Tritium Awareness Project

Tritium is a serious hazard  in Canada, requiring urgent action by the public and legislators alike. On this website you will find scientific documents, media reports, personal stories and fact sheets. You can also meet our advisory board in the “About TAP” section and download tools for taking action such as a municipal resolution aimed at stopping the release of tritium into drinking water supplies and a petition on phasing out tritium exit signs.

We welcome  your questions and comments.

TAP advisory board member Dr. Ian Fairlie just sent this comment about the “Tritium Studies Project Synthesis Report” , published on the CNSC website here.

“My initial perusal indicates that this another highly slanted, misleading, CNSC defence of the practice of releasing very large amounts of tritium near Canadian nuclear power facilities. It is perhaps revealing that the report (Figs 5 and 6) shows high tritium levels very near the SRB facility at Pembroke, but remains silent about the high tritium intakes by people near nuclear power facilities. 

The report takes a hesitant one step forward in actually mentioning the ACES and ODWAC reports (for the first time by CNSC). But two steps backward in refraining from discussing the concerns about tritium which led to the reports. 

The report has many defects and omissions but the main deficiency is that it ignores the mounting scientific evidence from radiation biology that tritium is a serious health hazard.”

SRB Technologies has applied to the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) for a new five-year license to process tritium at its manufacturing facility in Pembroke Ontario, site of the worst environmental tritium contamination in Canada owing to the SRB’s past activities. 

CNSC staff recommends that the Commission grant SRB a licence to discharge tritium in amounts up to 448 trillion becquerels per year through its stacks and 200 billion becquerels per year into the municipal sewer system.

At a one-day public hearing on May 19th intervenors included Concerned Citizens of Renfrew County, The First Six Years, the International Institute of Concern for Public Health, Prevent Cancer Now,  and the Council of Canadians. Many concerns and problems were highlighted, for example: serious groundwater pollution, proximity to residential neighbourhoods, radioactive waste disposal issues and funding for decommissioning.

If CNSC follows its usual pattern, a decision to approve this license application will be announced in the late afternoon on June 30th, the day that SRB’s current licence expires, and the day before the Canada Day holiday.

At a time when radioactive tritium from waste tritium lights is showing up in landfill leachate all over the world and regulators in other countries are grappling with how to keep waste tritium lights out of landfills, Canada’s regulators have loosened regulations for disposal of these toxic devices.

Recent amendments to the Nuclear Substances and Radiation Devices Regulations eliminated the requirement for a recall procedure for expired tritium lights that are, of course, still radioactive. There is now no requirement that tritium light manufacturers accept the return of discarded tritium lights of their own manufacture unless this requirement is now incorporated directly in a CNSC licence. In addition to relieving manufacturers of the financial burden of receiving waste lights as radioactive materials, this change to the Regulations increases the likelihood that purchasers of tritium lights will abandon these radioactive devices in ordinary landfills, even in jurisdictions such as the United States where this practice is not permitted.

For further details see letter to the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission from the Canadian Environmental Law Association on behalf of Concerned Citizens of Renfrew County.

TAP asks “How do these changes enhance the protection of the health and safety of the Canadian public? How do these changes enhance the protection of the environment? If they do not enhance either, then why were these changes made?”

A former U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission official now working for the Union of Concerned Scientists was quoted recently in a Vermont newspaper stating that virtually every commercial reactor in the country was leaking tritium, not the two-dozen plus number usually used by the NRC

Speaking at a meeting of the New England Coalition, David Lochbaum, a nuclear engineer who at one time was a member of the Vermont Public Oversight Panel, said

“Virtually every nuclear plant in the U.S. has reported leaks and many have reported many leaks, and no one knows how many leaks have not yet been found.”

Lochbaum credited citizen action groups, such as the New England Coalition, for raising the public awareness and putting pressure on government and federal regulators to pay attention to the radioactive tritium leak at the Vermonk Yankee nuclear plant which was shut down by the Vermont Senate in February of this year.

For the full article, please see the Rutland Herald article here.

May 17 2010

Open letter to Dr. Michael Binder, President of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission

CNSC staff recently produced a series of research studies on tritium called the Tritium Studies Project. Six of the reports are completed and available on the CNSC website (CNSC Open House: Tritium Studies Project April 28, 2010).

I have a special interest in these reports. Tritium in the community of Pembroke (my home town) began increasing in 1990 following the arrival of a facility that manufactures and recycles tritium filled exit signs and gun-sights. From a review of the CNSC reports I see that Pembroke now has the dubious distinction of being the “Tritium Capital of Canada.” Read more…

The Sierra Club of Canada has released a new report on tritium in Canadian drinking water. The report is entitled “Tritium on Tap”. It documents the massive quantities of radioactive tritium released into drinking water sources by the nuclear industry in Canada on a routine basis.

A copy of the report is available for downloading in the documents section of this website and at the Sierra Club of Canada site.

The Ontario Drinking Water Advisory Council has recommended that the Ontario drinking water standard for tritium be reduced from 7,000 Bq/l to 20 Bq/l. 

The report and recommendations are available here. 

TAP commends the ODWAC for its thorough review and sound recommendations which will help to reduce the tritium hazard to Ontario residents.

Serious tritium pollution has recently come to light in the vicinity of Shield Source Incorporated, a tritium sign factory near the Peterborough airport. The company has applied for a five year extension of its existing license. The application will be considered at a public hearing at the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission in Ottawa on June 10th. 

Documents filed for the hearing show tritium contamination at the base of SSI’s stacks has exceeded 1,000,000 Becquerels per litre. Local apples and groundwater wells are contaminated at many times higher than background levels. 

 SSI’s current license permits it to release 34,000 quadrillion becquerels of tritium. This is an unbelievably large quantity. So large it’s hard to put into words. But suffice it to say that SSI’s current license permits it to release more than the current total global inventory of tritium. Read more…

As they age, tritium EXIT signs become less effective and more toxic, as the tritium gas inside them is converted to the more toxic oxide form. One sign, thrown into a landfill can create significant groundwater pollution.

Various American authorities have recently posted detailed information on the internet about responsible management of  tritium EXIT signs. Authorities in the United States appear to be way ahead of their Canadian counterparts in addressing the serious problems created by use and disposal of  these signs, many of which are manufactured in Canada.

In the U.S.,  the Department of Defense, National Institutes of Health and Environmental Protection Agency all have prohibited use of tritium signs. Here are two informative web resources created recently by American authorities.

1) Responsible Management of tritium EXIT signs - excellent on-line training module from the Environmental Protection Agency that includes information on health risks, a key to identify tritium signs, recommended alternatives, and safe procedures for disposal.

2) Bureau of Radiation Protection, State of Pennsylvania - detailed webpage with much information about the problems with tritium exit signs.

TAP asks “Where is Canada’s information on responsibly dealing with tritium exit signs”?