Canada Must Ban Reprocessing

Civil society calls on Canada to ban reprocessing nuclear fuel waste. ​Learn more and join the campaign at reprocessing.ca

In 2020 Canada embarked on a review of its radioactive waste policy. Hundreds of civil society organizations, Indigenous Peoples, and concerned Canadians engaged with Natural Resources Canada, and thousands of Canadians called for a ban on reprocessing of nuclear waste. The draft policy, released in February 2022, disappointedly stated only that reprocessing is to be “subject to policy approval by the Government of Canada”. Meanwhile, the federal government is giving money to companies to develop experimental reprocessing technologies as a side operation to prototype small modular reactors.

The nuclear industry refers to extracting plutonium from nuclear fuel waste as ‘reprocessing” or “recycling”. It is highly contaminating, practiced in only a few countries, and is linked to nuclear proliferation and nuclear weapons. Reprocessing is a dirty, dangerous distraction from real climate action.

Learn more at reprocessing.ca

Natural Resources Canada launched a review of Canada’s Radioactive Waste Policy in 2021. The review came nine months after the federal government committed to the review in response to an international investigation that concluded that Canada’s radioactive waste policy was inadequate. Read more here

Five key points:

• Canada needs an independent agency, arms-length from government and industry, to oversee radioactive waste management and decommissioning
• Radioactive waste should NOT be abandoned; policy should direct perpetual care and monitoring
• Government and industry must be open and transparent in the management of radioactive waste and its transportation; Indigenous peoples and other Canadians have a right to access information, to engage in decision-making, and to know the risks
• No importing of radioactive waste from other countries
• No plutonium extraction (reprocessing or pyro-processing) of radioactive fuel waste

Click HERE for suggestions of key principles and policy points to include in your comments

Continue to write to Natural Resources Canada, send a copy to your MP and to the Prime Minister of Canada. And please send Nuclear Waste Watch a copy as well – we’ll add it to our record of public input.

Visit www.nuclearwastewatch.ca to learn more about this important review and how you can influence the outcomes.

Visit the Natural Resources Canada review website at www.radwastereview.ca

•       Read the discussion papers
•       Comment in online forums
•       Make written submissions (online or by email)
•       Email comments to nrcan.radwastereview-examendechetsradioactifs.rncan@canada.ca