Disposing of nuclear waste is a major problem for all countries that use nuclear power to generate electricity. In the U.S., the Yucca Mountain Repository for spent nuclear fuel was supposed to be ready by 1999 but the uncompleted project was canceled in 2009. Meanwhile, spent nuclear fuel continues to pile up at power reactor sites around the country. Cooling pools are filling up and spent fuel assemblies will have to be moved to onsite or offsite temporary storage in dry casks. The U.S. will not have a permanent spent nuclear fuel repository until 2050 at the earliest. In addition to spent nuclear fuel, there also low level and intermediate level nuclear waste from nuclear power plant operations that has to be disposed of. Ontario Power Generation in Ontario, Canada is currently working on the disposal of low level and intermediate level nuclear waste generated by the operation their nuclear power plants.
Ontario Power Generation has developed a plan for the disposal of nuclear waste from its three nuclear power plants in a permanent geological repository on the shores of Lake Huron. The repository would be located at the Bruce Nuclear Generation Station site near Inverhuron and Tiverton, Ontario and would take nuclear waste from the Bruce, Darlington, and Pickering nuclear power plants. The repository would be about twenty-two hundred feet underground in impermeable limestone. A Canadian federal panel approved the plan in 2015.
In February of 2016, the Canadian minister of the environment and climate changes requested that OPG carry out two additional studies with respect their disposal of nuclear waste. He asked for an environmental evaluation of two alternative waste disposal sites and a cumulative evaluation of environmental impact if a separate spent nuclear fuel repository was also located the Bruce site.
OPG reported that any of the three locations would meet the primary objectives of public health and safety, worker health and safety and environmental protection but that the two alternative locations would cost more because establishing new sites would have effects on land use, vegetation, and wildlife. In addition, there would be significant increases in transportation costs to those two other sites. Twenty-two thousand shipments would be required to move stored waste from the Bruce site to either of the alternative sites. This would raise the possibility of contamination of public roads and lands if there were transportation accidents. The alternative sites would increase costs from one to three billion dollars and offer no benefits.
Canada's Nuclear Waste Management Organization is working on locating a site for the creation of a permanent geological repository for spent nuclear fuel. OPG concluded that there would be no adverse cumulative effects of locating such a repository at the Bruce site near the planned low level and intermediate level waste repository.
Communities near the proposed Bruce site are very concerned about locating a nuclear waste repository near Lake Huron which would be below the level of the lake. Groups of activists are mobilizing against the repository.
Bruce Nuclear Generation Station:
