Transportation planning
Canada’s used nuclear fuel is safely stored on an interim basis at seven licensed facilities.
Once the deep geological repository is operational in the 2040s, the used nuclear fuel will be transported from the interim storage facilities where it is currently stored. The NWMO is responsible for ensuring our transportation activities, whether by road or by rail, are conducted safely and securely.
When transportation begins, used nuclear fuel will be transported in specially designed transportation packages certified by the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) to meet stringent testing and regulatory requirements. The NWMO must do this in a way that meets technical and regulatory requirements, and addresses safety from a social perspective through the lens of Reconciliation, Indigenous Knowledge and western science.
As the used nuclear fuel will need to be transported through communities and traditional territories to arrive at the repository, it is essential that the transportation plan reflects public priorities and concerns. While transportation is not expected to begin until the early 2040s, work is already underway to develop the transportation plan.
The NWMO has engaged in thousands of conversations with communities and interested parties to identify their priorities and concerns, which are described in our transportation planning framework. We are taking feedback from these conversations into account and have developed a draft Preliminary transportation plan and committed to updating our transportation planning framework every three years until we start transporting used nuclear fuel.
Engagement, planning and refining
Caitlin Burley, Manager of Transportation Engagement at the NWMO, talks to a visitor at the Mobile Learn More Centre in the Wabigoon Lake Ojibway Nation-Ignace area.
The focus of our work on transportation from 2020 through 2022 has been understanding the priorities of Canadians and Indigenous peoples related to transportation planning, documenting and incorporating them into our early planning. We actively sought feedback from Canadians and Indigenous peoples through engagement sessions, panel discussions, workshops and surveys, both virtually and in person. Our work also continues to be guided by the Council of Knowledge Holders and a new Community-Based Transportation Working Group, established in 2021.
Based on the information we gathered, we developed and published a draft transportation framework in 2020, summarizing the priorities that were identified and outlining a proposed approach to collaborative transportation planning. We then sought further input from people and communities about the draft framework and published the results in a What we heard report in 2021.
Using that feedback, we revised the draft framework and sought additional comments and questions about it. We then released a revised framework, reflective of people’s key questions, concerns and priorities, alongside a Preliminary transportation plan. The Preliminary transportation plan was developed to begin to answer some of the more technical questions about safety and logistics that we heard as part of our engagement on the draft framework.
We continued to engage with First Nation and Métis communities as we advanced our transportation planning. Applying a Reconciliation lens to this work helps us to fully understand how planning can be implemented in a sustainable way that considers how to plan for the next seven generations, takes into account Indigenous priorities and is guided by Indigenous Knowledge.
We remain committed to engaging in conversations about the NWMO’s transportation program and Canada’s plan with those new to the project. During the pandemic, we found new ways to engage with people (including through virtual platforms) that we are continuing to use to reach audiences we might not otherwise be able to hear from.
We also continue to inform governments about our transportation planning through one-on-one updates with federal and provincial representatives, as requested. Over the past three years, this included providing information to an interjurisdictional working group of publics servants from Transport Canada, the CNSC, and provincial transportation ministries from Ontario, Québec and New Brunswick, which meets every year.
The NWMO’s transportation planning remains a work-in-progress. The transportation framework is intended to be a dynamic document. We will update our transportation planning documents every three years to properly reflect planning priorities, questions and concerns as we continue to engage with Canadians and Indigenous peoples. This is one of the ways we are committing to ensure that our planning is reflective of community values and future generations.
Please check our transportation web page for a summary of conversations and public attitude research reports related to the topic of transportation.