All field work was halted Wednesday at a massive cleanup project for radioactive contaminants spread across two municipalities in Ontario, Canada, in response to the global COVID-19 pandemic.
In a late-morning tweet, Canadian Nuclear Laboratories said it had suspended field operations at the Port Hope Project and Port Granby Project, which are managed jointly under the Port Hope Area Initiative. “All sites are being placed in a safe state & essential activities related to water management & site security will continue,” the announcement states.
The Port Hope Area Initiative also closed its main office and temporarily cut off direct meetings with contractors, property owners, and the public, according to a separate statement.
The Canadian Nuclear Laboratories, meanwhile, said it had not been made aware of any confirmed or likely cases of novel coronavirus 2019 disease across any of its locations. But the nuclear science and technology organization is reducing operations at all facilities through April 6.
The Port Hope Area Initiative is a $1.3 billion CAD ($894.5 million) project of soil removal and other remediation activities for low-level radioactive waste contamination in the municipalities of Port Hope and Clarington. The contamination is the byproduct of uranium and radium refining in Port Hope from 1933 to 1988.
The project is currently scheduled to wrap up around 2025.
As of Thursday, there were 727 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Canada and nine deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University.
As recently as last week, the Port Hope Area Initiative was gearing up to drill boreholes to test for low-level waste at two locations in Port Hope. Remediation of residential properties in the municipality was also due to resume this spring.
This might be the first full interruption to a radioactive waste cleanup program, though agencies around the world are feeling the impact of the spread of the coronavirus.
At the Sellafield nuclear site in the United Kingdom, the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority planned as of Tuesday to soon temporarily shut down the Magnox fuel reprocessing facility. As of this week, one Sellafield worker had tested positive for coronavirus and another was in self-isolation, the London Guardian reported.
