IGNACE — The Northwestern Ontario municipality on the shortlist for a future nuclear waste storage facility has renewed its relationship with the organization aiming to build such a facility.
Ignace Township Council approved a revised memorandum of understanding with the Nuclear Waste Management Organization, which is funded by nuclear power producers, this week.
Interim Mayor Kim Baigrie said Thursday in a news release that the agreement’s renewal is an important step but any final decision to participate in a nuclear waste project will require debate and a vote by township council and community consent.
The memorandum “is just a matter of reaffirming the connection between Ignace and the NWMO and confirming that commitment we both have to move forward in this process. That's all there is to it,” NWMO spokesperson Vince Ponka said in an interview.
The agreement is in effect until the end of 2024, or earlier if either party chooses to back out. Its stated purpose is “to foster and facilitate effective communication and negotiation” toward a “hosting agreement” if the NWMO decides to build a deep geological repository for spent nuclear fuel near Ignace.
The memo’s Section 3 states that entering the agreement “does not constitute community consent” to a deep geological repository.
The Ignace-Wabigoon Lake Ojibway Nation area is one of two finalists for hosting an eventual underground repository for used nuclear fuel. The other finalist is the South Bruce and Saugeen Ojibway Nation area in southern Ontario. The NWMO has said it will choose a site in late 2024.
Sections 7 and 8 of the memo bind both parties to confidentiality and state that either side’s “communication with media” can be done only with written consent of the other side.
Ponka said that is standard terminology in memorandums of agreement.
We the Nuclear Free North’s Charles Faust said it’s problematic that the NWMO gets to vet what information gets out.
“It’s an undemocratic process that they've embarked upon,” he said.
“There is no transparency and no accountability, and it makes it very hard for people to understand the true nature of what's being proposed.”
The NWMO does “a lot of the work behind closed doors and we only see the tip of things,” Faust said.
The revised memo’s approval by council came about two weeks ahead of a 10-member Ignace delegation’s trip to Finland to see the northern European country’s almost-completed deep geological repository and a nuclear power plant. A delegation from Wabigoon Lake Ojibway Nation made a similar visit to Finland in the summer.
