The drills have fallen silent in South Bruce.
After nearly a year of drilling, the borehole coring north of Teeswater for a proposed underground nuclear waste facility has come to an end.
“We did intersect the target rock formation, Cobourg, at around 650 to 670 metres down and that formation is about 40 to 45 metres thick. This is the formation that would be the host of the repository if the project moves ahead,” says Martin Sykes, senior geoscientist with the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO).
The NWMO has spent over a year drilling into farmers’ fields north of Teeswater to see if the area is suitable for a massive underground facility that would house all of Canada’s high-level nuclear waste on a permanent basis.
Core samples taken from the site will determine if the geology is suitable or not, according to Sykes.
“We took about 400 [core samples] from each of the boreholes. These have been distributed to various labs across Canada and North America where they are undergoing analysis right now,” says Sykes. “We’re at the stage where these have been shipped away to laboratories and we’ll start to receive some data from them in the coming months.”
That data will be important for those in the community still undecided on how they’ll vote in a referendum happening next year, which will determine if South Bruce is willing to host Canada’s most radioactive nuclear waste forever, or not.
“There’s so much information that has to come forward as of yet and there are a lot of people from the public who want to have it [the referendum] on the next election ballot in October. But these studies and so forth will not be completed by then, so I’m afraid we have to put this referendum off until all that stuff is done, which will be in the middle of 2023 or near the end of 2023,” said Municipality of South Bruce Mayor, Robert Buckle in an earlier interview with CTV News.
Borehole drilling was also completed in Ignace, Ont. in November. The NWMO says it will decide whether Ignace or South Bruce will host Canada’s first permanent nuclear waste facility by the end of 2023.
