Limited participation opportunity and omissions of critical information in Initial Project Description

30 days is an egregiously insufficient time frame for the public to reasonably be expected to review and submit comments on the initial project description, as well as to file for funding to support ongoing intervention in the project review. While the initial project description is relatively succinct at 92 pages, this content is at best a summary-level overview of an extraordinarily complex proposal that omits information necessary to inform a full understanding of the project. A party wishing to fully engage in further stages of the project review requires full information and the funding application window should not be restricted to the same 30-day period during which said prospective intervenors are also supposed to acquaint themselves with an extraordinarily complex and enduring project and provide written commentary on its initial design. The process seems designed to limit, rather than welcome, informed participation.

Apart from my initial concerns regarding the limits to public participation in this review, I also wish to address three technical concerns: inclusion and engagement of affected parties and inclusion of information relevant to these activities, omission of transportation from the project description, and omission of groundwater considerations from the project description.

On the matter of inclusion and engagement of affected parties, NWMO has been socializing this project with Treaty 3 communities and interested parties since 2002, and an enormous body of evidence that has amassed over this period. Very little of that background information has been provided to the public through the initial project description. For example, the initial project description notes Wabigoon Lake Ojibway Nation is a directly affected Indigenous party, but makes only passing reference to “other potentially affected Indigenous communities [that] will continue to play a central role in identifying pathways of change, understanding land and resource use, and characterizing potential impacts on Indigenous Rights and interests.”

The opposition of other affected Treaty 3 Nations, such as Eagle Lake First Nation, is a matter of public record yet NWMO’s lengthy consultation and engagement with Eagle Lake, and that community’s informed opposition to the project, is absent from the project description. Eagle Lake First Nation has hosted NWMO information sessions at least as far back as 2018, where community concerns were made a matter of public record (https://jhr.ca/nuclear-waste-in-migisi-sahgaigan/), and more recently, the nation filed for a judicial review of the project, arguing its rights to be considered as a directly affected party given that the proposed project lies within its traditional territories (https://thenarwhal.ca/eagle-lake-nuclear-waste-judicial-review/). Withholding this information from the public gives the reader of the project description a false impression that NWMO has been transparent, thorough, and uncontested in its efforts to promote this project.

Other key information has also been omitted from this project description.

Transportation, the document notes, is largely excluded from the project description, as NWMO argues that all transportation infrastructure save for the “new access roads, site roads, and rail spur constructed for the Project” are part of existing, independently regulated public infrastructure, and thus out of scope for the project description. However, transportation is integral to the project as the waste the project proposes to contain must somehow make its way to the facility from a distant point of origin. Without the waste and a means to transport it, there is no need for the project. While NWMO may not be responsible for maintaining transportation corridors that are essential to connect the waste with the DGR, it cannot pretend that transportation is outside the scope of the project. The fact that it is the very same regulator involved in this joint review – the CNSC – that does have jurisdiction over existing federal and provincial standards related to the transportation of nuclear substances on our public roadways further supports that the project proponent should be seeking CNSC compliance in its transportation planning.

Transportation planning from waste source to the ultimate point of burial absolutely must be included within the scope of a full impact assessment, particularly given the extremely sensitive, socially and economically important Great Lakes watersheds through which this waste is intended to pass for 50 or more years. Anyone who regularly drives northern Ontario highways knows the alarming frequency (near daily) with which long-haul transports are involved in collisions, crashes, and fatalities. No matter how well engineered safety solutions may be, there will never be a non-zero probability that a crash involving spent nuclear fuel tests those limits. In climate risk mitigation, an area of personal expertise for me, we often use a decision-scaling methodology to plan appropriately to mitigate potential harms. With decision-scaling, one bases risk-mitigation planning not on the likelihood of outcomes, but rather at the consequences of a worst-case scenario coming to fruition. This approach understands that while worst-case scenarios might be vanishingly unlikely, we have to be able to live the with consequences of such an outcome and plan accordingly.   

The final point I would like to raise in this initial commentary on the project description regards NWMO’s considerations (or lack thereof) for potential impacts of the project on groundwater. This project lies in the upper Winnipeg River watershed, just to the north of the international Rainy-Lake of the Woods (RLOW) watershed, a 70,000 sq km watershed shared among Minnesota, Ontario, and Manitoba, with 600 km of waterways flowing from the southeast to the northwest, through Rainy Lake, Rainy River, and Lake of the Woods, draining into the Winnipeg River. The RLOW is the source water for tens of thousands of local residents, as well as the 850,000 residents of the City of Winnipeg. While NWMO has elsewhere argued that the site is sufficiently removed from surface water interactions with the adjacent RLOW watershed, they have been unable to verify with certainty that there is no existing groundwater involvement between their proposed Revell Lake site and the RLOW, nor have they demonstrated how they will ensure no such groundwater involvement is facilitated through the deep bore drilling that will be required to build the facility. Again, miscalculation could come with disproportionately catastrophic risk. This key element must be included in much more detail within both the project description and any subsequent impact assessment.