Canada’s Port Hope Area Initiative on Wednesday broke ground on the first of four above-ground storage cells that will ultimately hold 1.2 million cubic meters of legacy low-level radioactive waste for hundreds of years.
The cell is expected to be completed toward the end of next year, and storage of waste from within the Ontario municipality should begin in 2018, according to a press release. The $16 million (CAN) project is being carried out by Toronto-based landfill construction and environmental remediation specialist ECC/Quantum Murray.
A contract covering the next three cells, along with management and ultimate capping of the above-ground mound, was recently posted. It is expected to remain posted for much of the year, and the contract should be awarded by March 2017, Bill Daly, spokesman for the Port Hope Area Initiative, said by email Wednesday.
The overall Port Hope Area Initiative is being funded with nearly $1.3 billion (CAN) in funding from the Canadian government. It involves two distinct projects.
The Port Hope Project involves cleanup, storage, and monitoring of low-level radioactive waste from radium and uranium refining operations in the city. Waste from the existing Welcome Waste Management Facility and other locations around Port Hope – which includes contaminants such as radium-226, uranium, and arsenic – will be consolidated into the storage mound.
The Port Granby Project involves relocating 450,000 cubic meters of waste and contaminated soils that originated with the same refining work. The material will be moved from a current storage site alongside the Municipality of Clarington near Lake Ontario to a new facility roughly 1 kilometer away.
Roughly $233 million is budgeted for the Port Granby Project, with the rest going to the Port Hope Project, Daly said.
