Canadian municipality began voting this week about hosting radioactive waste

Residents of South Bruce, Ontario, Canada, began voting this week about whether they wish to host a deep geologic repository for nuclear waste.

Voting began Oct. 22 and was to run through Oct. 28, according to the municipality’s website.

The seven-member South Bruce council decided this spring to let residents decide directly whether the municipality should host the repository.

The question that was to appear on South Bruce residents’ ballots this week is:  “Are you in favour of the Municipality of South Bruce declaring South Bruce to be a willing host for the Nuclear Waste Management Organization’s proposed Deep Geological Repository (DGR)?”

South Bruce, near the shores of Lake Huron, is about 110 miles from Toronto. The municipality is one of two potential host sites for a deep geologic repository to be built by Canada’s Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO). The other potential host site, the Township of Ignace, agreed this summer to host a repository, if NWMO wants to build one there.

Ignace, unlike South Bruce, did give its residents direct power to consent to hosting a repository. Instead, Ignace’s town council decided the question after surveying township residents.

The repository that NWMO could build in either South Bruce or Ignace would hold intermediate-level and non-fuel, high-level radioactive waste.

Earlier this year, President Joe Biden (D) signed a law that would increase official U.S. scrutiny of nuclear-waste disposal in the Great Lakes region.