Where will New Brunswick’s small modular nuclear waste go?

The Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO), an industry organization charged with finding a home for all of Canada’s used nuclear fuel, might have their work cut out for them if New Brunswick goes forward with deeply flawed plans for Small Modular Nuclear Reactors.

A representative from the industry’s waste management group has stated that communities willing to host a so-called Deep Geological Repository for radioactive spent-fuel have the right to refuse new types of wastes, like those from New Brunswick’s proposed Small Modular Nuclear Reactors (also called SMRs). But if there’s no place for SMR waste in the proposed repository, is there a viable future for SMRs?

On April 22, during an event hosted by the Assembly of First Nations in Fredericton, NWMO senior transportation engineer Ulf Stahmer stated that communities willing to host a Deep Geological Repository are only agreeing to store the waste we currently have. When asked about waste from proposed SMRs, Stahmer said that it is within the rights of the host community to deny any new waste or different kinds of waste. He further posits that it “is a discussion yet to be had if SMR waste is compatible in repositories or if willing communities want it.”

An “informed and willing host community” is one of the most important considerations when it comes to choosing a site for the waste repository, according to Martin Badley, assistant technical officer with the NWMO.

“That said, we cannot expect members of the two remaining potential host communities to be sufficiently informed on SMR spent fuel in time to have it included in our site selection process at the end of 2024,” he said in an email.

As such, Badley concludes that “the spent fuel from SMRs would be a topic of future discussion once a single site has been selected.”

What about New Brunswick’s radioactive waste?

The province is hoping to develop SMR technology – with the private companies ARC Clean Technology and Moltex Energy – on the Point Lepreau site (the home of the current CANDU reactor). The provincial government has already provided lots of funding and enthusiasm for these proposals has even gone as far as including SMRs in its energy transition strategy.

SMRs are not yet a viable technology and are still in development. The types and forms of waste from these reactors are yet undetermined. However, some studies have shown that while SMRs are being advertised as low-waste technologies, the different and complicated waste streams prove a huge hassle. A Stanford-led study from 2022 found that the establishment of SMRs will only exacerbate the challenges of nuclear waste management.

The proposed SMRs for New Brunswick would create a greater volume of waste, and the material would be more complex in nature than the used-fuel bundles that already occupy hundreds of concrete silos in a large fenced-off block of pavement at Point Lepreau, shrouded by our biodiverse Wabanaki Forest.

SMRs: New & complicated wastes

There’s another issue: Moltex’s proposed stable salt reactor design will use existing spent fuel from Lepreau’s CANDU reactor, but the reprocessing required to extract the plutonium to fuel a new reactor will create many new waste streams, and these too would need adequate storage.

“There are two waste streams to consider: the waste produced from reprocessing and the spent fuel from the reactor,” Badley stated.

Will Motlex’s reprocessed CANDU waste be stored in the proposed Deep Geological Repository, or will host communities be able to refuse that waste too?

And if these waste materials can’t find a home in the proposed repository, where will New Brunswick house all its radioactive refuse?

Badley writes: “Both waste streams [reprocessing and SMR spent fuel] would be considered high-level waste and, therefore, the NWMO would be responsible for their long-term management.”

“Though Moltex would be utilizing spent CANDU fuel, which has been extensively studied and characterized, the waste produced by Moltex would be significantly different from a chemical and radiological point of view,” he added.

“These new waste forms would require a new safety assessment to provide confidence in safety that they could be stored in a [Deep Geological Repository],” he said.

Should the host community refuse any sort of SMR waste, “a second DGR would be required,” he stated.

This proposed second repository — which Badley said is supported by the federal Minister of Energy and Natural Resources — would dispose of materials known as intermediate-level waste and non-fuel high-level waste.

I reached out to the office of Jonathan Wilkinson, Minister of Energy and Natural Resources, for comment, but I didn’t receive a reply by the deadline.

When will a site be chosen for this second proposed Deep Geological Repository and in whose backyard will it be this time? Are we to expect a repository in New Brunswick, since all the unaccepted radioactive wastes would be concentrated here?

‘The NWMO is creating an illusion,’ says environmentalist

Northwatch, a public interest organization based in North Bay, Ont. has been working to inform residents about a proposed nuclear waste repository in northwestern Ontario.

Brennain Lloyd, an environmentalist and critic from Northwatch, suggested that the Nuclear Waste Management Organization is misleading the public about their ability to choose.

“The NWMO is creating an illusion when they tell you that communities who agree to ‘host’ a DGR will later be able to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to different kinds of wastes, or even different activities,” she said.

Lloyd said that in the hosting agreement for the Township of Ignace, Ont., one of the contenders for a proposed repository, there’s “a condition that the NWMO can modify the scope of the project and that nothing in the agreement restricts the NWMO’s right to modify the project. The Agreement also gives the NWMO the right to ‘emplace used nuclear fuel in the DGR from sources other than ‘Accepted Fuel Sources.’”

Free, prior and informed consent

The two communities in Ontario scouted for the proposed first Deep Geological Repository are on the territories of the Saugeen Ojibway Nation, in the South Bruce area, and on the Wabigoon Lake Ojibway Nation, east of the town of Ignace. If either of these sites is selected, then free, prior, and informed consent from the Indigenous communities must be secured, according to the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

However, as Lloyd states, the NWMO does not seem to be giving communities this right. Already, the Nishnawbe Aski Nation, an organization representing 49 First Nations in Northern Ontario, has opposed the construction of a Deep Geological Repository in the North, claiming potential dangers to watersheds going into the Hudson Bay.

Closer to home, the Wolastoq Grand Council’s Resolution on nuclear energy and nuclear waste on traditional Wolastoq territory has demanded that “the Governments of New Brunswick and Canada and the nuclear industry respect the desires of First Nations in Ontario to stop the development of the Deep Geological Repository on Indigenous territory in Ontario, and to assume responsibility for the radioactive material created by nuclear reactors in New Brunswick.”

In an era of extreme uncertainty, New Brunswickers are left wondering where a proposed new Deep Geological Repository will go, what environmental consequences will come of its deployment, and whether communities truly have the right to say no to new waste after agreeing to host.

New Brunswickers must also be aware of the precarious situation we are in: should SMRs come to fruition at Point Lepreau, all our current and new nuclear waste might be denied storage in a Deep Geological Repository in Ontario.

Both proposed sites in Ontario are thousands of kilometres away from Point Lepreau in New Brunswick (2,900 km to Ignace and 1,725 km to Bruce, to be exact). If host communities accept our province’s waste, what about the consent of the hundreds of communities in New Brunswick, Quebec and Ontario that trucks carrying volatile wastes will drive through every day for decades? Is it really the time to invest in new nuclear technologies when our current waste is already troublesome enough?

Emma Fackenthall is a research assistant with the CEDAR project and an undergraduate student at St. Thomas University in Fredericton.