Know that feeling of relief when you’re struggling with a problem and realise others share the same issues too – and that common solutions might be possible?
This is nowhere truer than in the management of radioactive waste. Solving this problem has been challenging all over the world.
One country struggling with these challenges is Canada. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC)’s 7.30 program featured Canada’s nuclear program, and its struggle with radioactive waste, earlier this week.
Sixty years into its nuclear energy program – which supplies about half the electricity needs of Ontario, its most populous province – Canada still has no permanent repository for radioactive waste. Ontario’s three nuclear power plants, which house 20 reactors, are storing around three million radioactive fuel bundles while the search for a repository site continues. Canada has been looking at options for permanent underground storage of this radioactive waste since the 1990s, but no site has been selected.
Like in Australia, the situation is not much better with low-level waste (LLW), including the waste generated by nuclear medicine.
Canada’s Nuclear Waste Management Organization is tasked with finding a site for the permanent disposal of LLW and ILW. But a proposed repository in Southwestern Ontario, which had been in the works for 20 years, was withdrawn in 2020 after the local indigenous community rejected it.
Earlier this year, Tellus, including CEO Nate Smith, met with a visiting NWMO delegation in Adelaide. We briefed the Canadians on our facility at Sandy Ridge, in remote WA, which has permanently disposed of around 6,000 cubic metres of LLW since receiving its license in 2023. We also told them of our plan for a deep geological repository for multi-national LLW at Chandler, in the NT.
The lessons for a country such as Canada from our experience are two-fold, and related. First, nothing in LLW is more important, or more difficult, than securing social licence for permanent disposal. We briefed our NWMO friends on the partnership with the Titjikala Native Title Party, who voted last year to back Chandler.
Second, our experience shows the value of harnessing private sector expertise to address LLW. Here in Australia, as the Commonwealth’s stockpile of LLW grows – and faces a big increase as AUKUS nuclear submarines arrive- the Australian Government continues the search for permanent disposal of this hazardous material. Canada is a reminder of just how long this search can take.
This is why we were so encouraged last month by comments from Federal Minister for Resources and Northern Australia, the Hon Madeleine King: “We can’t ignore the fact that in Western Australia, there now exists a disposal site for low-level radioactive waste that has all the permits, all the approvals, and everything it needs to do to operate safely.”
We can’t ignore the fact that in Western Australia, there now exists a disposal site for low-level radioactive waste that has all the permits, all the approvals, and everything it needs to do to operate safely.
Hon. Madeleine KingFederal Minister for Resources and Northern Australia