Ottawa – A petition calling on the federal government to stop the siting process for a proposed deep geological repository for highly radioactive nuclear fuel waste has been tabled in the House of Commons. The signatures are being tabled by Members of Parliament from Windsor West, Timmins-James Bay and Thunder Bay-Rainy River.
The three MPs represent ridings that span the wide expanses of Ontario that could be adversely impacted by the transportation, processing and burial of the wastes. The federal government has 45 days to respond to the petition.“The Nuclear Waste Management Organization’s plan to transport, bury and abandon all of Canada’s high-level nuclear waste puts present and future generations at risk”, commented Bill Noll, an organizer with the group Protect Our Waterways – No Nuclear Waste, based in South Bruce.
The signatures were collected over the summer by volunteers at community events such as festivals, fairs and farmers’ markets. All signatures were obtained prior to the NWMO’s surprise announcement on November 28th that it had selected the Revell site between Thunder Bay and Kenora as the preferred location for a processing plant and deep geological repository for all of Canada’s nuclear fuel waste.The NWMO had continued to state over the last year that they would make their site selection by the end of 2024. But even more persistently NWMO had been asserting that they would not proceed to site selection without an “informed and willing host”.
With neither Saugeen Ojibway Nation nor Wabigoon Lake Ojibway Nation – the First Nations associated with the candidate sites in southwestern and northwestern Ontario – having made what NWMO had described as a required “compelling demonstration of willingness”, an additional delay of the site selection announcement had been expected. Instead, the NWMO ignored their own requirements and announced its selection of the Revell site on November 28th, 2024.
“Each of the signatures on these petitions represents a conversation with a concerned resident along the transportation route, downstream from the project, or someone local to the site”, explained Dodie LeGassick, Environment North’s nuclear lead and a volunteer with the northern Ontario alliance We the Nuclear Free North.
“By NWMO design, those living downstream and along the transportation route are shut out of the NWMO’s site selection process. The federal government must course-correct the NWMO.”The NWMO has been engaged in a site search since 2010 and since 2020 has been focused on two municipalities as potential “host communities” – the municipality of South Bruce in southwestern Ontario, and the Township of Ignace in northwestern Ontario.
The Township of Ignace is 43 km east of the NWMO’s candidate site between Ignace and Dryden, and in a different watershed – factors which critics say disqualify it from acting as a “host” community.With the November 28th announcement of the site selection, the NWMO says it is now preparing for the regulatory process, which is expected to begin in 2028.
Critics of the project and of the NWMO’s siting process say the federal government must intervene. They point to an upcoming triennial report in March as one of the few mechanisms under the federal Nuclear Fuel Waste Act for the government to redirect the nuclear industry organization.
“In his next response to the NWMO’s annual report we are looking to the federal Minister of Natural Resources to set out directions for a new approach. The NWMO has spent 20 years and a billion dollars and failed to secure a willing host. The emperor has no clothes, but does the federal government have the courage to call it?”, commented Brennain Lloyd, project coordinator with Northwatch and a volunteer with We the Nuclear Free North.
