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.

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

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.

Of course SSI’s actual tritium releases are only a small fraction of their allowable limit*. But a small fraction of an enormous number can still be a large amount.

This is all eerily familiar. Citizens of Pembroke have been through this with our own tritium sign factory, SRB Technologies Incorporated. Soil and groundwater in the vicinity of SRB remain highly contaminated with tritium and nearby residents have stopped growing vegetables for home consumption. Some still grow a few veggies to use for monitoring tritium contamination every year.

Members of the Tritium Awareness Project will be intervening in the licensing hearing for SSI on June 10th. Members of the public who are interested in intervening must contact the CNSC  by May 13th. Details for intervenors are available on the CNSC website at www.cnsc-ccsn.gc.ca/eng/

Members of the public can also sign and/or collect signatures on the TAP petition to phase out the use of tritium lights. The petition is located here.

* due to the CNSC’s strange practice of setting allowable limits more than a thousand times higher than actual releases, an approach that is contrary to guidance from the International Atomic Energy Agency.

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”?  

Disposal of waste exit signs can seriously pollute groundwater. Tritium lights become much more hazardous to the environment as they age; the glass tubes act as sponges for tritium, converting it into its more hazardous and soluble oxidized form. Information linking high levels of tritium oxide in landfill leachate to discarded exit signs, has recently come to light in Scotland, South Africa, Italy and several states in the U.S. Regulators are grappling with the issue of how to ensure that used tritium exit signs go to monitored, radioactive waste storage facilities (1,2). Although no Canadian data are available, the situation may be worse here because regulations allow for disposal of used exit signs in ordinary landfills.

References:

1) Study of tritium in leachate from Scottish landfill sites
2)  State of Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection

SRB  was licensed by the Atomic Energy Control Board (now the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission) in 1990  to market a radioactive waste byproduct of CANDU reactors called tritium — a radioactive form of hydrogen. SRB makes self-illuminating signs — they glow in the dark because they are filled with large quantities of radioactive tritium gas.  

Over the years. SRB has contaminated the environment in Pembroke with high levels of tritium. In some years, more tritium was given off into the environment by the SRB plant than by all of Canada’s nuclear power reactors combined.  Meanwhile, SRB is exporting tritium contamination problems around the world because there is no effective control over the ultimate disposal of these radioactive signs. 

This story is replete with patent examples of regulatory incompetence, murky questions about nuclear weapons and international security risks (because tritium is also used as a nuclear explosive material) and salt-of-the-earth folks being treated with disregard and exposed to high levels of radioactive tritium for  almost 20 years with no end in sight.  Please see also the “personal stories” category for more about this.

TAP feels that the marketing of radioactive wastes like tritium should be banned in Canada, and the SRB plant should be permanently shut down. 

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.