On June 30, NB Power registered an environmental impact assessment with the province of New Brunswick and filed a licence application with the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) to prepare a site on the Bay of Fundy for the ARC-100, an experimental small modular reactor (SMR) still in early design.
Making information public about the project – which includes not just a reactor but also new aquatic infrastructure in the Bay of Fundy and new radioactive storage – as well as testing the veracity of claims made about safety, risk and impacts will be difficult if not impossible without a federal Impact Assessment, which has so far been denied.
Relying only on the provincial assessment or the CNSC’s review to inform understandings of adverse effects and impacts is a major step backwards. The provincial process has limited opportunities for public input. The CNSC’s licensing process is narrowly defined by the stage of activity being licensed (i.e., site selection, construction, operations and eventual decommissioning), meaning a review of impacts and opportunities for public engagement are spaced decades apart.
Read the full article by Susan O’Donnell and Kerrie Blaise in the NB Media Co-op HERE.