PORT HOPE, ONT.—Canadian Nuclear Laboratories (CNL) has announced a new milestone for its Port Hope Area Initiative, as the first truckloads carrying low-level radioactive waste have begun rolling from excavations along the Lake Ontario shoreline to a new storage facility in Port Granby.
The launch of the fleet marks the official start of the environmental cleanup in the Clarington region east of Toronto, part of a $1.28-billion remediation commitment made by the federal government in 2012. CNL announced the milestone Nov. 1.
The Port Granby facility is being constructed to be able to hold about 450,000 cubic metres of contaminated waste. The waste will be stored in an engineered above-ground mound.
Construction of the infrastructure required for waste movement was completed over the summer by the contractor, AMEC-CB&I Joint Venture.
The mound’s engineered base liner system was installed and internal waste haul roads and an underpass at Lakeshore Road were constructed, enabling the trucks to start transporting the waste to the new facility, located about 700 metres north of the lake.
CNL said measures are in place to carefully monitor the waste trucks — all of which will be tightly covered — even though they will not travel on public roadways.
Wash stations for vehicle decontamination have been built and vehicle monitors have been installed to track waste volumes while remediation activities are underway.
The cleanup is scheduled to take place over three years, after which the mound’s cover system will be constructed, which is expected to be in 2021.
Contamination of the Port Hope and Port Granby townsites resulted from lax disposal practices by Eldorado Gold Mines and its successors beginning in 1932, when the producer opened radium refining facilities in Port Hope, through to the 1970s.
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