Handle With Care: What Canada Can Teach the U.S. About Managing Used Nuclear Fuel

In 2012 The Algoma News ran a commentary by Tom Isaacs, lead advisor to President Obama’s Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future. He argued that the United States had something to learn from Canada about where to put used nuclear fuel. Nuclear-policy websites in both countries picked the piece up and shared it widely. More than a decade later, the argument has held up well.

Why Yucca Mountain failed

For decades the U.S. planned to bury its used reactor fuel at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. Nevada fought the project throughout, and federal funding was cut in 2009–2010. The Blue Ribbon Commission was then set up to recommend a new approach, and it issued its final report in January 2012.

The commission’s main finding was that Yucca did not fail on the science. A deep geological repository is still the approach most nuclear countries are taking. The problem was the process. The site was chosen without the real participation and consent of the people who would live next to it, so in the end there was no public trust to sustain it.

The consent model

The commission found better examples in other countries.

• Finland required the host community to agree before a site could proceed. Its repository at Onkalo, near Olkiluoto, is expected to be the world’s first operating deep repository for used fuel.
• Sweden gave municipalities what was effectively a veto. In 2022 the Swedish government approved a repository at Forsmark in the municipality of Östhammar, and construction began in 2025.
• Canada went through the same kind of failure the U.S. had. A federal environmental review of a geological disposal concept ended in 1998 with an important conclusion: the concept had been shown to be technically safe, but it did not have broad public support.

Parliament responded in 2002 with the Nuclear Fuel Waste Act, which created the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO). The NWMO held national consultations, including dedicated engagement with Indigenous peoples. In 2007 the federal government approved its recommended approach, Adaptive Phased Management: a deep geological repository, built in stages, with retrievability and room to change course.

In 2010 the NWMO started a siting process that was the reverse of the old one. It did not pick sites. Communities had to come forward and ask to be studied, and any community could drop out at any stage.

How it played out in the North

About 22 communities expressed interest, and many of them were in Northern Ontario, including places along the north shore of Lake Superior and in Algoma. The Algoma News covered the local debate, including public workshops held in Wawa in 2011 by groups that wanted residents to hear from sources other than the industry.

Over more than a decade the list was cut down through technical studies and community decisions until two candidates remained: Ignace in Northwestern Ontario and South Bruce in southwestern Ontario. In November 2024 the NWMO chose the Wabigoon Lake Ojibway Nation–Ignace area. Both the township and the First Nation had formally said they were willing to host it.

The lesson still applies

Canada’s process was slow, expensive and contested, and the regulatory and construction work is still ahead. Still, it reached a willing host, which the U.S. process never did. The United States still has no permanent plan for its used fuel.

Isaacs made the same point in 2012: for a project meant to last thousands of years, getting the community’s agreement is part of what makes it safe.