Getting It Right? The Site Selection Process for Canada’s High-level Nuclear Waste

Abstract

This chapter focuses on assessment and risk management of the site selection process for Canada’s permanent high-level waste management facility for used nuclear fuel. It also examines the risk management approach related to the development of the transportation routes that will be needed to carry used nuclear fuel to the permanent deep geological repository (DGR). There are several types of risks (technological, environmental, human health, political, security, and financial) and uncertainties (epistemic, semantic, and normative) that exist in this case. Our goal is to better understand how those different risks and uncertainties are assessed by different groups (in particular the lay public, stakeholders, and experts) and handled by the risk managers. The REACT (regulatory, economic, advisory, community-based, and technology) framework is used to assess risk management practices for siting a location for high-level nuclear waste. After a general introduction to the case, three descriptive sections provide the level of individuals’ affectedness, the types of risk management intervention tools, and the level of democratization in the case. A particular emphasis is on the public consultation process for communities interested in hosting the DGR.