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To the Editor, The Hill Times:
Re: "Some nuclear projects do provide benefits, but nuclear waste disposal is another story" (Letters to the Editor, July 14, 2025), the author asks how society would benefit from the Nuclear Waste Management Organization’s (NWMO’s) plan to transport Canada’s millions of used fuel bundles to Ignace, Ontario and safely emplace them in a Deep Geological Repository (DGR).
I offer this: any effort to deal with large volumes of waste responsibly, and avoid bequeathing this problem to our grandchildren, is a benefit to society.
The objective of the DGR is to isolate the used nuclear fuel from the environment for millennia (the duration of its risk), so that it survives glaciation, wars, climate change, and total societal collapse if necessary – free of institutional controls.
This environmental stewardship is a laudable goal for our industrialized world: thousands of years hence, as post-glacial civilizations address millions of tonnes of chewed up toxic detritus from our time, the one enduring waste product they won’t have to worry about will be the nuclear fuel.
More than that, Canadians have already benefitted enormously from the generation of this waste: most of it comes from CANDU reactors that have powered half of Ontario for decades, one of the main reasons that Canada’s most populous and industrialized province has an almost 100% clean electrical grid – the envy of the world.
If we are to benefit from the production of waste, we must also deal with waste if future generations are to similarly benefit.
This is fundamental, but particularly important today as nuclear power is poised to alleviate energy poverty and drive sustainable development globally.
Jeremy Whitlock, PhD
Stratford, Ont.
(Nuclear consultant and former senior technical adviser at the IAEA Department of Safeguards.
Original letter to The Hill Times (2025 July 14) from F. Greening:
Some nuclear projects do provide benefits, but nuclear waste disposal is another story: letter writer
Re: "Canada fails to meet key principle of nuclear safety: Ottawa activist."
(The Hill Times, June 16, 2025) and "Public comment on nuclear regulator
welcome, but misinformation is not: letter writer," (The Hill Times, June 23,
2025)
Lynn Jones pointed out in her June 16 letter to The Hill Times that, "The
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) principle of justification in
nuclear safety requires that any practice involving human exposures to
ionizing radiation be justified during the licensing process for a facility. It
must be demonstrated that the overall benefits of the project to individuals and
society outweigh the potential health detriments of the radiation exposures it
will cause."
Jones further notes, "A March 2025 report by the IAEA flagged a serious
problem in Canada's nuclear governance regime. Canada has not incorporated
the fundamental safety principle of justification into its legal framework,
despite being urged to do so by an international peer review team in 2019."
By way of a response to this letter, Jeremy Whitlock on June 23 suggests that
the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) does in fact address this
requirement as follows: "With regard to the principle of 'justification' (i.e.,
benefit should outweigh risk), the CNSC did not check the box in the IAEA
review because it is already integral to the licensing of any nuclear project in
Canada: the CNSC rightly noted this in its response to the 2019 review."
I would argue that Whitlock's claim, namely that justification of a nuclear
project is inherent in the license approval process, is highly questionable,
especially for projects involving radioactive waste disposal, as explained
below.
First, I would acknowledge that some nuclear projects, such as power station
license renewals, do provide benefits to individuals and society by generating
electricity for domestic, business, and industrial consumption. But when it
comes to nuclear waste disposal, I fail to see any benefits that might accrue to
individuals or society with regard to the licensing of nuclear waste disposal
facilities. Simply put, radioactive waste is a very dangerous, intractable
material that offers no benefit to society and has no commercial use or value.
On the contrary, it is a commodity that is very expensive to manage or to
safely dispose of.
A perusal of recent public hearings on radioactive waste facilities in Canada-
such as a used fuel or low- and intermediate-level radioactive waste deep
geologic repository, or the Western Waste Management Facility at the Bruce
site in Bruce County, or the near surface disposal facility at the Chalk River
site-totally lack a description by the proponent of any benefits arising from
the construction and licensing of these facilities.
I would ask Whitlock to please explain how society would benefit from the
Nuclear Waste Management Organization's proposal to move Canada's
estimated total of 5-million used fuel bundles an average distance of 1,725
km, to Ignace in Northern Ontario, at a total cost of more than $550-million.
Dr. F. R. Greening
Hamilton, ON
The letter writer is a research scientist who worked for Ontario Power
Generation and Bruce Power between 1978 and 2013.
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