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73 organizations representing a broad segment of Canadian society have sent a joint letter to the federal government urging more oversight of the nuclear industry and of nuclear waste projects.
In the letter, the groups urged the Prime Minister and the Ministers of Environment and Climate Change and of Energy and Natural Resources to exercise oversight of the Nuclear Waste Management Organization’s “Adaptive Phased Management Project” to transport, process, bury and eventually abandon all of Canada’s nuclear fuel waste at the NWMO’s selected site in the heart of Treaty 3 Territory in northwestern Ontario and its upcoming impact assessment process.
The groups expressed an overarching concern about the lack of federal oversight of this project since its inception in 2002.
More recently, the NWMO has made it known that they are seeking to have transportation of the radioactive wastes excluded from the project’s impact assessment process. But for 20 years the NWMO has been describing transportation as part of their project, and the Impact Assessment Act requires activities that are integral to – or, in the language of the Act “incidental” to – the project be included in the assessment.
The joint letter requests that the federal government provide immediate oversight and direction in four areas:
- Direct that the impact assessment and nuclear licensing processes for the Nuclear Waste Management Organization’s project do not commence until after Eagle Lake First Nation’s legal case challenging the site selection has been heard and a decision rendered by the Court
- Direct that, when and if an impact assessment process is undertaken, that process proceeds only after the NWMO has provided a full description of their project including the transportation of the radioactive wastes, the processing of the wastes in the “used fuel packaging plant”, the emplacement containers and the emplacement of the wastes, the monitoring and retrievability of the wastes, and the long-term safety of the repository
- Direct that, when and if an impact assessment process is undertaken, the assessment process includes a thorough review of the transportation activities, including design of the transportation containers, the long-distance transportation of the wastes, and an examination of the alternative means of transporting only wastes that have been transferred into a “final” container prior to transport
- Direct that the public and Indigenous people have a full opportunity to engage in the assessment process, beginning with and importantly during the planning phase, and that the Agency exercise the flexibility provided to it to support public participation in the process, including by considerate timing of engagement opportunities and comment deadlines.
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