William Leiss, Deep Disposal: A Documentary Account of Burying Nuclear Waste in Canada, Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2024.
An expert panel in Ontario recommended in 1977 that Canada should permanently dispose of its high-level nuclear waste (used nuclear fuel) by burying it deep down in the good granitic rock of the Canadian Shield. For the next twenty-five years Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. (AECL) refined the concept of a DGR, a deep geological repository, and also excavated a cavern at a depth of 400 feet, in a formation known as a pluton, in southern Manitoba to serve as a research lab for a DGR. Then everything fell apart, when a federal government (GOC) group known as the Seaborn Panel concluded that the public generally did not have a requisite degree of confidence in the DGR concept.
The GOC responded with the Nuclear Fuel Waste Act (2002), creating a brand-new arm’s-length unit called the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) and, in effect, ordering it to find a long-term solution for this waste, a search to be paid for by the electrical utilities who are deemed to “own” that waste. NWMO has spent the past twenty-two years looking for a plan which the federal Minister of Natural Resources would be happy with. It decided that the best plan would be to find a small Ontario municipality which would agree to serve as a “willing host” for a DGR, an agreement to be lubricated with a nice chunk of public money. Guess what? Eventually two such municipalities were located, and both said yes – but their consent didn’t really matter after all.
Why? Because in the end another form of consent (also well-lubricated, presumably) had emerged which would prove decisive, namely, the explicit consent of a First Nation on whose traditional territory any such DGR would actually be built. It took NWMO almost twenty years to fully realize that only the second form of consent could tip the balance in favour of an actual DGR siting. Thus, as of the present, in Fall 2024, NWMO and its boss, the federal minister, wait for a decision from either the Saugeen Ojibway Nation, based in the Bruce Peninsula, or the Wabigoon Lake First Nation, located near Dryden in northwestern Ontario, to say yes. Deep Disposal tells the full story and asks whether this whole process, ongoing since 1977, might have been better designed, and, indeed, whether it is likely to be successful when all is said and done.
Deep Disposal tells the full story and asks whether this whole process, ongoing since 1977, might have been better designed, and, indeed, whether it is likely to be successful when all is said and done.
On a personal note, I disclose having been a consultant for NWMO from 2002 to 2011, and I acknowledge that I, like others, were remiss in those early years for not realizing the significance of siting a DGR in Ontario that would be located on the traditional territory of a First Nation people.
Feature Image: “Saugeen Ojibway First Nation 6935 (7497246108)” by Robert Taylor from Stirling, ON, Canada is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
