Concerns Regarding Project Scoping, Deferred Assessment, and Incomplete Consideration of Reasonably Foreseeable Effects

This submission provides detailed comments on the Initial Project Description Plain Language Summary for the proposed Deep Geological Repository for Canada’s Used Nuclear Fuel. While the document conveys confidence in the technical maturity of the repository concept and emphasizes regulatory oversight and mitigation, the overall assessment framework relies on a narrowly defined project scope, fragmented consideration of effects, and repeated deferral of foreseeable impacts to future regulatory stages. These choices materially limit the ability of the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada to fulfill the objectives of the Impact Assessment Act during the Planning Phase and constrain informed, precautionary decision making.

The Initial Project Description defines the Project as the construction, operation, decommissioning, and closure of a deep geological repository at the selected site, while explicitly excluding transportation of used nuclear fuel beyond primary and secondary access roads. This framing treats the repository as an isolated physical work rather than as part of an interconnected national system required to manage used nuclear fuel. Under the Impact Assessment Act, a project is not limited to the physical footprint of a facility but includes undertakings and activities that are necessary for the project to function and that are reasonably foreseeable over its lifecycle. A repository designed to permanently manage Canada’s entire inventory of used nuclear fuel cannot function without the long-term, coordinated transportation of that fuel from reactor sites across the country. Transportation is therefore not ancillary, speculative, or optional. It is fundamental to the Project’s purpose and feasibility. Excluding it by definition does not remove its causal relationship to the Project, but instead constrains the scope of assessment in a way that is inconsistent with the integrative intent of federal impact assessment.

Transportation of used nuclear fuel would occur repeatedly over many decades and across extensive geographic areas, introducing predictable pathways of environmental and social interaction. These include interactions with land, water, wildlife, communities, and infrastructure far beyond the immediate Project site. Treating transportation as external to the Project fragments the assessment and prevents a coherent evaluation of corridor-level effects, accident and malfunction scenarios, cumulative impacts, and implications for Indigenous rights and community safety. The reliance on the existence of other regulators to address these issues at a later stage does not satisfy the requirements of the Impact Assessment Act. Impact assessment is intended to evaluate whether a project should proceed and under what conditions, based on a comprehensive understanding of its foreseeable effects, rather than deferring critical questions until after fundamental project decisions have effectively been made.

The Initial Project Description assumes reliance on existing transportation infrastructure without assessing whether that infrastructure is capable of safely and reliably supporting decades of hazardous material transport. Infrastructure is treated as a static background condition rather than as a dynamic system subject to physical limits, degradation, and external stressors. In northern and remote regions, highways and bridges are routinely affected by seasonal weight restrictions, freeze–thaw cycles, flooding, wildfire events, and extended maintenance gaps. Structural capacity, redundancy, and reliability are central determinants of transportation risk. The absence of an assessment of bridge load ratings, detour availability, route redundancy, and long-term maintenance feasibility obscures whether transportation can be safely accommodated without significant infrastructure modification. If upgrades, reinforcements, or operational changes are required to enable transportation, those interventions represent project-caused changes to the environment and must be assessed transparently rather than assumed to occur independently.

Accidents and malfunctions associated with transportation are reasonably foreseeable and must be considered even where the probability of radiological release is low. Risk assessment in environmental science and engineering recognizes that risk is a function not only of probability and consequence, but also of exposure duration and response capacity. Transportation incidents involving hazardous materials can result in prolonged road closures, traffic diversions, and emergency access disruptions regardless of whether containment systems perform as designed. In rural and northern contexts, a single incident can isolate communities, delay emergency medical services, disrupt supply chains, and impose psychosocial stress on residents. These outcomes constitute adverse effects within federal jurisdiction and warrant assessment in their own right. The Initial Project Description references emergency preparedness but does not evaluate whether assumed response capabilities align with actual conditions along potential transportation corridors. Emergency response effectiveness depends on the availability of trained personnel, specialized equipment, realistic response times, and redundant access routes. In many regions, emergency services are volunteer-based and operate under significant logistical constraints. Without corridor-level analysis, emergency planning remains conceptual rather than evidence-based.

Throughout the document, foreseeable effects are repeatedly deferred to future licensing and regulatory approvals, particularly under the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission. While lifecycle regulation is essential for nuclear facilities, licensing processes do not replace the function of impact assessment. Impact assessment is designed to integrate environmental, social, health, and rights-based considerations across jurisdictions and timeframes at an early stage, when alternatives, scope, and conditions can still be meaningfully influenced. Licensing focuses on compliance with defined requirements once a project has been approved in principle. Deferring assessment of transportation, infrastructure capacity, emergency response feasibility, and long-term system interactions to future licensing stages fragments decision making and limits the ability of IAAC, Indigenous Nations, and the public to engage meaningfully with the Project as a whole.

The Initial Project Description repeatedly characterizes potential effects as low risk or unlikely to be significant, while simultaneously acknowledging incomplete baseline data and uncertainty, particularly with respect to Indigenous social, cultural, and land use information. From a scientific perspective, assigning low residual risk under conditions of incomplete system definition and acknowledged data gaps is not defensible. Robust risk assessment requires clearly defined system boundaries, well characterized pathways of change, and an understanding of how uncertainties propagate over time. This concern is amplified by the proposed lifespan of the Project, which extends over approximately 160 years. Over such timeframes, uncertainty is inherent rather than exceptional, and assessment frameworks must explicitly account for it rather than relying on present-day conditions as proxies for future performance.

Climate change is identified as a valued component in the Initial Project Description, but it is not meaningfully integrated as a design and risk driver. For a project spanning multiple generations, climate change influences transportation reliability, infrastructure degradation, wildfire frequency and severity, flooding risk, and emergency response feasibility. It also affects long-term maintenance requirements and the resilience of supporting systems. Treating climate change as contextual rather than structural underestimates its influence on Project feasibility and risk pathways. A precautionary assessment would explicitly evaluate how evolving climate conditions interact with transportation systems, emergency response capacity, and infrastructure dependencies over the Project’s full lifespan.

Cumulative effects assessment in the Initial Project Description is largely component-specific and site-centric, despite the Project being explicitly regional and system-based in nature. Excluding transportation, infrastructure upgrades, and governance dependencies prevents an assessment of how multiple stressors may interact spatially and temporally. Cumulative effects are not merely the sum of individual impacts, but the result of interacting pathways that compound over time. For a Project with national reach and intergenerational duration, cumulative effects assessment must consider how transportation, infrastructure strain, climate change, land use change, and social perception interact to influence environmental and community outcomes.

The scope of Indigenous engagement described in the Initial Project Description focuses primarily on host and proximate communities, while Indigenous Nations located along potential transportation corridors are not included at this stage. Effects on Indigenous rights are not limited to the repository footprint. Transportation introduces foreseeable effects related to safety, access, land use, harvesting, travel, and the intergenerational transfer of perceived and actual risk. Narrowly defining the Project has the practical effect of narrowing the scope of consultation, raising concerns regarding whether the full range of potential impacts on Indigenous rights is being considered early enough to meaningfully inform decision making.

Finally, the Project assumes long-term continuity of infrastructure standards, maintenance regimes, institutional capacity, and governance frameworks over more than a century. From a systems perspective, these assumptions represent potential risk pathways rather than neutral conditions. Institutional change, funding constraints, regulatory evolution, and governance transitions are foreseeable over such timeframes and have direct implications for environmental protection and public trust. A precautionary impact assessment should acknowledge and evaluate these long-term dependencies rather than presuming stability.

In its current form, the Initial Project Description does not provide a sufficient basis for determining the appropriate scope of the impact assessment. By narrowly defining the Project and excluding essential system components, it limits consideration of reasonably foreseeable effects and undermines the objectives of the Impact Assessment Act. A revised scope that includes transportation of used nuclear fuel, infrastructure capacity and reliability, emergency response feasibility, climate resilience, cumulative effects, and broader Indigenous rights considerations is necessary to support transparent, defensible, and informed decision making at the federal level.