The Toronto Star, has the largest circulation in Canada. The paper has an enormous impact on federal and Ontario politics as well as shaping public opinion.
You can call it a repository for used nuclear fuel in an adaptive phased management program. You can call it a nuclear waste site.
Either way, a surprising cluster of municipalities in south-western Ontario’s rural heartland are saying they might want to be the place where Canada’s spent nuclear fuel is stored for thousands of years.
No final decisions on a waste site have been made – or will be for several years, under the multi-step process put in place by the Nuclear Waste Management Organization.
And the western Ontario municipalities who are showing interest will be judged against sites proposed by other communities scattered across Canada. But it’s a surprising show of interest for a region of the country best known for green fields, blue water and Alice Munro.
Of course, it’s also the home of the Bruce nuclear station, north of Kincardine on the shore of Lake Huron – and that’s the touchstone for the interest in the waste site.
The Bruce nuclear operation already keeps its own waste in surface storage areas.
For some, it doesn’t seem a big leap to take waste from nuclear power stations in Pickering, Darlington, Gentilly, Que. and Point Lepreau, N.B., and from research centres in Whiteshell, Man. and Chalk River.
Mayor Bill Goetz, mayor of Huron South, puts it succinctly, as he notes that Highway 9 runs straight through his rural municipality on the way to the Bruce plant:
“It’s going to come through here coming or going, so we thought we might as well be in the mix.”
So far, Huron South and its near neighbours Huron-Kinloss, Brockton and Saugeen Shores have done little more than ask for more information. They’ve taken a tour of the Bruce plant, or are scheduled to do so.
It’s still a long way of making a commitment to host the site. The Nuclear Waste Management Organization, charged with the project, has designed a nine-step process for site selection
and all communities are still in the earliest stages. It’s likely to take seven to 10 years to narrow the field down to one site.
The proposed site will then undergo a detailed environmental assessment before construction starts. The earliest date a storage facility could open, it figures, 2035.
And any or all may be ruled out by geology. The storage site will be buried at least 500 metres deep, and must be placed in stable, solid rock that doesn’t permit water to flow through.
Still, interest is percolating, and in some ways feeds on itself.
David Inglis, mayor of Brockton and Warden of Bruce County, explains:
“We thought: Other communities are doing it in our area, and if it’s going to be in our backyard, we want to know all we can about it. If it is in Bruce County, it’s going to affect the whole county for infrastructure and jobs.”
The interest discourages some residents who are suspicious of the long term impact of storing tonnes of highly radioactive waste, for millennia to come.
“I think it’s the money that’s speaking to them,” says Ruth MacLean, a minister who lives in Kincardine, and on Bruce Beach in Huron-Kinloss.
“I just think this is a company town – everybody knows what side their bread is buttered on.”
For the rest of this article, please go to the Toronto Star website: http://www.thestar.com/business/article/1134081–nuclear-waste-storage-depot-attracts-southern-ontario-towns