IGNACE – Residents with questions about nuclear power and waste will have another opportunity to ask experts Friday and Saturday at the Ignace Recreation Centre.
The Northwest Nuclear Exploration Event features exhibitors from the nuclear industry and the anti-nuclear side, a Kids Zone and panel discussions beginning with one at noon Friday on the “safety of transporting nuclear waste.”
The expo is important because “it’s critical, especially this year, to make sure that everyone in this community has ample opportunity to hear factual information from the experts in the nuclear field,” Ignace Mayor Kim Baigrie said Thursday.
Answers to questions on power generation, transportation safety and many other topics will be available in this “one-stop shop” for information, she said.
Ignace residents are looking for answers on nuclear questions, and this event “is like a one-stop shop for all of those answers,” she said. “And if there are other questions, we can try to get answers for them as well.
“No one in this community should ever look back and say that Ignace, this mayor and council and the many groups associated with this project didn’t provide information or an opportunity for residents to get informed,” she said.
“There are over 40 exhibitors. I’m excited for this, for our community.”
The event comes two weeks before a historic community vote on whether Ignace should participate in a proposed nuclear waste storage project.
Ignace residents and property owners 16 and older are voting from April 26-30 on whether their township should “continue participating” in the site selection process for a deep geological repository. Votes may be cast online or at the recreation centre’s curling hall.
A deep geological repository is an underground facility for the long-term storage of spent nuclear fuel. Finland recently completed construction of the world’s first such facility, and a delegation of Ignace residents toured it in November.
After the vote in late April, consulting firm With Chela Inc. will complete a report on community support for hosting the repository and present it to the township’s “willingness committee” in June.
Ignace council will then decide whether the township will continue as a potential host community and report its decision to the Nuclear Waste Management Organization by the end of July.
The industry-funded organization is supposed to choose between the Ignace-area site and a location in southwestern Ontario by the end of the year. Whichever site is chosen, construction is forecast to begin around 2034.
Unlike last September’s exploration event, this one includes exhibits by anti-nuclear groups. We the Nuclear Free North, Northwatch, Environment North and No Nuclear Waste in Northwestern Ontario will all be there.
“We’d like to demonstrate that we care about Ignace’s future and the folks that live there,” We the Nuclear Free North’s Wendy O’Connor said.
“Our fear is that the nuclear industry, which is running all of this, is not fully revealing the risks of the project – the social risks, the environmental risks, any of the risks – because, of course, they are the industry and they wish to continue being the industry.”
On Saturday’s agenda at 2 p.m. is an All Voices Panel including representatives of Environment North and Northwatch as well as “local voices.”
Saturday activities will kick off with a free breakfast hosted by Baigrie with the mayors of Pinawa, Man., and Clarington, Ont., as honoured guests.
Pinawa is the former site of an experimental reactor. Clarington hosts Ontario Power Generation’s Darlington nuclear station.
The event runs from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Friday and 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday.
