Ottawa approves plan to bury nuclear waste

Trucks and trains carrying millions of tonnes of dangerously radioactive waste nuclear fuel will be rolling across Ontario within 30 years, the federal government confirmed in giving the go-ahead to a multi-billion-dollar industry scheme for long-term waste storage.

The vehicles would carry waste fuel, now stored at the province's nuclear power reactors, to a holding site about 50 metres below ground at what Natural Resources Minister Gary Lunn called a "willing community."

Officials of the industry-led Nuclear Waste Management Organization said that site could be in one of the four provinces with nuclear activity – Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick, all with reactors, and Saskatchewan, with uranium mines. After roughly another three decades, the nuclear waste would be shifted to a permanent mausoleum as far as a kilometre underground at the same location.

"There's a strong likelihood in the years ahead that they'll be able to reuse the spent fuel to recover even more energy out of it," Lunn said.

The decision effectively rubber-stamps the scheme proposed in 2005. The nuclear industry would pay most of the research, construction and maintenance costs, estimated at $24 billion.