Nuclear Waste on Indigenous Homelands: A Settler Critique


Susan O'Donnell, St. Thomas University

The Canadian settler state has been involved in nuclear technology since the Manhattan project that developed the bombs dropped over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Later, as part of the Cold War, Canada too sought to use nuclear technology to support the power of the U.S. led “capitalist” bloc. Starting from such beginnings, the nuclear establishment in Canada has expanded to link federal departments, Crown corporations and agencies, provincial public utilities, public universities and thousands of companies from small manufacturers to Canada’s largest multinationals and partners in the U.S. and beyond. The main selling point has also evolved; nuclear technology is now portrayed as a safe and reliable source of energy that produces no carbon emissions, thereby allowing continued economic growth in the face of a dire climate crisis, thus ensuring the survival of the current capitalist trajectory. This message overlooks the well-known problems associated with nuclear energy: the risk of catastrophic nuclear accidents, the linkage with nuclear weapons proliferation, and the challenge of dealing with radioactive waste that stays hazardous for millennia. Many Indigenous communities in Canada are concerned about radioactive waste on their homelands (Akagi and O’Donnell, 2023; Blaise and Stencil, 2020; Coates and Landrie-Parker, n.d; Höffken and Ramana, 2023). In June 2021, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act came into force in Canada. Article 20(2) of the UNDRIP states: “ States shall take effective measures to ensure that no storage or disposal of hazardous materials shall take place in the lands or territories of indigenous peoples without their free, prior and informed consent ” (United Nations, 2017). ‘Hazardous materials’ includes nuclear waste, categorized by different levels of radioactivity. Of particular concern is high-level waste that includes spent or used nuclear fuel, that encompasses the most radioactive products of the nuclear fuel chain (Ramana 2018). High-level nuclear waste has been produced, and is currently stored, at sites in New Brunswick, Quebec, Ontario and Manitoba. The industry-run organization, the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) is trying to find a site to build a proposed ‘deep geological repository’ to bury this stockpile (Ramana 2013). It is expected to select one of two sites in Ontario, both of which on Indigenous territory, to site this repository. Several First Nations have expressed their opposition to such siting. If the NWMO proceeds with its plan, it will add to the long history of the environmental and health consequences of the nuclear power fuel chain falling disproportionally on Indigenous peoples and other marginalized communities as well as all our non-human relations (Höffken and Ramana, 2023). Our paper will explore the settler-colonial aspects of the nuclear industry, the situation of nuclear waste on Indigenous homelands, and what reconciliation with the nuclear industry might mean, from a settler perspective.

Non-presenting author: M.V. Ramana, University of British Columbia

This paper will be presented at the following session: