According to the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO), New Brunswick can be a suitable place for Canada’s spent fuel storage facility. NWMO is visiting several cities in New Brunswick, Canada for seeking public opinion on choosing a location for storing used uranium from the country's nuclear reactors. The province that would be home to the Canadian nuclear storage site would get a $16 billion to $24 billion investment.
Jo-Ann Facella, the director of social research for the nuclear waste organization, said new research is showing that a nuclear storage place could be located outside of a mountainous area, such as the Canadian shield.
We see that there has been a great deal of work and a great deal of promise in both granitic rock and sedimentary formations, Facella said.
For instance, in France, they are looking in clay formations. So I think we’ve expanded our understanding beyond the granitic rock to understand that there are other rock formations that are potentially suitable for this kind of project.
Currently, New Brunswick, one of the four nuclear provinces, stores its own spent fuel at the Point Lepreau Generating Station. Ontario and Quebec also rely on nuclear reactors to generate power. Saskatchewan is also being looked at as a potential location for the site because it mines uranium.
The underground storage facility to store the spent fuel at the Point Lepreau reactor is not considered a long-term solution, according to NWMO. So, the organization plans to create an underground storage facility that would allow storing all of Canada’s nuclear waste to be safely stored for a long period of time.
This proposal would also make it possible to retrieve the used uranium in the future.
NWMO is not looking at sites yet, but it wants to discuss the options with provinces that could host such a facility.
It’s our understanding that most of the geology of the four provinces that we are visiting is potentially suitable for a used fuel repository, Facella said.
However, detailed investigation would be required at a site in order to confirm that a site could effectively, safely and securely contain and isolate used nuclear fuel from the environment and its people.
Energy Minister Jack Keir said he is interested in what people in the province have to say about the proposal of bringing the nuclear waste storage facility to New Brunswick.
I’m looking forward to hearing what New Brunswickers are going to tell them. This process is about how to select a site, not selecting a site, he said.