New Sustainability Perspectives on Pollutant Releases from Canada’s Nuclear Sector

Abstract

This novel characterization of new Canadian radionuclide release data aims to both deepen the understanding of the nature and magnitude of present-day emissions from nuclear facilities and accelerate the tracking of this sector’s progress toward United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 12 (responsible consumption and use patterns) and target 12.4 (environmentally sound chemicals management). Further novel perspectives on the role of this data as an indicator of sustainability are discussed by merging it with other pollutant releases from this sector, as reported to the National Pollutant Release Inventory (NPRI), to fill gaps in the latter’s substance coverage. These public data sets are processed and analyzed using Tableau software and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s framework for using pollutant release and transfer (PRTR) data in sustainability analysis. Findings confirm that radionuclide emissions to air and direct discharges to water from present-day Canadian nuclear facilities do not contribute significantly to national-scale radionuclide contamination. Moreover, findings validate the usefulness of combining various PRTR (and similar) data to address substance coverage gaps and set a global precedent for strengthening PRTR indicator power in SDG 12 evaluation. This work underscores the value of interoperable data in accelerating knowledge translation of PRTRs in the lens of sustainable development.