“Town of Creighton representatives visited Toronto recently to meet with the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) to learn about Canada’s plan for the long-term management of used nuclear fuel.”
With the opening paragraph of a December 2010 news release, the Town of Creighton set the stage for a community conversation that would span four years, cost industry more than
$1 million and deeply divide residents.
The conversation would play out on the streets, on Facebook, in letters to the editors and at a series of public meetings. As some touted economic gains and job figures, others cited radiation risks and environmental fears.
Between placard-waving protests, a petition drive and even tacit allegations of bribery, things would get intense.
But not so intense as to shut out all calm, cool and collected discourse around the key questions.
Was Creighton – or more specifically, a rectangle of wilderness near the town – the appropriate place to bury Canada’s still-radioactive nuclear waste?
Was the underground repository envisioned by NWMO – the now-familiar acronym for Nuclear Waste Management Organization – the best ticket out of one-industry-towndom?
The answer that finally came Tuesday morning was succinct: It didn’t matter anymore.
“We’ve always known that the repository is not going to go somewhere where the geology can’t be demonstrated to safely isolate and contain the used nuclear fuel, essentially indefinitely,” said NWMO spokesman Mike Krizanc.
Studying
NWMO had been studying a 20 sq. km swath of land – two km by 10 km – just northwest of Creighton. Within that area, the repository itself would need about six sq. km of space.
By the standards of the project, that left little room to manoeuvre. So when geological work, including airborne surveys, identified fractures, NWMO had no choice but to cross Creighton off the list.
“If we had to put a repository there, we would have to work around those fractures and that would mean a larger footprint for the repository,” explained Ben Belfadhel, NWMO’s director of used fuel repository geoscience, “and we don’t have enough space to expand the footprint.”
The findings were a setback for NWMO, the nuclear-industry-funded organization tasked with locating a community to stockpile radioactive waste in a multibillion-dollar repository.
But for area resident Nadine Smart, they were the culmination of a hard-fought battle.
“I have a sense of peace and relief, yet I’m sorry that nine Ontario communities are still fighting this,” said Smart, a leader in the campaign to keep Creighton nuclear-waste-free. “Nuclear waste should not be buried anywhere. It has to be kept above ground where it can be monitored, forever.”
For other residents, the news represents a missed opportunity.
“I thought the project would have been good for the region if the geological study had come back favourable, but I do understand the misgivings people had about it,” said Trevor Miller. “Hopefully what comes out of this is further interest in diversifying the region’s industries, and maybe we’ll see something bigger and better come our way in the future.”
While anything’s possible, “something bigger and better” than the repository would be a bona fide coup for any community, at least from an economic standpoint.
The repository carries an estimated price tag of up to $24 billion. Throughout its different phases, it is expected to generate many hundreds of jobs, though an exact figure is difficult to pinpoint.
The repository won’t open until 2035 at the earliest, at which time it will serve as the national drop-off point for used – but indefinitely radioactive – fuel rods from Canada’s nuclear power plants.
NWMO estimates it will take about 40 years to transport all of the rods to the repository, mostly from Ontario. Special containers will house each shipment of rods.
The rods will be packed in “bundles,” each about the size of a fire log. Every shipping container will carry 192 bundles.
Located some 500 metres underground, the immensely secure repository will be the (presumably) eternal destination for the rods.
Creighton Mayor Bruce Fidler, an outside-the-box thinker, knew the ins and outs of the repository proposal well.
When The Reminder reached him for comment Tuesday morning, the tone of his voice conveyed his sentiment as much as his words: “Unfortunately, that’s the end of it.”
Across the border, Flin Flon Mayor Cal Huntley took time during Tuesday’s city council meeting to address NWMO’s withdrawal.
“Certainly we feel for our neighbours in Creighton because we certainly would have reaped some of the benefits if the project ever had come to fruition,” said Huntley.
Huntley said he and his council thanked NWMO for “the conscientious way” it approached the project, engaged the community and fostered relationships.
“We were…certainly sad to see the end of that project, regardless of what the outcome would have been further on down the line,” said Huntley.
Like Fidler, Huntley’s position on the repository was to support the learning process and, if it could be built safely, the repository itself.
Among the first
Creighton was among the first municipalities in Canada to approach NWMO to learn more about the repository. (Krizanc said NWMO itself did not initiate talks with any communities).
NWMO began taking requests from communities in 2010, eight years after federal legislation created the organization and mandated it to devise a long-term plan for the nation’s used nuclear fuel rods.
NWMO heard from more than 20 communities curious to hear additional details. Some were promptly eliminated because it was apparent their geology was incompatible with the project.
In all, 22 communities were allowed to enter what NWMO called the Learn More process. Three communities were in Saskatchewan: Creighton, Pinehouse and English River First Nation. The rest were in Ontario.
Initially, Krizanc says, Creighton’s geology had potential. An initial phase of study based on “desktop” data, not field data, determined the town could advance to a second phase.
That’s where things ended for Creighton.
Krizanc “guesstimates” that NWMO spent well over $1 million to establish whether Creighton was the right fit for the repository.
He said that estimate probably does not include the $400,000 that NWMO put into a fund for community projects in Creighton.
NWMO characterized that fund, announced in late 2013, as a no-strings-attached way of repaying Creighton for its role in moving the repository plan forward.
Other communities involved with and removed from Learn More also received $400,000 funds.
To some repository opponents, the funds were a veiled attempt to purchase public support and goodwill.
“NWMO denies they have any specific agenda in mind when they pour these amounts into a community,” wrote D’arcy Hande in a letter to the editor to The Reminder. “Hmmm! Makes you wonder.”
Hande, a Saskatoon resident, referenced not only the $400,000 grants, but also additional dollars he said NWMO doled out in Pinehouse.
Though Creighton has now left Learn More, it can keep the $400,000 fund. Krizanc said NWMO will also honour all other financial commitments to the town.
Relationships
Krizanc, a former journalist who is based in Hamilton, has visited Creighton on multiple occasions over the past four years. During that time, he and his colleagues have forged strong relationships with community leaders.
For that reason, Krizanc is disappointed to see Creighton exit the process, but he is also mindful of NWMO’s end game: identify one community with all of the obligatory ingredients.
Some wonder what will happen if NWMO simply can’t find a willing host community, be it for reasons of geology or public resistance. At this point, there are nine possible locations, all of them in Ontario.
Though Krizanc is optimistic one of those nine communities will meet the criteria, no one can say for certain at this point.
“As communities continue in the process, we will do more and more detailed work and we’ll see where it takes us,” Krizanc said. “We intend to find one community for a deep geological repository, and if we don’t, then we have to ask ourselves, ‘What did we do wrong?’ and maybe go back to the drawing board. But we fully anticipate that within the communities that remain, that we hope to get there.”
