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Ontario nuclear waste site selectors delay announcement until 2024

Nishnawbe Aski Nation chiefs opposed to storage site based on environmental grounds

Northern Ontario Business Staff, 15 Aug 22,

The site selectors for a proposed underground nuclear waste repository in Ontaro say they won’t make a decision on a preferred location until the fall of 2024.

The Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) is pushing back the naming of a site by one year, attributing it to a series of pandemic-related lockdowns that hampered their work in the selection process.

Wabigoon Lake Ojibway Nation-Ignace area, an hour’s drive east of Dryden, in northwestern Ontario and the Saugeen Ojibway Nation-South Bruce area in southern Ontario are the two communities on the short list to host the deep geological repository.

Last week, 49 chiefs of the Nishnawbe Aski Nation (NAN) passed a resolution at their annual conference in Timmins opposing plans to haul and store nuclear waste in the region. Though the potential site of the repository is not in NAN’s treaty area, leadership hold concerns about the downstream impact of such a facility in the waterways of their traditional territories……………………………………….

Since 2010, NWMO has been engaged in this process to find a permanent storage place for the long-term management of Canada’s used nuclear fuel……………..

The organization said the plan will only proceed in a host area with “informed and willing hosts, where the municipality, First Nation and Métis communities, and others in the area are working together to implement it.”………………

more https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/industry-news/design-build/nuclear-waste-site-selectors-delay-announcement-until-2024-5697570—

August 14, 2022 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Canada, wastes