Nuclear waste facility approved for Chalk River Laboratories despite opposition from First Nations, municipalities

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The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission has authorized construction of a landfill site for nuclear waste at Chalk River Laboratories, a large research facility in Deep River, Ont.

The project faced significant opposition from municipalities, First Nations, activist groups and others during the commission’s review, which began in 2016 and included public hearings. Intervenors expressed a range of concerns, including that contaminants might escape or that mishaps might occur during transport.

On Tuesday, the commission announced it had amended the licence of the site’s operator, Canadian Nuclear Laboratories (CNL), so that it can build the $475-million facility. The commission found that its design was “robust,” and that it “is not likely to cause significant adverse environmental effects” including harms to fish, birds and Indigenous peoples, provided CNL abides by certain mitigation and monitoring requirements.

Rejecting complaints from First Nations that they hadn’t been adequately consulted, the commission found its environmental assessment addressed their concerns and met all legal requirements.

“Overall, the evidence on the record demonstrates that the duty to consult has been met and that the honour of the Crown has been upheld,” the commission wrote in its decision, which was signed by presiding member Rumina Velshi, who recently retired as president.

Contaminated by decades of nuclear research, the Chalk River site is owned by Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd., a federal Crown corporation. Spokesperson Philip Kompass said Tuesday CNL was studying the decision’s details and planned to update the public on its construction schedule at a later date. He added that CNL must apply for another licence to operate the facility after its completion.

“This project is a major step forward in addressing low-level radioactive waste that is the liability of the Government of Canada,” he wrote. (Low-level waste is deemed to be comprised primarily of radionuclides with half-lives shorter than 30 years.)

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Described as an “engineered containment mound,” the Near Surface Disposal Facility (NSDF) is to be constructed on a wooded hillside roughly one kilometre from the Ottawa River. Its design includes liners, a weather cover and a system to treat leachate. Construction is expected to take three years, and the facility is to be monitored and managed for at least three centuries.

CNL plans to fill the mound with up to one million cubic metres of predominantly low-level waste, approximately 90 per cent of which is already at Chalk River. (It will also contain small amounts of long-lived radionuclides with half-lives greater than 30 years.) The facility will also receive waste from other research sites, hospitals, universities and private companies. It is designed to last 550 years, which the commission deemed long enough to allow sufficient radioactive decay.

Canada’s nuclear waste liabilities total billions of dollars. Is a landfill site near the Ottawa River the best way to extinguish them?

In a statement issued Tuesday, the Canadian Environmental Law Association said it was “extremely disappointed” by the commission’s decision and repeated concerns that the NSDF will leach radioactive contaminants into surrounding wetlands and the Ottawa River.

“The design of this facility is tantamount to an ordinary domestic landfill and we know that such facilities always eventually leak to the surrounding environment,” stated Theresa McClenaghan, the organization’s executive director.

The NSDF will not house spent fuel from nuclear reactors. The Nuclear Waste Management Organization is undertaking a separate initiative to establish a permanent underground site for high-level nuclear waste. CNL also operates other nuclear waste sites in Port Hope and Port Granby, Ont.