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.

Radioactive rhubarb has been found growing in Pembroke, Ont., near a factory that makes glow-in-the-dark signs from nuclear waste.

The rhubarb, apparently thriving downwind of the sign factory owned by SRB Technologies (Canada) Inc., contained about 1,000 times the radioactive tritium found either in rain water in Ottawa or in a rhubarb sample taken from a garden about 45 kilometres away.

“It was unusually large rhubarb, but I don’t think it was mutant or anything like that,” said Ole Hendrickson, a resident of the Ottawa Valley community who helped collect the samples.

The Atomic Energy Control Board, the country’s nuclear-safety agency, said the radioactivity from the rhubarb carries little risk, but Mr. Hendrickson said residents should not have any involuntary exposure to a potentially dangerous radioactive substance. He said regulators “should be targeting for zero level” of exposure to radioactive material.

There are no other known sources of tritium in Pembroke, such as atomic power stations or nuclear-weapon-manufacturing facilities, making fugitive emissions from the sign plant the only likely source. The company makes signs that are illuminated without electricity, such as airport runway markers and exit signs.

The tritium concentrations were about 19 to 75 times the average levels found in plants growing around Ontario’s three nuclear stations. The generating stations are far larger than the sign plant, which is in a small industrial building on the outskirts of Pembroke.

The AECB views the radioactive rhubarb as safe enough to be baked in pies or made into jam.

Sunni Locatelli, a board spokeswoman, said consuming the rhubarb would deliver a weak radioactive dose far lower than that from a chest X-ray or from living in a brick house, two other things that lead to small extra doses of radiation.

The emissions from the rhubarb are “well below the public dose limits,” she said.

The company said it is in compliance with all the conditions of its operating licence. “We meet the guidelines set by the Atomic Energy Control Board,” SRB executive Stephane Levesque said.

Mr. Hendrickson had the rhubarb sent to a laboratory at the University of Waterloo, which detected the high concentration.

The laboratory then refused to analyze a second plant sample — of an aspen leaf from a tree growing next to the sign factory — because of concern over the tritium levels in the rhubarb.

University officials were worried that if a worker accidentally broke a sample containing such a high level of tritium, its laboratory would be contaminated.

The Waterloo lab specializes in checking for minute traces of tritium in groundwater, which typically has radiation amounts about one-thousandth those of the Pembroke rhubarb. Staff were worried that an accident would irradiate instruments and undermine the accuracy of future test results.

A spill in the lab “might cause us a lot of grief,” said manager Robert Drimmie, adding that he did not refuse the second sample because of worries over the potential health risk.

Tritium is a radioactive form of hydrogen used mainly to make thermonuclear bombs. But it can also be used in glow-in-the-dark signs.

Tritium is produced as an unwanted byproduct of Canadian-designed nuclear reactors. SRB makes its signs using tritium from Ontario Power Generation Inc. and from tritium recycled from old glow-in-the-dark signs.

Canada has no standards for tritium contamination in food, Ms. Locatelli said, but regulators try to minimize exposure to all sources of human-caused radioactivity because it is a carcinogen and causes genetic damage.

There is no safe radiation dose, but the new federal regulatory standard for public exposure to human sources of radioactivity accepts as a safe risk nuclear contamination that causes 50 additional people in a population of one million to die of cancer.

The AECB says the sign plant is well within this safety standard.

SRB conducts its own testing for radiation in vegetation around the plant, but Mr. Levesque declined to divulge the results.

The rhubarb Mr. Hendrickson sent for analysis contained 2,000 becquerels per litre of tritium. A becquerel is a unit of radioactivity.

The Ontario drinking-water guideline for tritium is to allow no more than 7,000 Bq per litre. In the mid 1990s, a provincial advisory body recommended a more stringent safety standard of 100 Bq per litre, but the proposal was never adopted by the government

Radioactive matter shows up in rink ice, cucumbers, and woman’s urine

High levels of radioactive tritium are being found throughout Pembroke, the site of a plant that recycles the waste material to make glow-in-the-dark signs. Tritium has been discovered in the ice of a local hockey rink, in cucumbers and in the urine of one of the residents of the Ottawa River Valley city.

Although the tritium levels that were found were up to 1,500 times higher than the concentrations in rainwater, the Atomic Energy Control Board says they pose negligible risk of causing cancer.

Despite the assurances of the country’s nuclear watchdog agency, Kelly O’Grady, whose garden contained the radioactive cucumber, says she no longer wants to eat the food from her garden or feed it to her children.

“I don’t think it’s safe to be eating vegetables from our garden any more. We feel that our rights have been violated, that we should be able to plant a tritium-free garden,” Ms. O’Grady said.

The urine and cucumber samples were tested by Pembroke residents worried about emissions from the sign factory, owned by SRB Technologies (Canada) Inc., but it was the AECB that tested tritium levels in the ice rink, swimming pool water, and soil and vegetation throughout the community, including the local tourist bureau.

Tritium is a radioactive form of hydrogen and is an unwanted waste product of Canadian nuclear reactors. It has commercial applications for use in signs that glow in the dark without electricity, such as exit signs, but it is also a key component of thermonuclear weapons.

Tritium is considered by scientists to be the least dangerous reactor waste, but there is controversy over what constitutes safe levels, with some experts advising tighter standards, particularly for pregnant women.

SRB Technologies has said in a written statement that it operates “well within” the guidelines and regulations set up by the AECB and has processes in place to ensure that staff and the public are not at risk.

The woman who had her urine analyzed asked not to be identified.

In response to concerns about tritium releases, which made headlines earlier this year when radioactive rhubarb was found in the city, the control board conducted extensive sampling of soil and vegetation in Pembroke last month and in early November. Results of the testing were presented to residents and politicians on Monday evening.

The testing by both the board and local residents indicates tritium well above normal background levels in many parts of Pembroke, with the highest readings close to the factory. The ice, for instance, was tested at an arena a few hundred metres from the sign plant.

Patsy Thompson, head of the AECB’s radiological-protection section, said the readings around the sign plant are in line with the radioactivity levels the board would expect for the area, based on the amount of tritium the facility emits during normal operations.

Many residents want the plant to eliminate these discharges, but Ms. Thompson said the board doesn’t try to force nuclear operators to eliminate all radioactive emissions.

“The AECB does not regulate facilities such as SRB and others on the basis of zero discharge,” she said, but added that it tries to ensure that fugitive radioactive emissions are kept at low enough levels to ensure the number of cancer cases stays within the normal range.

She said the radioactivity that Pembroke residents receive from the plant shouldn’t be a cancer worry because the amounts are at low levels.

TRITIUM LEVELS IN SOUTHERN ONTARIO

Source: Atomic Energy Control Board

MARTIN MITTELSTAEDT, ENVIRONMENT REPORTER, The Globe and Mail
Wednesday, November 30, 2005 Page A3

Alarmed about radioactivity levels around Pembroke, Ont., that are hundreds of times above normal, staff at Canada’s nuclear regulatory agency have taken the unprecedented step of recommending the closing of a manufacturer of glow-in-the-dark signs. 

Staff at the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission have found that emissions from the company, SRB Technologies (Canada) Inc., have created a trail of groundwater contaminated with radioactive tritium more than a kilometre long under the Ottawa River Valley community of 15,000. The most contaminated water had tritium levels 743 times normal. The CNSC staff, in a toughly worded assessment filed with the regulatory agency, recommend that SRB not be issued a new operating licence when its current one expires at the end of December — effectively a call to close the company. 

The staff said they believe the company is so poorly run they don’t think it “is qualified to carry on the activities that the licence will authorize [it] to carry on” and are worried that if the facility is allowed to continue operating, there is “potential that an unreasonable risk to the environment and health and safety of persons will develop.” 

The staff also fear that the company might not take adequate actions for the “maintenance of national security and measures required to implement international obligations to which Canada has agreed.” 

CNSC spokesman Aurèle Gervais said the case is believed to be the first where the commission’s staff have recommended that regulators shut a nuclear facility that has been approved to handle large amounts of radioactive material. 

The CNSC has a policy of refusing to answer questions about its assessments until documents are submitted at regulatory hearings, so the nature of the possible “national security” issues is not clear. 

Nuclear regulators are touchy about tritium because it has a military use in the manufacture of hydrogen bombs, in addition to its use in glow-in-the-dark signs. 

SRB Technologies said it is upset by the call that it be closed. 

“We’re a little disappointed — well, really disappointed –with staff’s recommendation,” said company president Stephane Levesque. 

The hearing on the future of the SRB plant, which is located in a Pembroke strip mall, is scheduled for today, when commission regulators formally review the staff recommendation and the company’s counterarguments. 

Other documents prepared by the commission for the hearing indicated that a calculation error had led SRB to underestimate its tritium emissions by 90 per cent. The company also has toldregulators that its monitoring equipment may be faulty and might be providing incorrect figures for the amount of radioactivity released into the city. 

According to the CNSC staff assessment, tritium readings in a well about a kilometre from the plant were 400 becquerel per litre, while those in a well 400 metres from the plant were 2,750 Bq per litre. A becquerel is a measure of radioactivity.

Staff characterized those readings as a “significant development relating to contaminated groundwater.” 

Clean water has about 3.7 Bq per litre, so the Pembroke readings were 108 and 743 times normal. 

Tritium, like all radioactive substances, is considered a health risk because it may cause cancer. However, there is considerable regulatory uncertainty about what constitutes an unsafe exposure. 

Ontario’s drinking water standard is 7,000 Bq per litre, a level that is far more lax than the European Union’s standard of 100 Bq per litre or the U.S. figure of 740 Bq per litre. (Californialast year issued a report calling for an even tougher health protection standard of 15 Bq per litre.) The Ontario government rejected an advisory panel recommendation in the early 1990s to adopt 100 Bq per litre as the standard. 

The CNSC staff did not think residents are at risk because the readings are below drinking-water standards, but admitted they did not know the full extent of the radioactivity or the potential health effects. 

But some residents are concerned because neither the commission nor the company have accurate figures on the radioactivity to which they’ve been exposed. 

“If things are not being measured properly, then there is no control [over radiation exposures],” said Ole Hendrickson, a local resident. 

Other radioactivity tests in Pembroke have found that a residential swimming pool near the plant has tritium levels so high the water would not pass Ontario’s drinking water standard, and vegetables with elevated tritium concentrations have been found growing in gardens more than two kilometres away, indicating tritium is widespread throughout Pembroke. 

Mr. Levesque said SRB, which is owned by a Dutch holding company, intends to install pollution-control equipment and hopes the device will remove enough tritium from its emissionsto persuade regulators to keep the plant open. 

Without a licence renewal, the company, which employs 36 people, will have to shut down on Dec. 31. 

Documents compiled by the CNSC for the licensing hearing indicate SRB does not have an approved decommissioning plan and consequently has not posted a financial guarantee to covercleanup costs if the plant closes.   

 © Copyright 2005 Bell Globemedia Publishing Inc.

The federal government is licensing companies to handle dangerous nuclear materials that have both peaceful and military uses without knowing who ultimately owns the businesses.

Nuclear critics say the fact that the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, the federal watchdog agency, does not know the identity of owners of the companies it oversees is a major blunder, given the high-security risks presented by nuclear materials and the potential costs of any accident involving radioactive releases.

If problems were to arise at a company licensed to use radioactive material, the government should know who owns the business, Dave Martin, an energy analyst at Greenpeace, said.

“Understanding the ownership is part of understanding [a company's] capability, their economic viability, and ultimately that could have environmental and health impacts as well as business impacts,” he said.

Mr. Martin noted that there has been a “history of problems” at nuclear facilities, and he is worried that companies might dodge their environmental responsibilities.

But the federal regulator ensures only that a company is legally incorporated to do business in Canada; that is where its scrutiny stops.

The Nuclear Safety and Control Act “does not require that the commission obtain shareholder information from a licensee,” Pascale Bourassa, a spokeswoman for the CNSC, said in an e-mailed statement to The Globe and Mail.

Some of the businesses the CNSC regulates are household names because they are government electric utilities or are large publicly traded companies that must disclose major shareholders under securities law. But others are privately held and little information is available about them.

The lack of routine checks on the ownership of nuclear companies came to light during a hearing into a licence renewal for SRB Technologies (Canada) Inc., an Ontario company allowed to handle radioactive tritium.

The transcript of the hearing indicates regulators were unaware of who owned the Pembroke company, which makes glow-in-the-dark signs and is privately owned through corporations based in Holland and a Caribbean tax haven.

SRB is regulated by the commission because it uses tritium, a radioactive gas that can also be used to boost the explosive power of nuclear weapons. At the hearing, the regulators were trying to determine if the company, which has been operating in Canada since the early 1990s, could get the financial guarantees needed to cover the costs of cleaning up its factory when it closes.

The CNSC has been pressuring SRB to reduce its emissions, after discovering the company had underestimated contaminant releases by about 90 per cent around its factory in the Ottawa River community, as well as discovering that groundwater more than a kilometre away has become radioactive.

According to the transcript of the SRB hearing, regulators were in the dark about who owned the company.

SRB president Stephane Levesque was asked who owned it and he identified a Dutch holding company whose owners “are throughout the world in various countries.”

“So do you confirm that the company is owned by a Dutch holding company ultimately?” CNSC commissioner James Dosman asked.

“Yes, it is,” Mr. Levesque replied.

Mr. Dosman said he asked the question to determine if the parent company had the resources to help SRB get a financial guarantee for its decommissioning plan, which is currently being developed.

Nuclear regulations require companies to have cleanup plans and financial guarantees to make sure their facilities do not release harmful radiation after they close. Decommissioning plans for many licence holders include multimillion-dollar guarantees, but no amount has been fixed for SRB.

Despite seeking information on SRB’s shareholders, Ms. Bourassa said in an interview that the CNSC did not make further inquiries into SRB’s ownership.

A Globe and Mail review of the holding company, Amsterdam-based Sarodel Investments B.V., found it is a small company with about 500,000 euros (about $680,000) in assets and no individual shareholders. According to Dutch corporate records, Sarodel is owned by a company in the Netherlands Antilles, a tax haven. After the hearing, the government issued SRB a restrictive one-year licence; among its conditions is a requirement that the plant pump emissions up its smokestacks with enough force to ensure that any radioactivity disperses widely and does not build up around the site.

The CNSC also concluded, based on assurances from SRB, that once it is allowed to resume full operations next fall “it should be in a financial position to put the required decommissioning financial guarantee in place,” according to a regulatory document issued in late January.

Ms. Bourassa said the commission believes it can demand ownership information from companies under a general rule that it has the authority to request any data relevant to a licence application.

Unlike regulatory requirements in the United States, the Canadian watchdog doesn’t require routine notification when a company’s ownership changes.

The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission approved a shipment to Iran last year by a Canadian company of about 70,000 glow-in-the-dark lights containing tritium, a radioactive gas that can also be used as a component in hydrogen bombs.

The amount of tritium approved by the nuclear regulator for shipment to the volatile Middle Eastern country was about 10 per cent of the quantity considered necessary for making one nuclear weapon, although the company selling the lights, SRB Technologies (Canada) Inc., said it sent less than it was allowed.

The sale to Iran was confirmed by the CNSC after The Globe and Mail obtained heavily censored e-mails originating from the federal nuclear watchdog about the transaction. Another e-mail that discussed SRB indicated the federal bureaucracy didn’t want any atomic sales that would lead to Canadian complicity in programs by either Iran or North Korea to develop weapons of mass destruction.

“We must be particularly vigilant to ensure that Canada does nothing that could assist, directly or indirectly, the nuclear programs or WMD capabilities of either country,” Marc Vidricaire, then a senior disarmament official at the Department of Foreign Affairs, wrote in an e-mail sent to his counterpart at the CNSC.

The names of the countries were originally deleted by the CNSC in the version of the e-mail it made public, but Foreign Affairs identified them in a written statement to The Globe. Mr. Vidricaire, who subsequently left the federal government to become chief spokesman for the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, also wrote that the CNSC shouldn’t have approved the tritium export by SRB Technologies without first seeking the views of Foreign Affairs.

Mr. Vidricaire refused to comment on his e-mail, but Jim Casterton, a senior CNSC official, said in an interview that the agency approved a shipment by SRB of lights to Iran in 2005. There were no indications in the records of any dealings with North Korea.

The delivery to Iran was made in three batches between May and July. At the time, there were widespread international fears about Iran’s nuclear ambitions, and EU states were warning that any resumption by the country of its uranium conversion efforts would end negotiations linked to trade and economic issues.

The CNSC said the shipment was allowed to contain a maximum of 0.4 grams of tritium, but refused to comment on how easy or difficult it would be for the tritium sent to Iran to be diverted for a bomb.

Tritium, a radioactive form of hydrogen, is a so-called dual use item, meaning it has both peaceful applications, such as making glow-in-the-dark lights and the illuminated markings on watches, and a use in atomic bombs. Regulators monitor it closely, keeping track of even minute quantities, because only four grams, or about the weight of a 25-cent piece, is considered enough to make a plutonium-based nuclear weapon.

Federal tritium export guidelines have been developed to reduce the possibility of successful weapons production by rogue nations. The guidelines stipulate that countries failing to abide by the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons can’t be sent more than a gram of tritium annually in products such as lights, from any one exporter. Any amount can be sent to countries abiding by the treaty.

According to the e-mails and to Mr. Casterton, SRB also sought permission to send lights to Iran in 2004, but later withdrew the application for the sale. Mr. Casterton said this earlier application was for just less than a gram of tritium.

Canada is one of the world’s biggest sources of tritium because Candu reactors generate large quantities of it as a waste product. Ontario Power Generation extracts about 2.5 kilograms of it a year. Tritium is one of the world’s most expensive substances, selling for about $25,000 a gram.

The lights were made by SRB in Pembroke, Ont.

The company declined to identify its Iranian purchaser for commercial reasons, but said the buyer was an optical company.

SRB president Stephane Levesque said the quantity of tritium shipped to Iran was less than the amount permitted in its licence, at about a quarter of a gram. He said the purchaser used the lights to make compasses that can be read in the dark.

SRB makes items including emergency signs, and Mr. Levesque said the company’s products are designed to save lives.

“We make lights that glow in the dark, to illuminate various products for life safety, nothing else,” he said.

But the sale of products using tritium has been questioned by some disarmament advocates because of nuclear proliferation fears.

“The tritium trade epitomizes the risks of the nuclear industry because it has commercial applications, as well as nuclear weapons applications,” contended David Martin, a nuclear expert at Greenpeace. “It’s clear that tritium has ready and easy applications to nuclear weapons, so it should be treated with the utmost security.”

The CNSC also refused to identify the purchaser.

E-mails on the export were obtained through an Access to Information Act request made by an environmental group in Pembroke, Concerned Citizens of Renfrew County, seeking records the nuclear agency held on SRB.

Mr. Casterton, the CNSC’s acting executive director of international affairs, defended the Iranian shipment, saying the nuclear regulator is “vigilant” about making sure atomic materials from Canada do not contribute to nuclear proliferation.

He said federal policies on tritium are designed to “assure Canadians that these exports do not assist in any way for the development of nuclear weapons, or nuclear explosive devices.”

But this view on the shipment wasn’t shared by Mr. Vidricaire. Staff at Foreign Affairs review sensitive nuclear shipments, but in the case of SRB, Mr. Vidricaire was miffed that the CNSC approved the Iranian transaction before his officials were able to provide their views.

Although Mr. Vidricaire’s e-mail is heavily censored and Iran is not named directly, a previous e-mail exchange sent a month earlier identifies a proposed shipment to Iran by SRB as being a point of contention between the two agencies.

Mr. Vidricaire told the CNSC that it should assume the federal government would not approve future sales of tritium to countries posing proliferation risks, and he reminded the agency that then-prime-minister Paul Martin had been making speeches saying Canada had to be seen as taking a tough stand on nuclear weapons.

“In view of the foregoing, [Foreign Affairs] requests that when in the future CNSC reviews applications for the export . . . [censored] . . . for tritium, items containing tritium, or tritium-related technology, or for the export of nuclear or nuclear-related dual-use items, you do so on the basis of a presumption of denial.”

Nuclear watchdog may ask atomic agency to monitor Ontario company’s tritium use

The International Atomic Energy Agency, the body that tries to stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons, should inspect SRB Technologies (Canada) Inc., a Canadian company that uses radioactive tritium, according to an internal report by the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission.

The recommendation will be reviewed by the commission, Canada’s nuclear watchdog, at a licence hearing for SRB next week. If approved, it would place the Pembroke, Ont., company in the same league in terms of inspections as facilities that have stockpiles of fissile material that could be converted into atomic weapons.

SRB makes emergency-exit signs and other lights that glow in the dark using tritium, a radioactive form of hydrogen.

But tritium is also used for making hydrogen bombs.

A diplomatic source close to the Vienna- based IAEA said the agency did not ask to inspect SRB, which operates a factory in a strip mall on the outskirts of the Ottawa River community of 13,000 residents. The IAEA does not usually monitor tritium, but focuses on safeguarding atomic material considered more crucial to bomb making, such as enriched uranium and plutonium.

“To our knowledge . . . there has certainly not been any request from the agency, through the Canadians, to have anything concerning this company safeguarded,” the source said.

But the CNSC report said the commission wanted the inspections to “facilitate the implementation of Canada’s international safeguards obligations.” It also called for sweeping access to the plant and its records by IAEA inspectors, and wants the inspection requirement written into SRB’s next operating licence.

SRB could not be reached for comment. The commission did not return phone calls seeking comment on why it wants inspections by the UN-linked agency, best known for helping discover Iraq’s clandestine nuclear program in the early 1990s.

Last year, the commission allowed the company to ship about 70,000 glow-in-the-dark lights to Iran, or approximately 10 per cent of the amount considered necessary for a nuclear weapon, raising the ire of disarmament officials at the Department of Foreign Affairs.

Foreign Affairs did not want Canadian tritium sent to Iran because of fears that country is trying to develop weapons of mass destruction. The department told the commission it would not approve SRB shipments to Iran or North Korea, based on proliferation worries.

The company uses equipment containing uranium in its manufacturing process, but it is not known whether concerns over this material, the tritium in its lights, or equipment used to process tritium prompted the inspection recommendation.

The report, by Barclay Howden, the commission’s director-general of nuclear facilities regulation, also gave a strong endorsement of an SRB plan to limit groundwater contamination around its plant by collecting tritium laced rain water that falls on its factory and discharging it into Pembroke’s sewage system. The sewage is released into the Ottawa River, the source of drinking water for downstream communities, including Ottawa.

Some groundwater near the plant contains tritium at about eight times Ontario’s drinking standard, with pockets of even more severe contamination in the soil. The company’s sewer proposal would usually trigger an environmental assessment, but the report said it would be exempt from this requirement because the pollution threat is an emergency that poses a risk to human health and or property.

Environmentalist say it is inconsistent for the commission to view radioactivity around the plant as an emergency, and then permit the contaminated water to be poured down the sewer.

“It doesn’t make sense,” said Ole Hendrickson, a spokesman for Concern Citizens of Renfrew County, an environmental group opposed to the proposal. “The idea that a way of dealing with a serious contamination problem is simply to divert it into the river is unacceptable to a lot of people.”

Last week, the City of Ottawa’s environmental advisory committee voted to oppose the sewer plan because it would increase radioactivity in the capital’s drinking water.

Discharges from the plant would lead to a tiny increase in radioactivity because the tritium would be diluted by the river. Water supplies drawn from it would be well within Ontario’s drinking water standard for the contaminant.

But Mr. Hendrickson said regulators should get companies to reduce emissions, rather than controlling pollution through dilution. “If every polluter was able to solve their problem this way, then we’d have a very polluted world,” he said.

from the source: Globe and Mail

A company in Eastern Ontario is hoping to find that the solution to pollution is dilution.

The company, SRB Technologies Canada Inc. of Pembroke, Ont., has contaminated the groundwater around its factory with radioactive tritium, raising the ire of nuclear regulators. So it is proposing to clean up the problem by dumping some of the pollutant into the city’s sewers.

From there, the radioactivity would be mixed with sewage flushed by the city’s 13,000 residents and ultimately poured into the nearby Ottawa River.

In the plan, filed with regulators at the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, the company says its proposal is safe for people and the environment because the radioactivity would be diluted with all the city’s sewage and then have a further “immediate and substantial dilution upon discharge to the environment [the Ottawa River].”

The commission’s staff issued a report yesterday saying they approve of the cleanup idea, but are refusing to comment because the proposal is the subject of a hearing scheduled next week on the renewal of SRB’s operating licence.

SRB makes glow-in-the-dark signs, such as emergency exit lights, that don’t need electricity to run. They are made with tritium, a radioactive form of hydrogen produced as a waste product from Canada’s nuclear power plants.

Some residents object to the proposal, saying it doesn’t make sense to take contaminants from the factory site and place them in the river, which is a drinking water source for downstream communities, including Ottawa.

“It’s just moving pollution from one place to another. It’s a bit of a shell game,” said Ole Hendrickson, a researcher with Concerned Citizens of Renfrew County, a local environment group, who worries that the plan, if approved, could make the city’s sewage plant radioactive.

SRB could not be reached for comment.

The company has released small amounts of radioactive waste into the sewers, but the plan proposes increasing it by up to fourfold.

SRB has been in hot water with nuclear regulators because groundwater around its factory, located in a strip mall in the Ottawa River valley community, is contaminated with tritium. One well has radioactivity levels about eight times the Ontario drinking water standard, but there are pockets of even higher contamination in the soil.

In August, the commission ordered the company to shut its operations because of the contamination, but it has since resumed production after agreeing not to operate when it rains—the company and regulators are concerned that tritium going up the factory’s smokestack is washing back down onto the site in wet weather.

To stop a further buildup in radiation, the company is proposing to divert the contaminated rain falling around the factory and its smokestack into a holding tank, from which it would be periodically released to the sewer system.

“Although no significant risk to the public would exist as a result of releases of the diverted rainfall, in an attempt to allay any possible public concern, we will be performing monthly [radiation] measurements at the water sewage treatment plant to ensure that concentrations are as expected,” the company said.

The most contaminated water the company expects to collect will have tritium levels about 300 times Ontario’s drinking water standards. But by the time this water is mixed in with the 4.5 million tonnes of sewage Pembroke produces every year, it will have radioactivity of less than 1 per cent of the standard.

The company has investigated what other businesses handling tritium do with their radioactive water, and said “it is a known and accepted practice” to dispose of it down drains, provided the amounts are within the effluent limits in their operating licences.

There is debate over what constitutes safe exposure. Both the federal and Ontario governments have tritium drinking water standards of 7,000 becquerels per litre, about 10 times the U.S. level and 70 times the European one. A becquerel is a measure of radioactive decay.

Pembroke facility shuts down operations temporarily amid
radioactivity concerns

By MARTIN MITTELSTAEDT
Thursday, December 1, 2005

A company that contaminated groundwater around its plant in Pembroke, Ont., with radioactive tritium says it has halted operations and will not resume manufacturing until it puts in place better pollution controls.

SRB Technologies (Canada) Inc. announced its temporary shutdown in an e-mail sent late Tuesday night to the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, the country’s nuclear watchdog agency. The letter was sent just before the company was scheduled to appear at a CNSC hearing yesterday into the future of the plant.

The company is a manufacturer of glow-in-the-dark signs, such as emergency-exit markers, which run without electricity. It makes the signs using tritium, a waste product taken from Ontario’s nuclear-power plants.

Last month, staff at the commission recommended the plant be closed after they discovered the company was not able to provide reliable estimates on the amount of radioactivity being released into Pembroke, an Ottawa River community of 15,000.

The Ministry of Environment has found elevated levels of radioactive tritium in ground water at the municipal dump serving Pembroke, Ont., and several other nearby Ottawa River valley communities.

The dump, the Alice and Fraser Township Landfill, is not licensed to receive radioactive waste, and it is not known exactly how tritium, used to make glow-in-the-dark lights, among other products, and nuclear weapons, got into the dump.

But the discovery, made earlier in December, is being played down by the ministry because the amount of radioactivity was well below Ontario’s drinking-water limit.

Ministry spokesperson Kate Jordan said the Pembroke finding wasn’t high enough to warrant further action. “While there was tritium in the ground water at the site, [it was] well below our ministry standards,” she said. “We don’t feel that they pose a risk to the community or to the environment.”

The highest level – 1,000 Becquerel/Litre – is one seventh Ontario’s drinking water standard. One Becquerel is a radioactive disintegration per second.

But Ontario’s limit is lax by international standards and is currently under review by the government. The reading would have exceeded by wide margins California’s goal of having no more than 15 Bq/L, and Europe’s of having no more than 100 Bq/L, in water supplies.

California’s strict limit is based on the amount of tritium consumed over a lifetime that would cause no significant health risk, which it defined as one extra cancer in a million exposed people. Based on the California risk calculation, Ontario’s limit deems acceptable about 466 extra cancer cases.

The ministry testing is believed to be the first in Canada to find elevated amounts of tritium, a radioactive form of hydrogen, at a municipal landfill, and was prompted by a request from an environmental group in the community, located about 150 kilometres northwest of Ottawa.

“If these levels were found in any other jurisdiction there would be an immediate investigation. Ontario Ministry of Environment staff are using permissive and outdated provincial tritium standards as an excuse to avoid action,” contended Ole Hendrickson, a spokesman for Concerned Citizens of Renfrew County, the local group, in a statement.

Elevated amounts of tritium have also been found at dumps in both the United States and the United Kingdom in water that collects under landfills, known technically as leachate. Studies in those countries suggest the radioactivity is coming from the disposal of glow-in-the-dark signs, such as emergency-exit lights used in buildings, and products such as luminous watch paints. A group of U.S. researchers warned earlier this year that landfill workers exposed to construction debris may be at high risk of tritium exposure due to releases from the signs.

The only other testing in Ontario, at a landfill near Waterloo by the ministry in 2004, found low amounts of tritium around 10 Bq/L to 20 Bq/L. Some tritium is produced by natural processes and rain contains about 2 Bq/L.

Although the ministry doesn’t know precisely how the dump water got its radioactivity, Ms. Jordan said the source may have been glow-in-the-dark products.

In response to written questions, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, the federal atomic watchdog, said it believes glow-in-the-dark signs caused the contamination. Canadian nuclear regulations allow the radioactive signs to be tossed into landfills, provided certain limits on their radioactive content are met.

Mr. Hendrickson said he is not aware of efforts by the CNSC to see if discarded signs meet the regulatory conditions and the watchdog wasn’t immediately able to confirm or deny his statement.

Ministry staff also suspect that radioactive waste was dumped at the landfill before modern pollution regulations were adopted in the 1970s.

The dump doesn’t have radiation monitoring equipment, and is supposed to accept only non-hazardous household, commercial, and industrial waste, according to its licence from the ministry.

The local citizens’ group wants the ministry to do more testing to find out whether migration of radiation off the site poses any risk and to find the source of the tritium.

Currently, technologies to economically remove tritium once it contaminates ground water do not exist and sewage treatment doesn’t remove it.

“There is tritium getting into that dump and it should be disposed of at a hazardous waste site,” said Kelly O’Grady, another spokesperson for Concerned Citizens of Renfrew County. She said that if ground water leaves the site, it may pose a risk to those relying on well water. “I would be worried if I were living in that area,” she said.

A Pembroke company that makes glow-in-the-dark signs containing tritium said it hasn’t been using the dump.

The tritium is “not coming from the company,” said Stéphane Lévesque, president of SRB Technologies (Canada) Inc. He said SRB ships all of its radioactive waste to a Chalk River disposal site operated by Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. He said the company asks customers to return old signs to it, and to not throw them into landfills.