THUNDER BAY – In waste management, the proximity principle holds that waste should be disposed of “as close to the point of generation as technically feasible.”
That’s how Dodie LeGassick of Environment North explained it Wednesday when she asked the City of Thunder Bay to adopt the principle, which she wants applied to nuclear waste.
The Nuclear Waste Management Organization is considering a location between Ignace and Wabigoon Lake for Canada’s first deep geological repository (DGR), an underground facility for the long-term management of nuclear waste.
If that site is chosen, spent nuclear fuel from power plants in southern Ontario and elsewhere would be transported through Thunder Bay on their way to the DGR.
The possibility of trucks and trains loaded with radioactive waste crashing near the city is “a serious concern,” LeGassick told Thunder Bay council’s inter-governmental affairs committee.
She asked the committee to make several recommendations to council, including that the city support the proximity principle and consult with First Nations before making any decision about whether to support the DGR project.
The Ignace-Wabigoon Lake area is one of two finalists in the NWMO’s site selection for a DGR similar to one already built in Finland. The other finalist is a location near South Bruce in southwestern Ontario.
But a more important criterion than proximity is community willingness, regional NWMO spokesperson Vince Ponka said Thursday.
Canadians told the NWMO years ago that “they wanted us to make sure that any (host) community is informed and willing to take on this project,” he said in an interview.
“But with the proximity principle, they’re saying that communities near nuclear facilities must take used nuclear fuel.
“It just doesn’t seem right to say that this project should be forced on a community just because they happen to live near a nuclear power plant.”
Ignace Mayor Kim Baigrie told Newswatch this week that the township will “leave the technical issues of transportation and safety to the experts in the (nuclear) industry.”
Information from “the NWMO and other parties” forms “important data points” as Ignace decides whether it is indeed a willing host community for the DGR project, she said by email.
Ignace and Wabigoon Lake Ojibway Nation are each undergoing a “willingness process” funded by the NWMO.
Presenting to the committee on behalf of We the Nuclear Free North, Wendy O’Connor characterized the industry-funded NWMO as “the proverbial fox guarding the henhouse” and the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission as “a captured regulator.”
The “willingness process” is flawed because communities downstream from the proposed DGR site don’t get to decide, O’Connor said.
She said Dyment, which is closer than Ignace to the site, has no say in the matter.
Ignace is not downstream but gets to decide whether it is “willing,” she said.
O’Connor concluded her deputation by saying the proximity principle “could form the common-sense basis for a long-term waste management plan, with no need for long-distance transportation.”
City council asked its inter-governmental affairs committee in October to consider the proximity principle after Environment North and Nuclear Free Thunder Bay asked council to endorse the tenet.
Coun. Kristen Oliver, the committee’s chair, said Wednesday after LeGassick and O’Connor’s presentations that the panel will likely make a decision in the spring.
The proximity principle is “tricky,” she told Dougall Media, “because there isn’t any distance attached to it.”
If nuclear waste is generated in both Alberta and southern Ontario, she said, a Northwestern Ontario location might agree with the principle.
“I understand and completely sympathize, actually, with these groups and what they’re trying to accomplish here,” Oliver said.
“But the language is so tricky, because if there was that kilometre value included in this discussion it would certainly make it a lot easier.”
