IGNACE – Chéla Breckon says her team’s mission is to help Ignace residents as they decide whether they would be okay with hosting nuclear waste management operations in the area.
“We are here for the residents,” Breckon, president of the consulting firm With Chéla Inc., said Tuesday from her home base in eastern Ontario.
“The purpose of our study is to maintain the highest-level research ethics and approach to respecting and preserving the opinion of the resident and reporting that accurately to the leadership [in Ignace],” she continued.
“And so we want to encourage everybody to read our materials and to understand that our process is completely neutral.”
With Chéla was contracted this year by the Township of Ignace to field a “willingness engagement team” to study community willingness for an underground repository to be built in the vicinity by the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO), which is funded by nuclear power producers.
But “our client in so many ways in my view is the everyday people of Ignace, and they absolutely deserve to be heard and reported on accurately,” Breckon said.
“So that is our mission, and that is our top priority,” she said. “And so we want to hear from everyone, regardless of their opinion.
“We have no judgment or perspective of anyone’s opinion and no stake in the direction that the NWMO eventually chooses.”
Breckon’s team of herself and four other people launched a “Willingness Study” in the town of 1,200 in November when, over the course of five days, they heard directly from Ignace residents.
Another visit from the engagement team is set for late January.
In the meantime, residents can get in touch with the team via a toll-free number (1-877-473-4090), through the Ignace Willingness Engagement Team’s Facebook page, or at www.yourchoiceignace.ca.
Ignace residents aged 16 and up are entitled to register online for the Willingness Study, which is designed to learn about the community’s openness to hosting a deep geological repository for spent nuclear fuel.
Breckon said those without an internet connection or who need assistance registering online can reach out to her team for assistance.
An instructional video will be launched soon on the Your Choice Ignace website, she said.
The willingness engagement team will deliver a final report to the township next summer, she said.
The NWMO has the Ignace-Wabigoon Lake area on its list of two finalists for the future site of a deep geological repository (DGR) for spent fuel from Canada’s nuclear power plants.
The other site under consideration is in the area of South Bruce and Saugeen Ojibway Nation in southwestern Ontario.
A DGR is a facility constructed hundreds of metres underground to keep nuclear waste.
Finland will soon have the world’s first operational DGR, near the Gulf of Bothnia, for the placement of radioactive waste produced by the Nordic country’s nuclear power plants.
Ten Ignace residents, as well as individuals from nearby Dryden and Atikokan, toured Finland’s DGR in early November in a trip paid for by the NWMO, a few months after 18 Wabigoon Lake Ojibway Nation members toured the facility.
The Finland junket was part of the learning process as residents wrestle with the question of whether they would be willing to allow Canada’s future DGR to be constructed in an uninhabited place on Wabigoon Lake Ojibway Nation land. Ignace would be an operational centre for the DGR if the Northwestern Ontario site is selected by the NWMO next year.
Construction of the DGR, no matter where it is located, won’t begin until many years after site selection.
