Nuclear Waste Workshop Offered Wawa an Alternative to Industry Information

In the summer of 2011, a nuclear waste workshop came to Wawa. The town was one of a growing number of Northern Ontario communities thinking about a very large decision: whether to volunteer for study as a possible site for Canada’s used nuclear fuel.

A workshop at the Wawa Motor Inn

Northwatch, an environmental coalition based in North Bay, toured the northern communities taking part in the search with a series of workshops. Earlier sessions had been held in Ear Falls, Schreiber, Sioux Lookout, Ignace and Hornepayne. Wawa’s session was on Thursday, July 28, 2011, from 7 to 9 p.m. in the Cornell Room of the Wawa Motor Inn. It opened with a presentation and then moved to a roundtable on what residents wanted to know.

The timing mattered. Wawa council had written to the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) in May 2011 to say it was interested. The NWMO then presented to a special session of council on July 19, about a week before the workshop.

Northwatch spokesperson Brennain Lloyd said the communities were only at the start of the process but would soon have to decide whether to go further. Her group’s view was that good decisions require information that is reliable, independent and drawn from more than one source, not only from the industry promoting the project.

An old question for the North

The idea of burying used fuel in the Canadian Shield was not new in 2011. Atomic Energy of Canada Limited had studied northern Ontario sites in the early 1980s and met strong local opposition. It then developed a general concept for disposal in the Shield, but a federal environmental review that ended in 1998 did not endorse it, because the concept lacked public acceptance.

The NWMO’s proposal looked similar on paper: used fuel sealed in durable containers and placed deep underground in stable rock. The difference was the process. Communities had to volunteer, and they could withdraw at any point.

Residents who came to the 2011 sessions raised concerns that are still central to the debate:

• the risk of accidents while transporting fuel over long distances;
• possible exposure to radiation and the long-term effects on health and the environment;
• the fact that the waste stays hazardous much longer than any container is guaranteed to last.

What happened next

About 22 communities across Ontario and Saskatchewan eventually expressed interest. Over the next decade the NWMO narrowed the list through geological study and community engagement. Many northern communities, including several near Lake Superior, dropped out or were screened out along the way.

In November 2024 the NWMO selected the Wabigoon Lake Ojibway Nation–Ignace area in Northwestern Ontario after both communities said they were willing to host the repository. Regulatory approvals and construction will take many more years.

For Wawa, the 2011 workshop is a reminder of how seriously small northern towns took the question, and of how much residents wanted independent information before deciding. Read more: What Canada can teach the U.S. about managing used nuclear fuel.