THUNDER BAY — A track record of serious collisions on highways 11 and 17 overshadowed Thursday’s decision to put an underground nuclear-waste storage site at a remote location near Ignace.
Area farmers, rural volunteer firefighters, Indigenous leaders and resort owners said the prospect of radioactive fuel rods being driven down routes known for deadly crashes is troubling.
“The storage site itself sounds like it would be safe, they’ve studied it for years,” said Pass Lake resident Marcelle Paulin, whose family farm is about 10 kilometres from the Trans-Canada Highway.
“But the transportation piece is the weak link — it’s not the right approach,” Paulin added. “Too many commercial truck drivers are poorly trained and supervised.”
The Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) has selected for its future underground storage facility a location about 30 kilometres west of Ignace over another candidate site in southwestern Ontario.
Spent fuel rods from nuclear reactors are to be stored at the site after being transported there by truck or rail in specialized containers.
If the rods are moved by truck, “it would mean two to three shipments a day, approximately nine months of the year,” a NWMO spokesman said.
Some rural municipal official have expressed concerns about the NWMO’s trucking option, given the frequency of serious crashes on major routes in the Thunder Bay district.
This fall, Conmee passed a resolution against shipping fuel rods by road.
Last week the drivers of a transport truck and a pickup truck died when the two vehicles collided on Highway 17 near Sistonen’s Corner just west of Thunder Bay.
Early Thursday, firefighters were called to another remote stretch of Highway 17 just west of Shabaqua, after a transport truck caught fire. Nobody was injured, but the truck was completely destroyed, provincial police said.
The Township of Ignace voted in favour of the underground nuclear-waste storage site location this summer. Over the last few years, the township has received large grants from NWMO, including a new fire truck valued at $800,000.
Wabigoon Lake Ojibway Nation, which is closest to the selected storage site location and has also received NWMO funds, offered qualified support.
“This project can only continue if it can be proven that it will be built safely, with respect to the environment and in a manner that protects Anishnaabe values,” the band said in a statement.
About a dozen other Northwestern Ontario Indigenous communities, including Fort William First Nation and Grassy Narrows First Nation, have been opposed to the project.
Thursday’s decision by the NWMO “puts the people of Grassy Narrows in grave danger,” Grassy Narrows land protection team member Joseph Fobister said in a news release.
“The transport of extremely dangerous nuclear waste and its disposal within our watershed will do irreparable destruction to our lands, rivers, and our way of life, which have already been damaged by so many harmful decisions imposed on us.”
The Northwestern Ontario Municipal Association didn’t address the potential environmental risk, instead saying the storage site project would be an economic boost.
In a statement, the association said it would “support the Town of Ignace and Wabigoon Lake Ojibway Nation and surrounding municipalities to continue to advocate for any support they may need for the area in preparation for the influx of new people, which will have tremendous direct and indirect economic benefits for the region.”
Howard Ullom, who has operated a fishing and hunting resort near Ignace on Lake Umber for 25 years, said he ideally wouldn’t choose to have a nuclear-waste storage facility close to town.
But Ullom, who lives in the U.S. during the off-season, said he doubted it’s presence would harm his business.
“I don’t think it would bother my American clients, who are mainly coming for the fishing,” said Ullom, adding that business was good this summer.
Another resort operator, on the Kashabowie River west of Thunder Bay, said the prospect of radioactive fuel rods coming through the area didn’t seem like an immediate concern, given the construction of the storage site is expected to take 20 years.
“But it’s disappointing that (the NWMO) is going to put it up here,” said the operator, who declined to be named.
Paulin, who has been a volunteer firefighter, said the experience of going to the scenes of several wrecks on Highway 11-17 was revealing.
“You see drivers who were experiencing fatigue, or were obviously not trained,” Paulin said. “The biggest issue is that the highway is not safe.”
Paulin said it seems to her that the NWMO would need a specially-trained crew ready to respond to crashes if nuclear-fuel rods are on board, whether by rail or truck.
Meanwhile, organizations like We The Nuclear Free North said they will continue to highlight the risk of shipping spent nuclear fuel in the wake of Thursday’s NWMO announcement, said group member Wendy O’Connor.
The NWMO has said there is long history of safe shipment of nuclear materials in Canada.
The Chronicle-Journal / Local Journalism Initiative
