Canada’s Port Hope Project will by the end of November 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 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.
Contractor ECC/Quantum Murray is building all four cells under two contracts worth about $115 million. 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. We expect that the first areas to be remediated will be the temporary storage sites on Port Hope’s centre Pier and/or the Pine Street Extension.”
ECC/Quantum Murray is also conducting preparatory activities for construction of the remaining cells, Daly said. That contract, worth about $100 million, 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 in 2022.
The smaller-scale Port Granby Project, which also involves cleanup and permanent disposal of legacy low-level radioactive waste, is due to be completed by the end of 2020.
