Residents of an Ontario farm community that may become the site for a deep underground facility housing Canada’s radioactive waste were given an all-expenses-paid trip to Finland to see first hand what that future might look like.
The municipality of South Bruce has been engaged in a years-long process to decide whether it wants to become host for a $23-billion facility that aims to safely seal away Canada’s huge stockpile of nuclear waste for millennia.
Opinion: if we want a fossil fuel free future, nuclear is necessary. For nuclear to work, we need waste storage, somewhere. NIMBYism can block a green future. It is one of the few cases where I think Canada should use expropriation if necessary. The needs of the many. However, I’m not opposed to swaying gently either.
I’ve been to Finland. The interior could be Northern Ontario – nearly identical landscape.
There are also newer reactor designs that can use recycled nuclear material. If we use those reactors we don’t have to mine as much fuel.
The recycling process is up to 96% efficient. https://www.orano.group/en/unpacking-nuclear/all-about-used-fuel-processing-and-recycling#:~:text=Orano expertise,turn generate their own electricity.
I agree. All of those designs are on-paper designs though, and nothing has ever been built. We should simultaneously be investing in reactor R&D and build some of them.
