IGNACE — Some may call a trip to Finland’s almost-completed nuclear waste repository an information tour. To anti-nuclear activist Charles Faust, it’s a propaganda tour.
The Nuclear Waste Management Organization is “wining and dining” Ignace residents and “showing them the glossy side of the (nuclear) industry,” Faust, a member of We the Nuclear Free North, said Monday.
Ignace will send a delegation of at least eight people to visit the Onkalo deep geological repository in a couple of weeks.
The NWMO will foot the bill for the junket, which will also include a tour of a nuclear reactor and meeting public officials. The trip is part of the NWMO’s “willingness process” of giving Ignace residents information to decide if they want to have a deep geological repository in the vicinity.
In reality, said Faust, the deep-pocketed nuclear industry is buying consent from the people of Ignace and nearby Wabigoon Lake Ojibway Nation, in whose territory the facility would be built if the NWMO decides to build it in Northwestern Ontario.
“They’re holding all the cards and they’re just building on the idea that this will get a yes for them in the willingness department,” he said.
It’s undemocratic and misleading, and the federal government has abdicated its own responsibilities on nuclear waste disposal, he said.
Ottawa is asking the NWMO “to do everything that has to do with nuclear waste because it seems like our federal government does not have any capacity whatsoever and is not interested in developing the capacity” to handle the issue, he said.
The government has handed an enormous amount of power to a private corporation, he said.
What’s more, Faust said, “I believe there is a conflict of interest. The nuclear waste management organization is not a public entity. It’s a private, not-for-profit corporation owned by the nuclear power producers.”
(NWMO spokesperson Vince Ponka clarified that the organization is not owned by nuclear power companies, but rather funded by them.)
There is no transparency, he continued, because the NWMO is “not subject to freedom of information requests.
“We can’t find out how much money they’re spending in Ignace or in other places to try and entice people to welcome them into the community.
“Only government public agencies are subject to the Freedom of Information and Protective of Privacy Act.
“(The NWMO is) not subject to it because they’re not a public organization, they’re a private organization,” he said.
The NWMO is considering Ignace and South Bruce in southwestern Ontario as host communities for an eventual underground repository for waste from nuclear power plants.
The Township of Ignace put up a notice on its website Oct. 7 inviting applicants to “represent the community in Finland” along with eight other people in an early November visit to the Onkalo deep geological repository in Finland near the Gulf of Bothnia and the country’s border with Sweden.
The matter is on the agenda for the Oct. 16 meeting of Ignace township council.
Delegations for South Bruce and Wabigoon Lake Ojibway Nation visited the Onkalo site in the summer.
