The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
A Flin Flon city councillor is open to the idea of nuclear waste storage next door in Creighton. Coun. Colleen McKee learned much about the proposal from a trip to Ontario that included presentations and a tour of a nuclear power station. 'I'm pretty skeptical about things, I'm pretty critical when it comes to thinking about things, but there's nothing there that scared me,' she said at a city council meeting earlier this month. If Creighton manages to land the underground repository that will store Canada's nuclear waste, Coun. McKee said, 'I think it would be a real benefit.' When Coun. Ken Pawlachuk spoke of the projected jobs from nuclear storage, Coun. McKee said it 'would be phenomenal for this area if we could secure something like that.' Councillors McKee and Pawlachuk were among nine Flin Flon-Creighton area delegates to travel to Ontario last month courtesy of the Nuclear Waste Management Organization. The trip included presentations from a geoscientist, conversations with NWMO officials and a tour of the Darlington Nuclear Generating Station in Clarington, Ontario. See 'Plans' on pg. Continued from pg. NWMO wants civic leaders to learn as much as possible about plans to store Canada's spent nuclear fuel rods in an underground repository to open in 2035. Among the 21 communities in the running is Creighton, where town councillors have been touting the repository as the secondary industry this area has long needed. But is it safe? Coun. McKee, for one, is impressed by the structural integrity of the planned repository. '...they're building to withstand an ice age, which is really phenomenal when you think about it,' she said. Coun. McKee said the list of 21 potential host communities will be narrowed down to six by September. The list will subsequently go down to two communities. Many observers view Creighton's bid as a long shot. For one, 90 per cent of Canada's nuclear waste is in Ontario, where 18 communities are in the running for the repository. For another, Premier Brad Wall has said Saskatchewanians are not supportive of storing nuclear waste in their province and that it is highly unlikely his government would allow such a project to proceed. But Coun. Bill Hanson, who recently attended a municipalities conference in Vancouver, said he got a positive reaction from NWMO officials when he introduced himself as being from the Flin Flon-Creighton area. Their response, according to Coun. Hanson: 'Oh yeah, we're really interested in going to Creighton.' While NWMO expects the repository to open in 2035, it will take up to eight years before a host community is chosen. Bundles The repository would store the country's used _ and heavily contained _ nuclear fuel 'bundles,' each about the size of a fire log. The toxicity of these bundles diminishes with time, but they remain a potential hazard indefinitely. The repository is expected to represent a multibillion-dollar investment and spawn more than 4,000 jobs before, during and after construction. The project will carry a price tag as high as $24 billion. Manitoba, unlike Saskatchewan, has a law banning nuclear waste storage. Joining councillors McKee and Pawlachuk in Ontario last month were Mayor George Fontaine and Coun. Karen MacKinnon of Flin Flon; Town of Creighton administrative assistant Kate Aasen; councillors Scott McCullum, Karen Thomson and Frank Wiegers of Denare Beach; and Kory Eastman of the Creighton NWMO Community Liaison Committee.
