The Port Hope Area Initiative (PHAI) in Ontario has begun moving radioactively contaminated soil from a decades-old storage facility into a new above-ground engineered mound for long-term disposal.
The agency completed the first cell of the new disposal facility in late November and began trucking in waste from the nearby Welcome Waste Management Facility on Dec. 1, according to a Dec. 7 press release from the Canadian Nuclear Laboratories branch.
The legacy facility, which opened in 1944, holds roughly 450,000 cubic meters of soil produced by decades of radium and uranium refining in the municipality during the early to mid-20th century. It is within the PHAI waste management complex at Port Hope.
There was no word Friday regarding how much soil had been transferred to the new storage structure in the first eight days of transport. The project is scheduled for completion by the end of 2020.
In total, 1.2 million cubic meters of contaminated soil and historic low-level radioactive waste from the site and the broader Port Hope community will be stored in the four cells of the new disposal structure. Contractor ECC/Quantum Murray holds two contracts worth $115 million CAD ($89.7 million U.S) to build the four cells.
Environmental remediation of other locations in the municipality along Lake Ontario is due to begin in 2018, the release says. The initial off-site waste to be relocated will come from three interim storage locations in Port Hope, the release says: material presently under tarps on the Center Pier, near a sewage treatment facility, and at the Pine Street North Extension. The work is being done by Amec Foster Wheeler.
The Port Hope Project is the larger of two endeavors that comprise the Port Hope Area Initiative. The Port Granby Project involves construction of a separate above-ground engineered mound to hold 450,000 cubic meters of contaminated soil and low-level radioactive waste.
Editor’s Note: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that Port Hope sits along Lake Huron.
