Electricity generated from nuclear power may be efficient, but the byproduct of that process—used nuclear fuel—is a problem the Canadian government has yet to solve.
After more than five decades of nuclear power reactors in Ontario, Quebec, and New Brunswick producing this fuel, the country has more than 3.3 million used nuclear fuel bundles to deal with, but no permanent solution for long-term nuclear waste storage.
“If stacked like cordwood, all this used nuclear fuel could fit into about nine NHL hockey rinks from the ice surface to the top of the boards,” the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) says on its
website. “At the end of the planned operation of Canada’s existing nuclear reactors, the number of used fuel bundles could total about 5.6 million.”
In an effort to solve the issue, at least temporarily, the NWMO is seeking sites for a deep geological repository that can store the country’s nuclear waste.
Two sites currently under consideration are the Wabigoon Lake Ojibway Nation-Ignace area and the Saugeen Ojibway Nation-South Bruce area, both in Ontario.
So far, only Ignace, a township located more than two hours northwest of Thunder Bay, Ont., has
voted in favour of being the host site of the $26 billion project. For either site to be selected, both the town and the First Nation involved must give the green light.
Debate
For Ignace, giving the project the go-ahead was about capitalizing on a multi-million-dollar opportunity, township spokesperson Jake Pastore told The Epoch Times via email. He said the township in March signed a $171 million agreement with the NWMO outlining “a host of … economic development benefits to the community.” Under the agreement, the NWMO would build a Centre of Expertise within the community, which he said could employ more than 250 individuals. In addition, around 900 workers would be needed for transitional and construction jobs for the $26 billion project, Mr. Pastore said.
Housing, hotels, and restaurants would be built to accommodate the influx of project staff and the township offices would be expanded to “accommodate a potential double or more of the population base in Ignace,” he said, adding that the increased tax base would also benefit the community.
Not everyone in town is happy, however.
They say many along the shipping route will be affected with tons of waste brought in via truck. They express worry over the local environment, including watersheds, should a problem with the storage lead to contamination.
Many Canadians are concerned about the safety of storing nuclear waste, and of nuclear power generation in general, according to a 2022
survey by the Canadian Nuclear Association in collaboration with Environics Research. Of those surveyed, 87 percent said they are concerned about storage of nuclear waste. Seventy-seven percent were concerned about the general environmental impacts of nuclear energy, and 85 percent about the possibility of a nuclear accident.
The Saugeen Ojibway Nation, which will be asked for its approval of the other site, has
already rejected one proposal for a nuclear waste repository in 2020. That proposal was made by Ontario Power Generation.
The NWMO
says before it proceeds with any such projects, it will ensure it meets “stringent safety requirements.” It also
says that its “deep geological repository system is in line with international best practices and how other countries with used nuclear fuel plan to safely manage it for generations to come.”
Repository Project
The NWMO is expected to make a final decision on the repository site by the end of December. Once a site is chosen, 10 years of regulatory reviews and licensing will follow, with construction of the repository expected to begin in 2033.
Facilities will be constructed on the surface to receive, inspect, and repackage the fuel into purpose-built containers encased in a bentonite clay buffer box. The boxes will then be transferred for underground placement.
The repository will have a footprint of approximately 600 hectares and would be constructed more than 500 metres underground, roughly the same length as the CN Tower, the world’s third tallest tower at 553.3 metres.
The depth is necessary to ensure “future inadvertent human intrusion into the closed repository would be very unlikely,” the NWMO
says.
Millions of bundles of used nuclear fuel will be housed in the repository’s underground rooms that will be connected by a vast network of tunnels. The buffer boxes will be arranged in these rooms and any leftover space will be backfilled with bentonite clay pellets or chips.
The site is expected to be up and running by the early 2040s.
The transport, handling, and placement of the used nuclear fuel is expected to take place over a period of roughly 40 years with intense monitoring throughout the process, the agency says.
“There will also be an extended period of monitoring, which could last several decades—70 years has been assumed for financial planning purposes,” the website
notes. “Many decades from now, in collaboration with regulatory authorities, the community will decide the form and duration of this monitoring.”
Once the roughly 100-year monitoring phase has passed, the facility will be decommissioned with the closure expected to take approximately 30 years, the organization says. Monitoring following closure “will be decided in collaboration with a future society.”
Storage Needs
Currently, used fuel is being stored in seven licensed facilities near nuclear power stations, the NWMO
says.
In Ontario, waste is housed at the nuclear generating stations in Pickering, Darlington, and in Bruce township as well as at the Atomic Energy of Canada Limited’s site in Chalk River. Other storage areas are located at nuclear reactor sites in Quebec and New Brunswick as well as at the Atomic Energy of Canada site in Manitoba.
None of the current sites offer long-term storage solutions.
“Today’s method is safe, but temporary,” the organization
says on its website. “It requires ongoing maintenance and management, which isn’t sustainable over the very long period the material must be contained and isolated.”
The bulk of Canada’s historic waste, meanwhile, is located in the southern Ontario communities of Port Hope and Clarington
, representing a $2.6 billion clean-up effort by the federal government.The waste and contaminated soils equals approximately 2 million cubic metres, and dates as far back as the 1930s when a radium and uranium refinery was established in Port Hope, according to a federal government
website. The waste was produced by former federal Crown corporation Eldorado Nuclear and its private-sector predecessors from the 1930s to the 1980s.
“While the low-level radioactivity of naturally occurring radioactive materials do not pose a risk to human health and the environment, there is general consensus in the local community, as well as in professional and regulatory communities, that the management of the waste onsite does not represent a suitable long-term solution,” the site says.
Finland is building a repository said to keep nuclear fuel safe for at least 100,000 years, 450 metres underground. Known as Onkalo, the $500 million euro project is expected to be up and running in the mid-2020s.
Safety Protocols
The NWMO’s science and engineering teams have been conducting safety studies for more than a decade. The teams deduced that an underground repository using a
multiple-barrier system is the safest storage option for waste.
Used nuclear fuel is at its most dangerous when it is being removed from a reactor. After nuclear fuel bundles are removed, they are placed in a water-filled pool to decrease their heat and radioactivity, the NWMO website
says. Each bundle weighs approximately 24 kilograms and resembles a fireplace log.
The bundles are placed in dry storage containers seven to 10 years later when the radioactivity of the fuel has lessened, a method that has been in use around the world since the 1980s.
Dry storage containers are made of reinforced high-density concrete that is 510 millimetres thick and are lined inside and out with 12.7-millimetre-thick steel plating, providing an “effective barrier” against radiation, the organization says.
“After 10 years of cooling at the reactor site, more than 99 percent of the radioactivity decays away,”
says the website. “While the hazard continues to diminish over time, for practical purposes, used nuclear fuel remains hazardous, essentially indefinitely.”
