Many small Ontario towns feature main streets that look like an old man’s mouth, with large gaps where once-harmonious streetscapes are interrupted by vacant lots, strip malls, and dollar stores. Port Hope has escaped this ugly fate. Films are made here; visitors flock to the boutiques, restaurants, and antique shops; and a growing community of well-heeled Toronto exiles adds an edge of sophistication to the small-town charm. Stagnant during the 1990s, Port Hope’s population jumped almost 10 percent between 2001 and 2006, to over 16,000, and it is now finally giving its neighbour and perennial rival, Cobourg, a run for its money. On the outskirts of town, sprouting from the fertile soil first farmed by the Iroquois 1,000 years ago, is a new crop: row upon row of neat brick homes.
The juncture of the Ganaraska River and Lake Ontario is rich in trout and salmon. When the fish return each fall to their spawning grounds, they must run a gauntlet of anglers on both sides of the river — all in the shadow of a nuclear refinery. Owned by Cameco, the world’s largest uranium producer, the plant stands in the middle of the town’s waterfront, minutes from busy Walton Street. It’s the first thing commuters see when they step off the train, and it looms over the harbour’s inner basin, by the yacht club. If a new nuclear facility were proposed for this setting, a buffer zone of at least 1,000 metres would be required as a precaution, and to protect neighbours from the heaviest emissions.
The advice that followed included locking windows and exterior doors and, if an explosion was a possibility, closing all window coverings. The kicker: for additional protection, townspeople were advised to seal all of their windows and doors with plastic sheeting secured with duct tape. Evans-Gould looked around her small kitchen: “How long would we be safe in this duct-taped room? ”
It doesn’t take an emergency for people to be exposed to contaminants in Port Hope. The town is riddled with radioactivity, many residents say, the result of decades during which uranium waste was used as fill or dumped here and there, and of the incorporation of building materials scavenged from the nuclear plant in construction projects. In 1933, the Eldorado Mining and Refining Company began producing radium here; by 1942, it had converted to uranium production for the Manhattan Project, which developed the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. That year, the federal government assumed control of Eldorado, holding onto it until 1988, when the company was reprivatized and merged with the Saskatchewan Mining Development Co. to form Cameco. The plant is the oldest extant nuclear facility in the world, and today it is an essential cog in a global nuclear network. It’s the only commercial supplier of fuel-grade unenriched uranium dioxide (UO2), used in heavy-water candureactors, and an important source of uranium hexafluoride (UF6), used for light-water reactors all over the world. Down the road from the main plant, Zircatec, another Cameco-owned company, manufactures fuel bundles for candu reactors, using the uranium dioxide from the waterfront plant. In some respects, Port Hope is at the core of Canada’s nuclear industry.
Complacency about nuclear power marked Eldorado’s first four decades. Then, in 1975, high levels of poisonous radon gas were detected in an addition to St. Mary’s elementary school, built a decade earlier over radioactive fill from the plant. The discovery sparked a scandal, and by 1982 almost every property in Port Hope had been surveyed, foundations of homes and buildings dug up, and 200,000 tonnes of the most severely contaminated soil and materials removed from 400 properties and transported to Chalk River (north of Petawawa, Ontario), where the federal Crown corporation Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. (aecl) has its research station.
At that point, in 1982, the cleanup stopped. The Chalk River site was full, and the federal government could find no other willing host. The partial meltdown of the tmi-2 reactor at Three Mile Island near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, in March 1979 had caused storms of protest, sent a chill through the nuclear industry, and made the issue of nuclear waste storage highly contentious. In Port Hope, contaminants that had already been excavated were simply left — some in tarp-covered piles around town, others fenced off in dumps and ravines — and considerable waste remained in the ground and trapped in the harbour’s sediment.
For nearly twenty years, nothing happened — the stasis and problems afflicting the nuclear industry no doubt compounded by the 1986 explosion at Chernobyl in Soviet Ukraine, the subsequent evacuation, and general unease about nuclear power generation (and waste) through the 1990s. Then, in 2001, after the federal government and Port Hope reached an agreement for the waste to be stored locally, aecl’s Low Level Radioactive Waste Management Office (llrwmo) began working on criteria for a long-term waste management facility. The process and subsequent development is being overseen by the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (cnsc), the federally appointed nuclear industry watchdog; Natural Resources Canada; and Fisheries and Oceans Canada. The $260-million undertaking — one of the largest such projects in the world — is expected to start in 2009. Over the following seven years, nearly 1.4 million cubic metres of contaminated soil will be dug up and transported to relative safety. According to Glenn Case, a branch manager at the llrwmo, the stigma that has hung over Port Hope for so long will be eliminated. “It’s an honourable legacy,” he says.
Not everybody is so sanguine, however. While welcoming the move, critics maintain that there will still be over 2 million cubic metres of contaminated soil in and around Port Hope after the cleanup.
Comments (15 comments)
G.R.L. Cowan: I grew up in Port Hope and a few years ago noticed that the uranium refinery in the middle of the waterfront was, at least on the side I could see, nameless. As if its owners weren't proud. So I was glad, more recently, to see this had been fixed.
The first thing anyone needs to understand with regard to disputes like this is that uranium costs governments MONEY.
Specifically, it costs them the money they would have made on natural gas or petroleum, had uranium not replaced them. A $0.2-million tonne of uranium can't pay the taxes that a $4.5-million uranium-tonne-equivalent in natural gas would have paid. February 08, 2008 12:42 EST
Johnmorand: The Editor:
The information supplied to the Port Hope council by Health Canada officials was misleading and an outright falsehood in several areas. The detailed information on which the Health Canada official based his information was not provided and that is clearly the reason by he declined a meeting with the writer. He could not support his comments!
Firstly, the studies referred to by the Health Canada official contain no evidence or research supporting the claim that levels of man made uranium found in Port Hope residents are found in the bodies of Canadians generally.
Two of the articles that were done by Health Canada staff and used to support the comments made to Council never found an acceptable Medical Journal for publication and in one of the articles the comment was made by a Health Canada staffer that the amount of Uranium in the air in Port Hope was 200 times the provincial average- go figure!
Once again the comment on the Eldorado workers study is an outright lie. There is direct evidence that Hodgkin’s Lymphoma and non lymphoma are five times the average in Port Hope Eldorado workers. This fact was clearly stated in a 2005 Royal Military College report.
Several years ago our local liberal MP told us that the Federal Government did not want to do proper health studies because of the huge liability that might be uncovered.
Community members remain at risk from historic and new loss of containment waste and Cameco is only proposing to clean up a small amount of the contaminated soil under their UF6 facility because further excavation would cause the faulty foundation to crumble causing collapse of the building.
Any loss of containment of nuclear material is serious and should be totally remediated.
Many of us in the community want to work with the government and industry to correct the problem but vicious personal attacks, physical threats and forcing someone to move their business to another community by pro-nuclear activists keeps the municipality split to the advantage of the industry and federal government who avoid responsibility as long as we fight each other rather than starting legal action against the federal government to get the health studies completed.
The result of the completed health studies would be to eliminate the problem based on no proof of health issues or if there is proof of health problems the creation of a billion dollar fund to pay the individuals and families who have been impacted and suffered for decades from the loss of nuclear contanment and the financial and health stigma and scourge vested on our community by the federal government.
John Morand
Port Hope,
Ontario
February 10, 2008 07:52 EST
Don Thompson: This article is very timely for us in Alberta as atomic power is an issue in our current election. Despite the huge volumes of negative information available, right-wing parties are pushing for a plant to feed the U.S. electricity market. Money now for disaster later.
Amusingly, the states to receive the power have a Federally mandated power commission that decided not to even consider the nuclear alternative prior to 2015. One of the states disallows atomic energy by statute. February 19, 2008 07:35 EST
Endgames: Welcome to the new world order. How can you stop what you don't see. February 19, 2008 18:01 EST
Clean Air Clean Water Clean Soil: Thank you for publishing this article, I only hope that our Country, Politicians and small towns take note.
People here are very protective of their jobs at any cost, including the lives of their children and grandchildren and you can not safely question anything concerning any form of industrial pollution in Port Hope. Cameco is not the only polluter here, we have Esco, ChemCraft and another which is hopefully on the way out Collins Aikman. You can not even breath the air many days when you are going in to the local A&P thanks to the toxic air caused by Esco. Governments including Provincial, Federal and our local Town Council all turn a blind eye because of jobs. If you mention this to a 'born and raised' local you get a dressing down, all because of jobs. Dirty industry, dirty secrets.
When the petition started by a local florist happened in November it was like a witch hunt, it actually reminded me of when they burned out the Catholic's here in the 19th century. If those people had pikes and torches they would have marched on those who are trying to help us get what the Fed's promised, a complete health study on the citizen's of this town.
HELP !
I have lived here for almost twenty years and thought the whole mess was taken care of years before, I was wrong.
There is a huge portion of this town that is in denial.
February 25, 2008 07:27 EST
Clean Mind Clean Body -Cleaned Out: Hey....what's the deal here? I checked with the Port Hope Police and they said nobody has ever been incarcerated in their holding cell for more than 3 days -let alone 20-years. Ergo, what kind of imprisonment -self imposed or otherwise- has kept Clean Air Clean Water Clean Soil trapped in Port Hope for two whole decades? Geez- if I couldn't breathe the air at the A&P I'd get outta town before welts, lesions, warts, boils or open cancerous lesions started showing up all over my pristine body. I think anybody with half a brain would.
"Denial"? Yeah.....somebody's in denial alright. But I don't think it's "a huge portion of this town" -rather it's a few shrill attention seekers making ridiculous self-discrediting statements they can't possibly hope to prove or even justify. March 05, 2008 08:01 EST
Derrick Kelly: The letter submitted by Clean Mind Clean Body - Cleaned Out is typical of the kind of response or "dressing down" that you get from some Port Hopers, when you say something they don't want to deal with, just like Clean Air Clean Water Clean Soil described in their letter.
They usually try and discredit your opinion or view by making a straw-man and then kicking it over. Some of the straw-man arguements used are that there are risks to everything, like smoking or driving, it's part of life so that if you live in town you should just accept the possible risk of getting sick from uranium exposure.
In Clean Mind Clean Body-Cleaned Out's reply they set-up the straw-man argument to be that no one is keeping any one in Port Hope against their will so if you don't like it, leave. I personally find that arguement to be the most insulting of them all.
I was born and raised in Port Hope and have lived in town off and on for the last 45 years. I want people who feel the way that Clean Air Clean Water Clean Soil does to know that there are some open minded, independent thinkers in town who see the issue for what it really is all about, hiding the truth to save money by not fixing the problem and helping the nuclear industry to make profits.
Derrick Kelly
Port Hope, Ontario March 07, 2008 04:42 EST
Dennis Landwehr: I am a not-born-here with complete distrust of and disgust for Port Hope politics. Would any civic leaders, anywhere else, nominate their downtown core as the right place to process uranium and assemble nuclear fuel rod bundles? Sure, Cameco pays lots of taxes and employs a few hundred people, but how much vision does it take to imagine the boost in property values and tax revenues that would occur if this utterly unacceptable use of prime lakefront real estate was moved to an appropriate location, with an adequate buffer from populations, and to new state-of-the-art facitities instead of a cobbled-together group of decades-old industrial buildings.
The regulators know that if they refused to re-license the facilities they might be replaced themselves, or at a minimum would be saddled with the task of finding another site willing to accept this industry. It does not inspire confidence that as recently as the 70's the operators of this facility chose, and were allowed, to build the UF6 plant a few dozen meters from Lake Ontario, without so much as an impermeable layer of clay or the sort of liner now routine in municipal landfills, below the concrete foundation. Cameco and the CNRC seemed to be shocked (Shocked!) last summer when routine work revealed the evidence of leaks. Well here's a news bulletin, guys and girls: Concrete cracks! Cracks leak! Water flows through sand! Soil Mechanics 101.
Cameco SHOULD be happy to 'give' cash to virtually every commuity effort here: if they were required to move, and to clean up their sites, their costs would higher by orders of magnitude. It would be irresponsible to their stockholders to voluntarily absorb those costs (now instead of later, eventually).
If we accept the idea that Nuclear Power is a neccessary and economical energy choice in these days of CO2 concerns, (and that is yet to be shown) it follows that this work has to happen somewhere. As a trained engineer, it seems obvious to me that this processing should either happen where the material is mined, or where it is used, as these places are exposed, monitored and buffered anyway. One such place is the
Darlington site, less than half an hour's drive from Port Hope, so the trained work force would not have to leave Port Hope, and the jobs would not be lost. (Not to mention the jobs created in the clean-up).
Though I can see the UF6 plant from the bathroom window of our historic Walton Street home, this is not a not-in-my-back-yard lament. This facility should not be in anyone's yard. Given a map of Canada, would anyone logically zoom in on the Port Hope waterfront as the best possible site for Uranium processing and fuel rod assembly? It is an accident of history that the plants were built here. It is a failure of
political will and of federal regulation that they are allowed to stay.
March 08, 2008 13:33 EST
Clean Mind Clean Body -Cleaned Out: The "if you don't lke it, leave" argument shouldn't be seen as any more or less insulting to those upon whose doorstep it falls than the argument that those of us who live here and don't singularly obsess with the nuclear reality are, according to Clean Air, 'in denial'.
I perfectly accept Clean Air's right to raise the alarm. If Clean Air were to move in to a house directly beneath the approach glidepath to Runway 32 at Pearson next week I'm sure that by Wednesday of that week he or she would be petitioning neighbours to help get the entire airport relocated.Some people feel a natural need to change and reshape things to their own view of how things ought to be. I know this: If I were as uncomfortable (both with the nuclear industry's presence and my own perception that a substantial number of my fellow residents were so astonishingly dull witted as to ignore my warnings of certain doom to come) I think I'd leave. Maybe I'd be happier somewhere else amongst a more enlightened social grouping whose sensibilities were more in line with my own -maybe even huddled together under an airport glidepath. But I wouldn't take insult. I'd just leave my erstwhile fellow residents to their own self-destructive tendencies, satisfy myself that I did all I possibly could to save them from themselves and, though my sincerest efforts fell upon the deafest of ears since the Great Plague, wish the poor slobs well and move on the next dreary little backwater where maybe, if I'm lucky, there'll be another imminent disaster waiting to which I can lay claim and raise high my banner of public education and unappreciated self-sacrifice.
But I certainly wouldn't take insult.... March 11, 2008 06:43 EST
RickW: Perhaps, while the arguments sway back and forth interminably, Parliament ought to be moving to Port Hope, and the MPs should buy residences there, until the matter is cleared up. March 12, 2008 17:12 EST
G.R.L. Cowan: Parliamentarians no doubt would find the surroundings congenial, but the implicit endorsement of nuclear energy is one they and their staffs are unlikely to make. The reason is the relative prices of fossil fuels and uranium. Much of the fossil fuel dollar, a disproportionately large share, goes to government. When two or three pennies' worth of uranium replaces that dollar, they are displeased.
So in general, when you hear anyone on any kind of public payroll saying that the public thinks nuclear energy has difficulty 'x', this is his or her way of acknowledging that fossil fuels have difficulty 'X'.
But what do I know. I was raised in Port Hope, and am now, even as I write, a pulsating mass of isotopes. March 20, 2008 12:55 EST
Terry: My father has recently been diagnosed with Papillary Thyroid Cancer. He comes from a large family (12 siblings) where there is no genetic history of cancer in his family. His family grew up in the Campbellford, On area, a safe distance from Port Hope, 30-40 miles northeast. We've researched and have found that Papillary Thyroid Cancer is slow growing and can be caused by exposure to radiation. My father was hired sometime in the late 70's and early 80's by a contractor based out of Warkworth Ontario, to clean up some of these sites around Port Hope. He described operating a loader to dig up waste that was "purple and oozing" from the ground. He described simply relocating the waste to other areas and dumping it into tarp-lined holes in the ground. Although it is tempting to pin-point this experience as the cause of his cancer, it would seem difficult to prove (we think?). Are there any groups out there that we can seek advice from? March 24, 2008 09:08 EST
Clean Mind Clean Body -Cleaned Out: Terry asks if there are "any groups" out there that he might seek advice from. Well, I know this isn't quite the answer you might have hoped for but I can tell you one group that is so far 'out there' that to seek any advice from them would be akin to consulting a congregation of Holy Rollers in the middle of their talking-in-tongues rapture to ask whether or not Satan was the primary cause of all things bad: F.A.R.E.
By all means seek reasoned advice. But -by all means- question the motives of those giving that advice. What's in it for them to sway you to one side or the other? Are their facts 'facts' -or distorted conclusions based on superstition and quack science? Do they engage in fawning hero worship of celebrities like David Suzuki and Al Gore? Or are they open to other opinions and ideas?
Above all else -be careful. Sign nothing. Don't pee in any bottles. Avoid wine and cheese parties where everone is wearing Birkenstocks and discussing yurt building methods. If you see a Prius in the driveway run like hell. Should you be lured in make sure you have the number of a reliable de-programmer handy. Never look any of them in the eye and carry hand sanitizer at all times.
Good luck in your quest. March 30, 2008 07:22 EST
Clean Mind, Clean Body -Cleaned Out: Well, things certainly are taking a turn, aren't they? John Morand refuses to answer some very pointed questions from Prof. Jim Campbell. John Miller fearlessly continues his totally unfounded accusations. Tom Lawson has perfected his crazy old man routine and now does hourly performances in the organic food aisle of the A&P while mothers shield their children. A kind of group obsessive compulsive disorder has gripped the True Believers of FARE and they're turning into the local chapter of The Flat Earth Society -minus the self-deprecating humour. Meanwhile the search for everything from two-headed dogs to elevated cancer levels continues. Morand claims (by way of the Toronto Star)it took vast sums of money to remove nine barrels of supposed waste from his property during renovations recently but doesn't speculate how much he devalues his own (and every other property in town) with his shameless and outrageous media whore-ing. Has his 'play' about terrorists storming Cameco from the lake made it to Broadway yet? We wait with bated breath. Lawsuits are being spoken of in the most serious manner. Big lawsuits -the plaintiffs being the owners of the overheated, overactive, overarching imaginations of FARE and the PHCHCC. Watch for it -there'll be plenty of good reading and scrupulous examination of personal motives. It's going to ba a very warm summer for the FARE-est of Port Hope. Very warm indeed. May 04, 2008 10:35 EST
Anonymous: I find it hard to live with the idea that the government can decide what is safe or not, ignoring the safety protocols they put in place themselves. May 12, 2008 13:15 EST