ALEXANDRIA, Va. — Canada’s Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) plans this year to drill two more boreholes in one of the five locations being evaluated for a deep geological repository for the nation’s used nuclear reactor fuel.
These will be the second and third boreholes drilled in the Ignace area in northwest Ontario. The first was completed in early 2018.
“We’re working with other communities to plan drilling on potential sites in their areas as early as next year,” Lisa Frizzell, vice president for stakeholder relations with NWMO, said Wednesday during a presentation at the Institute of Nuclear Materials Management’s Spent Fuel Management Seminar.
Each borehole costs $3 million to $4 million, covering all activities involved — from site preparation to drilling to analysis and testing of samples.
Up to 10 boreholes will be drilled at each potential repository site, down as far as 1,000 meters into the earth. Samples taken from each borehole will help the organization analyze the rock at the locations being considered for the disposal facility. That is deeper than the plan for the repository itself, which would be at 500 meters underground.
“We need to get a good picture of what the geology looks like so we can build the safety case” for the location that is eventually selected for the repository, Frizzell told Weapons Complex Morning Briefing after her presentation.
The NWMO is a nonprofit, nongovernmental entity established in 2002 by Canada’s nuclear utilities to site, design, and build a repository for what could eventually be 5.2 million bundles of used nuclear reactor fuel. The organization expects to select the location by 2023, with operations beginning in the early to mid-2040s. As of 2018, the full life-cycle cost estimate for the project was is $23 billion (CAD, in 2015 dollars).
