Northwestern Ontario nuclear waste storage site moves forward as 5 vendors chosen

Desmond Brown · CBC News

· Posted: May 13, 2025 7:00 PM EDT | Last Updated: 8 minutes ago

The Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) has chosen 5 vendors to plan and program Canada's archetypal heavy geological repository —  a multibillion-dollar task that aims to yet store the country's atomic waste. 

The NWMO announced successful November that Northwestern Ontario had been chosen for the repository.

A tract adjacent Ignace and Wabigoon Lake Ojibway Nation has been identified arsenic the NWMO's preferred determination for the project, which volition store atomic discarded hundreds of metres underground.

In a Monday quality release, the NWMO said the vendors chosen are:

• WSP Canada Inc.
• Peter Kiewit Sons ULC (Kiewit).
• Hatch Ltd.
• Thyssen Mining Construction of Canada Ltd.
• Kinectrics Inc. 

"This is an breathtaking milestone for the Nuclear Waste Management Organization and for the atomic manufacture successful Canada," Craig MacBride, the NWMO's manager of nationalist and media relations, told CBC Thunder Bay.

"It's the adjacent measurement successful the process to permanently isolate and incorporate Canada's utilized atomic fuel, and we've teamed up with 5 large companies to assistance america marque it a reality."

MacBride said the 5 companies volition screen six categories of pre-construction work: design/engineering, above-ground operation design, excavation design, underground excavation operation design, atomic absorption advice and atomic systems and facilities. 

Laurie Swami, the NWMO's president and CEO, said the enactment is arrogant to prosecute with "five experienced and respected companies" to plan and program the repository.

"We're excited to enactment with them to move toward our extremity of containing and isolating Canada's utilized atomic fuel," Swami wrote successful a quality release.

"While this is simply a unsocial task successful Canada, the halfway needs are good established, and the companies chosen person heavy acquisition successful mining, operation plan and the handling of atomic materials." 

Speaking astatine the November announcement, Stephen Lecce, Ontario's curate of vigor and electrification, said arsenic the provincial authorities "expands our zero-emissions atomic fleet to conscionable rising vigor demand, Ontario is cementing its presumption arsenic a satellite person successful each parts of the atomic lifecycle. This accomplishment by NWMO is conscionable the latest example."

Construction connected the repository isn't expected to statesman until the mid-2030s, with the extremity of getting the tract operational successful the aboriginal 2040s, the NWMO has told CBC News.

The NWMO, which was founded successful 2002, says the $26-billion task volition make hundreds of jobs.