Temporary nuclease waste storage facility

When US Senate minority leader Harry Reid announced his imminent retirement last month, all eyes looked to Yucca Mountain. The long-time Senator from Nevada has spent much of his career opposing a long-term nuclear waste storage facility proposed at the desert site. With his sizeable influence set to disappear in 2017, many hope—or fear—that a Republican congress could reverse President Obama’s 2010 decision to defund the project for good.

In Canada, the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) has viewed such drama with great interest. While America’s national nuclear waste repository has been hamstrung by decades of infighting and scientific controversy, mostly over its site selection failures, the NWMO is determined not to make the same mistakes up north.

NWMO’s plan has been dubbed the Adaptive Phased Management (APM) program, and if completed it will store all of Canada’s spent nuclear fuel in a single, enormous underground repository. Only nine northern Ontario communities remain on the list of candidates that the NWMO hopes will be both willing and able to […]