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What is High-Level nuclear waste?
“High level nuclear waste” consists mainly of the fuel rods that are removed from nuclear reactors once they are so radioactive as to be no longer useful for generating energy. They contain a wide range of radioactive elements, some of which do not occur in nature, and some of which remain radioactive for literally millennia. They are also extremely hot and will kill an exposed human in minutes.
These properties mean they must be isolated from the environment, shielded and cooled in water for at least 10 years at the reactor sites before they can be moved into “dry” storage. Currently, there are some 3.3 million fuel rod bundles stored in cooling pools or in temporary dry storage in Canada (mostly in Southern Ontario, New Brunswick and Quebec). And this number grows every day a nuclear reactor keeps running.
What are Deep Geological Repositories?
The final storage solution for high level nuclear waste has been the subject of debate worldwide since the dawn of the nuclear industry in the 1940s. No country has yet developed and implemented a safe and socially acceptable solution, though many, including Canada, are focussed on developing so-called “Deep Geological Repositories” (DGRs). DGRs are essentially envisaged by the nuclear industry as very deep holes and lateral tunnels like a mine drilled in bedrock. Specially designed waste-holding canisters would be placed in the tunnels and when the excavation is full, the hole would be filled with buffer materials and grout. After a period of monitoring, the site would be closed up and shut down.
What are the risks to water?
Research has focused on how to isolate the canisters and their contents from the inevitable ingress of groundwater into the cavern for enough time to prevent radioactive contamination of ground and connected surface waters.
The Nuclear Waste Management Organization, or NWMO, (consisting of the major players in Canada’s nuclear industry) is communicating that a DGR will be a safe solution. NWMO has an interest in implementing a DGR as it will help to clear out the at-reactor temporary storage areas which are at, or nearing capacity, to allow for the production of more high-level waste.
Others including some nuclear scientists and engineers are not so sure and point to the risk of contamination of entire watersheds if radioactive water escapes the repository. If radioactive contamination is detected in the future, there will be no way to contain it, and no way to retrieve the thousands of buried canisters to rectify the problem.
Leakage from a repository is not the only way that radiation could enter the environment. The transportation of millions of canisters, and the “repackaging” of waste canisters to burial canisters at the DGR site are also potential accident and exposure points.
How was site selection carried out?
NWMO announced its preferred site for Canada’s future DGR on November 28, 2024 - the Revell area of Northwest Ontario – between the towns of Ignace and Dryden. The township of Ignace is considered to be the potential “host community” for the Revell site, and on July 10, 2024, Ignace Council voted in favour of being a “willing host” for this massive storage hole in the ground and the accompanying transfer facility.
NWMO provided Ignace a half million dollar signing bonus, in addition to many donations and monetary contributions to local initiatives leading up to the vote.
Wabigoon Lake Ojibway Nation (WLON), the closest First Nation community to Revell Lake, held a community wide referendum just days before the NWMO announcement. The referendum question was not made public, but WLON reported that the majority of their members voted in favour of continuing studies of the Revell site. They were clear that the vote did not constitute “consent” to the DGR Project. Any financial arrangements between WLON and NWMO are not public. NWMO’s publicly declared process indicated that site selection would only be made after a “compelling demonstration of willingness” from both Indigenous and non-Indigenous host communities. To date that compelling demonstration has not been secured.
What are the problems with the NW Ontario site?
Problems abound with the NWMO announcement, not the least of which is that the site in question is not even in Ignace Township, or in the same watershed. The Revell batholith site, 45 kilometres west of Ignace, lies on the watersheds of both the Rainy River which flows into Lake of the Woods, and thence to the Winnipeg River and Lake Winnipeg, and the English/Wabigoon River system which flows north through Lac Seul and into Lake Winnipeg.
To reach northwestern Ontario, the waste will have to be transported to Revell - several massive shipments daily for 40 years for the existing waste - along the often-treacherous route skirting Lake Superior. It must then be “repackaged” in a surface facility. Little is publicly known about what this entails, but any accidents and even routine cleaning will result in radioactive pollution to the surrounding waters. No downstream or transportation route communities have expressed approval of the Revell site. Many have passed resolutions against it.
Are there First Nation concerns?
First Nations along the downstream routes have expressed their opposition to this project. Chief Rudy Turtle of Asubpeeschoseewagong (Grassy Narrows) was clear in his letter to the CEO of NWMO: “The water from that site flows past our reserve and into the waters where we fish, drink, and swim. The material that you want to store there will be dangerous for longer than Canada has existed, longer than Europeans have been on Turtle Island, and longer than anything that human beings have ever built has lasted. How can you reliably claim that this extremely dangerous waste will safely be contained for hundreds of thousands of years?”
His views are echoed by neighbouring chiefs, and other Treaty 3 First Nations have rejected nuclear waste transportation and abandonment through and in their territories.
Has there been past opposition?
In 1986, a citizens group in the Eastern Townships of Quebec successfully lobbied politicians on both sides of the border to reject a US proposal for a massive nuclear waste repository in Vermont, on a watershed flowing into Canada.
Around the same time, Manitoba citizens convinced our government to oppose another proposed US nuclear waste site – with potential for drainage to the Red River. And eventually, the NDP government of Howard Pawley passed Manitoba’s High-Level Radioactive Waste Act, banning nuclear waste disposal in this province.
What is the Manitoba government’s position?
We do not know where Manitoba stands today, even though the Revell site is not far from Manitoba and the water is flowing this way. No single town or community should be making decisions with such profound risks to all of our health and futures. People who depend on Manitoba rivers and lakes (including Winnipeggers, via our water supply from Shoal Lake) should be part of this decision.
Nuclear waste problem is not solved
Original printed in the Winnipeg Free Press 12/03/24 Page:A9
By Anne Lindsey
On November 26, right on schedule, the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) triumphantly declared they have picked their site for the future Deep Geological Repository (DGR) for all of Canada’s high-level nuclear waste.
NWMO is a federal government-created consortium of companies that own and must manage Canada’s nuclear waste – 130,000 tonnes (and counting) of highly toxic radioactive materials currently sitting in temporary storage at reactor sites. Their chosen repository site is near Revell Lake, between Ignace and Dryden, Ontario. The Revell area is on the territory of Treaty 3 First Nations, the closest being Wabigoon Lake Ojibway Nation (WLON). It sits at the headwaters of Wabigoon and the Turtle-Rainy River watersheds – flowing north and west, eventually into Lake Winnipeg, via the English-Wabigoon system, Lake of the Woods, and the Winnipeg River.
In July, the town of Ignace signed a “willingness declaration” agreeing to host a DGR in the Revell area (notwithstanding that Ignace is not even on the same watershed as the Revell site), and only days before the site selection announcement, headlines across multiple news outlets suggested that WLON had also declared itself to be a willing host.
In fact, WLON’s news release about its recent community-wide vote says “the yes vote does not signify approval of the project”. It does say that the nation agrees to further study of the site. This is an important distinction. (The Nation has also since stated that the project will be subject to Wabigoon’s own regulatory assessment and approval process. What this means legally in terms of WLON’s ability to reject the project in the future is not currently known).
NWMO’s process says it must receive a “compelling demonstration of willingness” from a host community before proceeding to site characterization (further geological study of the chosen site to see if it’s even suitable for keeping nuclear waste out of groundwater and the environment for the required hundreds of thousands of years).
NWMO says it is “confident” that specific location studies will prove that their out-of-sight, out of mind concept of deep burial of some of the most dangerous toxins on earth will be safe. They’ve been expressing that cavalier confidence for decades, lulling Canadians into believing that it’s fine to keep producing the waste because eventually it will be dealt with.
A quick media scan shows many casual observers leaping to the conclusion that Canada’s nuclear waste problem is “solved,” erasing a major obstacle to a costly and dangerous expansion of nuclear power. Nuclear promoters are encouraging this misleading assumption.
Without a doubt, nuclear waste owners to the south are watching these developments closely. US utilities and government have even more waste in temporary storage and no permanent solution in sight.
But is the waste problem solved? Even if (predictably), the industry deems their concept technically feasible, and even if WLON eventually decides they are a “willing host”, what about all the other communities impacted by this decision?
They must have their say. This means everyone along the transportation routes from southern Ontario and New Brunswick – let’s remember we are talking about three massive shipments per day for the next 40 years just for existing waste on the sometimes-treacherous highways of northern Ontario.
It also means all the downstream communities (including in Manitoba) whose waters would be affected by any release of radioactivity. Many Treaty 3 First Nations near the Revell site as well as the Grand Council of Treaty 3, Nishnawbe Aski Nation and Anishnabek Nation have already made statements opposing transportation and burial of nuclear waste in northern Ontario.
It’s telling that not a single community or First Nation other than Ignace and Wabigoon Lake has voiced support for the Revell site.
Since Ignace first expressed interest in 2009, both of those communities have been actively courted by the NWMO. Cash and other incentives are known to have been provided to Ignace. Little is publicly known about any agreements that may exist between NWMO and WLON. Those details may never be known as NWMO is mysteriously exempt from freedom of information requests (even though it claims to be transparent).
What is clear is that NWMO has not yet achieved its necessary goal of a “compelling demonstration of willingness”. What it has done is corrupted its own process by claiming consent where none exists, with the blessing of the federal government. Perhaps worst of all – and one might say this is historically predictable – it has created a situation in which neighbouring communities may end up pitted against each other.
Meanwhile, the nuclear waste problem is not “solved”.
