On May 25th the Nuclear Waste Management Organization will be holding court in the Howard Johnson Hotel at 50 Brady Street in Sudbury, soliciting pubic comments on their proposed siting process for the selection of a "host community" for nuclear waste.  The sessions are scheduled between 2:00 in the afternoon and 9:00 in the evening.  They are set up in an open house format for people to drop in any time during this period.  25 or so poster boards will be set up around the room providing what the NWMO describes as "a high level overview of who we are, why used nuclear fuel needs to be managed,what is the plan which was approved by the government for the long term management of used nuclear fuel in Canada, and some key elements of the proposed process for selecting a site".  A 20 minute video will be playing throughout the session covering many of the same issues.  Printed material will be available and NWMO staff from a variety of areas of the organization will be at the session to hear comments, suggestions and concerns and to answer questions.

There is a lot of background to this issue and to the Nuclear Waste Management Organizations current foray into northern Ontario, but here are the key bits:

• Nuclear waste is very long-lived and extremely dangerous. High  level nuclear fuel waste is created when nuclear power is used to  generate electricity. The waste is a radioactive poison, and includes hundreds of  different isotopes, or radiation-producing substances. Even low  doses of radiation can cause cancer, birth defects and  other health problems. The waste is lethal and must be strictly isolated  from the environment for hundreds of thousands  years. If the wastes  leak into the environment, the radioactive elements will contaminate  the soil, water and air.
• The Nuclear Waste Management Organization was created in 2002 and told to consider three options for the long term management of nuclear fuel waste and then report back to the federal government. In November 2005 the NWMO recommended burying the waste in a rock formation combined with short term storage at the reactor sites and the option of moving the waste to a central above-ground storage site while they constructed the underground repository.
• Critics have described the NWMO's proposal as combining the worst of all three options the NWMO considered, saying that it encourages the continued production of nuclear waste and lets the industry off the hook for long term management of the extremely hazardous material.
• There are serious concerns that, with the approach being promoted by the NWMO, a site will be selected before research is completed, and it will be hundreds of years before the community that is made "host" to the disposal facility will know what kind of a facility they are being set up to "host". As with any option that involves removing the waste from where it was created and is currently stored, communities will be put at risk by the transport of nuclear waste, potentially very long distances.