibly cavalier dismissal ignores local history, too. Sewage in the Ottawa River DID kill people, nearly 200 of them, in two typhoid epidemics some 30 years before this interview.
© Ottawa Citizen 2005
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