For months, Canadian and U.S. citizens have waited apprehensively to see whether Canada’s government will decide to bury low- and intermediate-level nuclear waste in an underground repository near the Canadian town of Kincardine, Ont., along Lake Huron and across from Michigan’s “thumb.” It shouldn’t.

Former Prime Minister Stephen Harper appeared set to approve the plan, but his Conservative Party was defeated in elections last fall by Justin Trudeau’s environmentally attuned Liberals. Last month, fortunately, the new federal government announced that any decision would be delayed indefinitely.

The waste in question does not consist of highly dangerous spent fuel rods. Instead, it ranges from old mops, brooms and gloves to more radioactive fans, filters and pumps that came into contact with nuclear fuel. Ontario Power Generation, which produced the waste, insists the Kincardine site is safe, in an ancient and stable geological formation.

That may be true but it seems likely, especially to residents of a Great Lakes state such as Pennsylvania, that there are better places to bury nuclear waste than close to Lake Huron. Canada should be able to easily find a site in the vast stretches of its frozen north.

Plus, a bigger issue applies. After more than a half-century of commercial nuclear power, the United States and Canada have vast amounts of nuclear waste but no safe long-term storage. Several years ago, Scientific American magazine calculated that the U.S. had 64,000 metric tons of spent fuel rods, a figure that has to be larger today.

Nearly all spent rods are stored in “temporary” facilities. Efforts to find a permanent site, such as Yucca Mountain in Nevada, have been stymied by politics and shortsighted not-in-my-backyard thinking.

Deciding not to bury nuclear waste near the Great Lakes is justifiable. But the continued refusal by the United States and Canada to commit to safe permanent storage sites is — especially in the age of terrorism — the most environmentally irresponsible decision of all.

First Published: March 10, 2016, 5:00 a.m.