THUNDER BAY — City residents got the chance to put their questions about nuclear safety directly to Canada’s Nuclear Waste Management Organization this week.
Staff with the NWMO to their time in one-on-one discussions with community members during an information session at the Superior Inn on Thursday.
“We’re here all day and we’re happy to talk to people for as long as they want” said Indigenous and regional communications manager Vince Ponka.
Attendees of the open house raised safety concerns about both the storage and the transportation of nuclear waste to a planned underground disposal site near Ignace.
“We want people to feel confident in the safety of this project, because it will go on for more than a century” said Ponka.
Not everyone in attendance was reassured.
Nothing is foolproof, said Andrew Mandamin. “It doesn’t matter how deep underground the repository is, Mother Earth is so unstable these days” he said.
The NWMO’s manager of Engineered Barrier Science, Peter Keech, was at the event to explain the multi-barrier system that will be used to store waste.
The waste, as described by Keech, is made up of small insoluble ceramic pellets that will be stored in a corrosion-resistant alloy, making up the first two barriers of protection. This goes into a copper-coated fuel container to prevent corrosion.
“It’ll stand when a glacier comes and wanders by in 10,000-60,000 years,” Keech said. “And again 150,000 years after that.”
The container is welded shut and set inside a bentonite clay container that will swell and seal gaps if wet. “This is why we use multiple barriers, so that again and again things would have to go wrong, and it’s just not feasible that that’s going to happen” he assured.
Mandamin also expressed concerns about the transportation aspect of the project. “I’ve lived up here for about 40 years, and I’ve seen so many tragedies on the Trans Canada. The highway between here and Sault Ste. Marie is very treacherous; there are deep ravines on the side of the highway” he said.
“They’re designed to be indestructible through an accident scenario. […] We don’t have a full plan for transportation yet for something that’s twenty-ish years away. We don’t know what the roads will look like then” said Keech, but while the plan isn’t set, a framework is, he added, and there will be periods where citizens can offer input.
Alexa Cattani attended as both a community member and as an employee for an engineering company participating in the project. Cattani is urging the NWMO to consider rail or alternative transportation.
She thinks that the project will be great for the region and added that the lithium refineries that are being proposed to put around Thunder Bay will produce nuclear waste that can go straight to the NWMO. “We’re looking at being a lithium hub, and also (need) some place to put our waste from that lithium hub once we’re done refining.”
“It is nuclear waste, we have to store it properly (…) this just turns out to be the ideal sediment makeup of rock where the isolation could be put into place, and I think its quite safe” said Gary Christian, executive director of the North Superior Workforce Planning Board, who attended the open house to see how the plan has progressed.
Christian also said that he believes the project will bring economic and employment benefits to both First Nations and non-First Nations in the area.
Charles Faust, a founding member of We the Nuclear Free North, also attended the open house. A long-time critic of the project, he said the initial project description submitted by the Nuclear Waste Management Organization is more of a concept than a plan, lacking detail.
He also spoke about concerns regarding the safety of the fuel packaging plant, stating that “that’s one of the greatest opportunities for radiation to leak into the surface water and the air.”
