The Port Hope Project in Ontario, Canada, is scheduled this week to begin retrieval of radioactively contaminated soil from a third and final location.
The project, involving 2,000 cubic meters of historic low-level radioactive waste near a sewage treatment plant in Port Hope, 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 material from the Center Pier in Port Hope, then last month finished moving about 12,000 cubic meters of contaminated soil from the Pine Street Extension. The material 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). It is part of a much broader, $1.3 billion ($981 million) cleanup of Port Hope and nearby Port Granby under the Port Hope Area Initiative. Both municipalities were contaminated by uranium and radium refining during the 20th century.
One upcoming project at Port Hope will be extraction starting in 2019 of 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 Eldorado Nuclear, which will require several construction seasons to remove, according to Port Hope Area Initiative spokesman Bill Daly.
Canadian Nuclear Laboratories, which manages the Port Hope Area Initiative, “will be undertaking a number of PHAI activities planned in Port Hope in 2019,” Daily wrote by email. “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. Remediation of private properties will continue on a neighborhood-by-neighborhood basis over multiple years. At peak, CNL anticipates to be remediating more than 100 private Port Hope properties per year.”
