The Port Hope Project in Ontario, Canada, is scheduled Monday to begin retrieval of radioactively contaminated soil from a third and final location in the municipality.
The project, involving 2,000 cubic meters of historic low-level radioactive waste near a sewage treatment plant, is scheduled to be completed by the end of the month.
Contractor Amec Foster Wheeler in September completed removal of 17,000 cubic meters of contaminated soil from the Center Pier in Port Hope, then last month finished moving about 12,000 cubic meters of material from the Pine Street Extension. The waste is being placed in the Port Hope Project’s Long-Term Waste Management Facility.
Amec Foster Wheeler’s contract for the waste removal is worth CAN $2.6 million ($1.9 million). The project is part of a much broader, $1.3 billion ($981 million) remediation of low-level waste at the municipalities of Port Hope and nearby Clarington (the latter under the Port Granby Project).
Both municipalities were widely contaminated by uranium and radium refining in Port Hope from 1933 to 1988. Canadian Nuclear Laboratories, which manages the project, had hoped to complete work by 2023. But earlier this year the organization pushed that schedule back by two years due to the number of properties in Port Hope that will require remediation, PHAI spokesman Bill Daly said by email Thursday. That timeline remains subject to change as additional properties in Port Hope are checked for radioactive contamination.
Cleanup at the first three properties began this fall and is due to conclude in January.
“Remediation of private properties will continue on a neighborhood-by-neighborhood basis over multiple years,” Daly wrote. “At peak, CNL anticipates to be remediating more than 100 private Port Hope properties per year.”
Over half of about 4,500 mostly residential properties have already been analyzed, he said. “Through the ongoing property testing, CNL has identified more than 800 properties to be remediated and we project more than 1000 properties will require cleanup by the end of the testing” Daly wrote. “This represents more waste to be remediated than originally anticipated and will extend the project schedule past 2023.”
The remediation would cover work ranging from removal of limited amounts of tainted soil to cleanp of structure exteriors, as well as extraction of building materials from a home’s interior.
Another upcoming effort at Port Hope will be extraction starting in 2020 for 52,000 cubic meters of waste from a former municipal landfill near the Pine Street Extension. The landfill received low-level radioactive waste from operations by the Crown corporation Eldorado Nuclear, which will require several construction seasons to remove, Daly said.
Co-mingled municipal and radioactive waste will be taken to the Long-Term Waste Management Facility, while noncontaminated municipal waste will be returned to the landfill.
The Port Hope Area Initiative also this week announced the beginning of cleanup at the Peter Street Mound, where low-level waste was found in 1985 during a redevelopment project. The current remediation includes extraction of old building materials.
A number of other projects are planned in the coming year in Port Hope, Daly said. “These include the stabilization of the harbor walls and subsequent dredging and dewatering of contaminated sediment, remediation of the West Beach, and removal of the old buildings at 95 Mill Street South near the waterfront.”
For the Port Granby Project, removal of waste from a legacy facility near Lake Ontario should wrap up in 2019, Daly said. Canadian Nuclear Laboratories expects that more than 1 million metric tons of waste will ultimately be placed in Port Granby’s Long-Term Waste Management Facility.
