A Toronto-based construction and remediation company has secured the contract to finish building and then operate the Port Hope Project radioactive waste disposal facility in Ontario, Canada, the Port Hope Area Initiative (PHAI) announced on March 17.
ECC/Quantum Murray is already building the first storage cell in the engineered above-ground mound. Under contract with the Canadian Nuclear Laboratories, the government’s management and operations contractor for its nuclear facilities, the firm will now construct three additional cells and manage storage during cleanup of low-level radioactive waste at Port Hope, according to a press release.
There were “many” other bidders for the $100 million (CAD) contract, though PHAI spokesman Bill Daly said Monday he could not offer a specific number. ECC/Quantum Murray has “the capacity to do this,” Daly said. “This is a very complex project. They had the expertise, knowledge, and resources.”
The first storage cell cost about $15 million, Daly said.
The Port Hope Project is intended to clean up 1.2 million cubic meters of historic low-level radioactive waste and contaminated soil produced by decades of radium and uranium refining in the city. Remediation is planned at several locations in the area, with the program due to issue a contract for cleanup along Port Hope’s waterfront at an undetermined time ahead of the start of work in summer or fall 2018. Waste from that project would be the first into the storage site.
Together, the cells will be encased on all sides in numerous protective layers of natural and engineered material to prevent any radioactive material from escaping into the environment. All waste should be in storage by 2022, at which point ECC/Quantum Murray will cap off the facility. It is expected to keep the waste safe for hundreds of years.
The contractor’s additional responsibilities include finishing all necessary support infrastructure at the site, encompassing internal roadways for moving the waste, radiation monitoring portals for vehicles, weight scales, and a station to decontaminate all trucks exiting the facility.
The Port Hope Area Initiative also encompasses long-term storage of another 450,000 cubic meters of low-level radioactive waste from the same refining under the nearby Port Granby Project. Cleanup there is already underway, with 65,000 cubic meters of waste interred since last November in the two-cell storage facility built by AMEC-CB&I. Work at Port Granby is due to be finished by 2021.
The total project is forecast to cost $1.28 billion in Canadian government funds. Prior to the latest contract award to ECC/Quantum Murray, 17 percent of the funding had been spent on contracts and 8 percent on project management and oversight, Daly said.
ECC/Quantum Murray is a 32-year-old firm with 500 employees and 17 offices around the world. Its cleanup projects include groundwater remediation at the Chalk River nuclear facility in Ontario; remediation and closure of a 10-acre landfill at the U.S. Marine Corps Recruiting Depot on Parris Island, S.C.; and a joint venture for a brownfields redevelopment in Nova Scotia, the largest such project in North America.
Elsewhere in Ontario…
Separately, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission is accepting public comments on a draft environmental impact statement for the planned Near Surface Disposal Facility at the Chalk River Laboratories.
Canadian Nuclear Laboratories has recommended construction of an engineered containment mound that could hold up to 1 million cubic meters of waste currently stored at, or expected to be produced by, Chalk River facilities. It would be operational for roughly 50 years, starting in 2020, followed by closure operations to 2100 and three centuries of storage under active and passive controls.
About 1 percent of the waste in storage by volume would be intermediate-level radioactive waste, with the rest being low-level waste.
The draft EIS studied potential adverse effects from the project for air quality, hydrogeology, hydrology, surface water quality, terrestrial biodiversity, and socio-economic and community well-being. “Based on the evaluation, each of the residual adverse effects was assessed to be not significant,” expect for a minor increase in existing challenges facing local populations of bats and Blanding’s turtles, the report’s executive summary says.
“No residual effects were identified for human health during the NSDF Project life cycle,” according to the report, prepared by Golder Associates for Canadian Nuclear Laboratories.
Comments on the draft EIS must be submitted by May 17 to Nicole Frigault, an environmental assessment specialist at the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission. They can be submitted in writing by email: [email protected]; by fax: 613-95-5086; or by mail: P.O. Box 1046 Station B, 280 Slater St., Ottawa, ON KIP 5S9.
Comments will be considered as Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission staff decides whether the draft EIS is sufficient or whether additional information is needed. Commission staff would then prepare a report to help guide the commission’s environmental assessment of the project, with a public hearing expected in January 2018.
