Some residents of South Bruce, Ontario, the pop. 5,000 potential host site of Canada’s sole permanent geological repository, don’t approve of or don’t understand the government’s plan to store waste there, according to a poll.
South Bruce is one of two potential sites being considered by the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO), the Canadian agency charged with finding a disposal solution for Canada’s spent nuclear fuel and nuclear waste.
As of 2017, Canada had 52,652 metric tons of heavy metal (tHM) worth of spent fuel stored across the country, according to the Stimson Center, a nonproliferation and foreign affairs research group headquartered in Washington, D.C.
“The NWMO is still a few years away from selecting a site,” NWMO spokesperson Becky Smith wrote in an email to Morning Briefing on Monday. “The community is still learning about this project and whether it is a good fit for this community. It would be premature at this point to ask people whether or not they support the project in South Bruce. Our work has focused on ensuring the local communities are informed about the project and its impacts.”
The organization this year narrowed its search for a host site down to two areas: South Bruce and the Town of Ignace, both located in the province of Ontario.
Now, according to a poll commissioned by advocacy group “Protect Our Waterways – No Nuclear Waste” from Mainstreet Research, if a vote on whether to host a deep geological repository were held today, 64% of South Bruce residents surveyed would vote “no,” 16% would vote “yes” and 20% are unsure.
The poll was conducted in October on a sample size of 284 adult South Bruce residents.
The group is pushing South Brucen Mayor Robert Buckle to hold a referendum so community members can vote on whether they approve of the facility or not. Buckle said in 2016 that if he was reelected, he’d hold a referendum, according to the local London Free Press. In June, he said now isn’t the right time because of the coronavirus, according to Canada’s CTV News London.
Mainstreet Research is a Canada-based market research and polling firm. The group “Protect Our Waterways – No Nuclear Waste” strongly opposes the potential repository, claiming that by considering the underground option, the NWMO “refuses to pivot to actually addressing the issue of sustainably dealing with nuclear waste” and “would rather bury their industry’s biggest threat than invest in technology and processes that could reuse this waste.”
“Protect Our Waterways – No Nuclear Waste” did not respond to emailed requests for comment.
The NWMO is currently in the process of preparing both the South Bruce and the Ignace site for borehole drilling to test the land. The organization plans to choose a site in 2023 after analyzing samples from the boreholes and performing extensive site characterizations. Local approval is required in order to move forward with a final site, but the organization hasn’t decided exactly what “community approval” will look like yet.
“[South Bruce] has been putting a lot of thought into that, so that I think in the very near term we’re going to see kind of a path forward about how they will determine what that looks like and it will involve a lot of consultation with people in the community to determine what they think is fair,” Smith told Morning Briefing in a phone call Tuesday.
Once the NWMO has chosen a site, it will go through a series of federal regulatory processes in order to begin operating, she said.
