Dryden City Council is wondering what impact a deep underground nuclear repository would have on the community.
One of the two proposed sites is located between Dryden and Ignace.
Joanne Jacyk is the site director for the Nuclear Waste Management Organization in Ignace and says Canada currently transports products that are more radioactive than the spent nuclear waste.
“There is a misconception that this is a very new thing, that it’s a very dangerous thing and it’s something we aren’t familiar with,” Jacyk told Dryden city council recently during a deputation.
“The reality is, in Canada, we do have transportation of high levels of radioactive material. And the reason we don’t hear about them is because it’s done without incident on a regular basis.”
Jacyk points out the NWMO isn’t reinventing the wheel because radioactive materials are already being shipped across the country.
“In Canada we don’t typically ship used fuel at this point, but we do ship other materials that are in the risk profiles. I guess you would say just as risky or just as dangerous if not more radioactive. An example of this would be Cobalt 60 for nuclear medicine.”
Jacyk says the deep underground nuclear repository would be around for in excess of 100 years, plus monitoring, and have as many as 800 direct employees, and not all could be housed in Ignace.
