A bipartisan group of lawmakers recently pressed the Joe Biden administration in a resolution to oppose a Canadian geologic repository for spent nuclear fuel planned for the Great Lakes Basin.
In the Sep. 17 resolution led by Rep. Dan Kildee (D-Mich.), the coalition of delegates from Great Lakes states like Michigan, Ohio and Minnesota urged Biden and Secretary of State Anthony Blinken to “take appropriate action to work with the government of Canada to prevent a permanent nuclear waste repository from being built within the Great Lakes Basin.”
The Canadian government’s Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) is eyeing a site near Lake Huron as a possible location for a future deep geologic repository for the nation’s nuclear waste inventory.
The lawmakers sounded the alarm about the potential environmental and human impacts of a nuclear waste repository on the Great Lakes, and asked the administration to work with Canada to develop a “solution for the long-term storage of nuclear waste … that does not pose a threat to the Great Lakes.”
The resolution has been assigned to the House Foreign Affairs Committee. At deadline Wednesday for Weapons Complex Morning Briefing no debate had been scheduled.
This isn’t the first time Kildee has led the charge against a potential Canadian repository. A nearly-identical version of the Sep. 17 resolution was sent to the House’s foreign affairs panel last year, but it never heard debate.
While the federal government has yet to bring a permanent storage site for spent fuel online, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission last week licensed a private company to store it at a proposed interim storage facility in west Texas.
