Waste management strategies covered in province’s latest nuclear power webinar series

By ZOE MASON on January 22, 2026.

The province held the third in a series of public engagement webinars about nuclear energy in Alberta last week, with a focus on technical questions and nuclear waste management.

The webinar included presentations from the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission and the Nuclear Waste Management Organization.

Justin McKeown, team leader of the Western and Northern regions team at CNSC, told attendees that the core principle guiding radiation protection is represented by the acronym ALARA – as low as reasonably achievable.

The CNSC allows a dose limit of 1 mSv per year from licensed nuclear activities.

To put that number in context, someone living in Edmonton is exposed to 2.4 mSv per year simply based on naturally occurring radiating materials. A typical dose received from a dental x-ray is 0.05 mSv, while a chest x-ray exposes a person to a dose of around 0.1 mSv.

Someone living near a nuclear power plant can expect to be exposed to approximately 0.001 mSv per year as a result of the nuclear activities.

In a subsequent presentation, Chantal Medri, manager of intermediate and high-level waste at NWMO, outlined Canada’s plan for long-term intermediate and high-level nuclear waste.

Intermediate and high-level nuclear waste includes the metal parts inside a reactor and the highly radioactive used nuclear fuel bundles produced by the generation of nuclear power.

Canada is in the process of constructing a deep geological repository, which will provide long-term, high-security nuclear storage for the waste produced by all the country’s nuclear power generation.

The repository will be located between 650 and 800 metres below the ground – more than 100 metres deeper than the CN Tower is tall.

After extensive community consultation, a site was identified for the deep geological repository at Ignace and Wabigoon Lake Ojibway Nation in Ontario in 2024.

The project advanced to the first stage of the regulatory decision-making process on Jan. 5.

The storage facility uses five levels of protections that begin with the fuel pellet, and bundles themselves to protect against radiation leaks.

The bundles are stored in a copper-coated steel container, which is then put inside a bentonite clay buffer box, stored underground beneath hundreds of metres of rock.

The facility is designed according to an international scientific consensus about the safest methods for long-term nuclear waste disposal.

The host community has already agreed to a facility that would house 5.9 million used fuel bundles, the projected total inventory expected to be produced in Canada from the current fleet of reactors through the end of their life cycle. Ontario’s Bruce Power project is scheduled to continue operations into the 2060s.

All three of the public information webinars are now available on the province’s nuclear energy engagement webpage.