The industry-based Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) has confirmed that two of the four Canadian communities that it is talking to about becoming a nuclear dump are in northern Saskatchewan; at Pinehouse and English River. The other two are in northwestern Ontario, much closer to the nuclear power plants along the Great lakes that produce almost all of the nuclear waste in Canada.
Every day, the world over, large amounts of high-level radioactive waste created by nuclear power plants is placed in interim storage, which is vulnerable to natural disasters, man-made disasters, and to societal changes. In Finland the world's first permanent repository is being hewn out of solid rock -- a huge system of underground tunnels - that must last 100,000 years as this is how long the waste remains hazardous.
The United Church, Saskatchewan’s largest religious organization, has entered the debate on nuclear wastes. Its annual conference May 28th in Moose Jaw passed a resolution “prohibiting the transport or storage of high level nuclear waste across Saskatchewan”.