WABIGOON LAKE — Wabigoon Lake Ojibway Nation will have a decision on community willingness to host a nuclear waste facility “probably within the next two weeks,” Chief Clayton Wetelainen said Monday.
The process for deciding on community willingness will start this week, he told Newswatch.
A location east of Wabigoon Lake but within the First Nation’s traditional territory is one of two finalists for siting a deep geological repository, or DGR, proposed by the Nuclear Waste Management Organization.
The DGR would be constructed hundreds of metres below ground for the long-term storage of radioactive waste from Canada’s nuclear power plants.
The NWMO, a federally mandated body funded by nuclear power producers, aims to begin building the facility around 2034 and complete construction about a decade later.
Besides the Revell site south of the Trans-Canada Highway between Wabigoon Lake and Ignace, the NWMO is considering a spot in South Bruce, a rural municipality near Lake Huron in southwestern Ontario.
The NWMO has identified community willingness as essential for whichever site is selected. Both the host municipality and the host First Nation must express willingness to host the DGR.
The township of Ignace gave the go-ahead in a unanimous vote by its municipal council on July 10.
In South Bruce, 51 per cent of 3,138 ballots cast in a referendum on Oct. 28 were in favour of the municipality being host to the DGR.
The South Bruce site lies on the traditional territory of Saugeen Ojibway Nation which has said it won’t be making a decision until next year
