The Nuclear Waste Abandonment Issue in Northwestern Ontario

For more than 50 years, nuclear power companies in Canada have been creating highly radioactive nuclear wastes that will be dangerous for hundreds of thousands of years. Now they want to bury and abandon it.

According to the nuclear industry’s plan, an estimated 132 thousand tonnes (132 million kilograms) of highly radioactive nuclear waste will be shipped to their selected site, repackaged and buried. The Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) has chosen a site in Northwestern Ontario between Ignace and Dryden, just south of the TransCanada Highway, for their deep geological repository (DGR) for all of Canada’s nuclear fuel waste. However, the actual construction of the DGR, which could begin in the mid-2030s, is still far from a sure thing.