Canada’s Port Hope Project is scheduled by the end of November to complete the first of four storage cells of an above-ground engineered mound for storage of radioactive waste, with transport and storage due to start early in 2018.
The Port Hope Project, one part of a broader radioactive waste cleanup program covering two municipalities in Ontario, will ultimately place into storage 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 during the early to mid-20th century.
Contractor ECC/Quantum Murray is building all four cells under two contracts worth $115 million CAD ($92 million U.S). The first contract covered only one cell, with ECC/Quantum Murray in March securing the follow-on deal to build the remaining three.
“Construction of the first cell of the Port Hope Project engineered aboveground mound will be complete by November, 2017,” Port Hope Area Initiative spokesman Bill Daly said by email. “The cell will begin receiving waste in early 2018, once Canadian Nuclear Laboratories (CNL) awards the first contract/s for the excavation and movement of historic low-level radioactive waste from sites within the community.”
Upward of 4,800 properties in Port Hope are being tested for radiological contamination in a process started in 2012. Roughly 90 percent of these sites should not require remediation, according to the project website. Cleanup is expected to start with Port Hope’s Center Pier, where 17,000 cubic meters of low-level radioactive waste is held in temporary storage, and the Pine Street Extension, Daly said.
ECC/Quantum Murray is also conducting preparatory activities for construction of the remaining cells, including building waste-haul roads and installing vehicle weight scales and portal sensors to monitor waste volumes and radiation levels for trucks driving to the storage facility.
That contract, worth $100 million (CAD), also encompasses enlarging legacy water collection ponds and management of the storage facility until it is closed, at the anticipated end of the Port Hope Project by 2023.
Canadian Nuclear Laboratories, which oversees the cleanup, expects in the near future to award contracts for the actual excavation and transport of the waste, Daly said, though he could not offer a specific schedule.
“Waste transportation to the Long-Term Waste Management Facility from various sites in the Municipality of Port Hope will be delivered in a safe, coordinated fashion,” Daly stated.
The smaller-scale Port Granby Project, which also involves cleanup and permanent disposal of about 450,000 cubic meters of legacy low-level radioactive waste, is due to be completed by the end of 2020.
The legacy waste resulted from onetime Eldorado Nuclear radium and uranium refining operations in Port Hope and was deposited at the Port Granby site beginning in 1955 until the facility was closed in 1988, according to the website.
In total, the Port Hope Area Initiative expects to spend $1.28 billion CAD (just over $1 billion in U.S. dollars) over a decade on Phase 2 of the project, encompassing planning and engineering, procurement, construction, environmental monitoring, radiological investigations, site remediation and restoration, and other activities.
Phase 1, which extended from 2001 to 2011, involved environmental evaluations, design activities, and regulatory approval and licensing for the two projects.
