Two new contracts worth just over $9 million ($11.7 million CAN) have been issued for radioactive waste cleanup in the municipality of Port Hope, Ontario, Canadian Nuclear Laboratories (CNL) announced Wednesday.
Arcadis, an Amsterdam-based design and consultancy firm that already has one contract for radiological testing in Port Hope, is expected this spring to start work on a $7.8 million ($10 million CAN) work package to excavate an estimated 58,000 cubic meters of waste from three locations along Port Hope’s waterfront. Most of the material is low-level radioactive waste, but one of the sites is expected to include a small amount of industrial waste, CNL spokesman Bill Daly said by email. The work should wrap up in 2020.
Canada’s Milestone Environmental Services will conduct similar work for a number of residential properties and one commercial property.
A significant number of additional work packages for residential cleanup are anticipated going forward, according to a CNL press release. As of March, more than 200 properties in Port Hope, primarily residential, had been found contaminated with historic waste.
After removing the waste, Arcadis and Milestone will transport it to the new storage facility at Port Hope, replace the contaminated material with clean soil, and conduct landscape restoration.
The Port Hope Project is the larger of two cleanup efforts overseen by the privately operated CNL’s Port Hope Area Initiative, a $1.3 billion (CAN) program for remediation of low-level radioactive waste left by former uranium and radium refining activities in the region near Lake Ontario.
The newly awarded work will be conducted alongside removal of contaminated soil from three temporary holding sites in Port Hope. A broader remediation program for Port Hope Harbor and the Center Pier is due to start in 2019.
