Martin Mittelstaedt, Globe and Mail (Canada)
February 8, 2006
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. Read more…
MARTIN MITTELSTAEDT, ENVIRONMENT REPORTER, The Globe and Mail
March 23, 2006
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.
Read more…
March 29, 2009
Jim Merritt
Chair, Ontario Drinking Water Advisory Council
40 St. Clair Avenue West, 3rd Floor
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
M4V 1M2
Dear Mr. Merritt,
The Tritium Awareness Project (TAP) is a voluntary collaborative initiative aimed at bringing attention to the hazards of tritium exposure in Canada. TAP is a new organization, formed in January 2009, and is supported by a growing number of individuals and NGO’s. The TAP advisory board members bring years of experience and professional expertise to this educational effort. We invite you to visit the TAP website at www.tapcanada.org for more information about this initiative.
TAP supports the important work to date by the ODWAC to review the Ontario drinking water standard for tritium. This review has the potential to make a major contribution to reducing the tritium hazard in Ontario. Read more…
MARTIN MITTELSTAEDT, The Globe and Mail -
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
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. Read more…
MARTIN MITTELSTAEDT, Globe and Mail
Friday, October 20, 2006
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. Read more…
Globe and Mail
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. Read more…
MARTIN MITTELSTAEDT, ENVIRONMENT REPORTER, The Globe and Mail
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
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. Read more…
International Health Institute Calls for Immediate Attention
In support of the Tritium Awareness Project and MPs who are calling for action, the International Institute of Concern for Public Health (IICPH) calls on authorities to heed warnings about public health risks from spills of tritium into air and water from Chalk River nuclear reactors. Tritium and other radioactive contaminants are being released into the Ottawa River, affecting the drinking water for millions of people in the communities that draw water from the Ottawa and St. Lawrence Rivers. Unless immediate and serious action is taken, chronic exposure to the tritium-tainted water will cause widespread and unnecessary damage to people’s health and the natural environment. Read more…
In his recent letter to Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission on behalf of the Tritium Awareness Project, Dr. Gordon Edwards points out that the CNSC should remove from its web site this statement:
Radiation doses of 100 mSv [millisieverts] and more have shown increases in cancer incidence but there is no evidence of health effects at doses below about 100 mSv.
Frequently Asked Questions : Tritium
http://www.cnscccsn.gc.ca/eng/readingroom/factsheets/tritium_studies_faq.cfm
In his letter to CNSC President Michael Binder, Dr. Edwards says “The statement is scientifically incorrect and misleading. It suggests that a safe threshold of radiation exposure exists – a conclusion at odds with the widespread scientific consensus as found in many documents published by the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR), the US National Research Council (NRC), and the International Commission for Radiological Protection (ICRP).
On March 6, 2009, Ottawa Centre Member of Parliament, Paul Dewar tabled a motion in the House of Commons that seeks to end tritium dumping into the Ottawa River and reduce the Canadian drinking water limit for tritium.
Here is the press release from Dewar’s office:
OTTAWA – NDP MP [New Democratic Party Member of Parliament] Paul Dewar (Ottawa Centre) is calling for a reduction in the amount of tritium — a cancer-causing radioactive form of hydrogen — in drinking water.
Dewar’s effort comes as Tritium Awareness Project announced that 28 trillion becquerels of radioactive tritium has been released at the Chalk River nuclear facility into the Ottawa River, the source of drinking water in Ottawa.
“I am extremely concerned about the high levels of tritium in the water we drink” said Dewar. “There is a host of health risks posed by exposure to high levels of tritium in water”. Studies in lab animals have shown that high levels of tritium exposure can cause a number of health problems from miscarriages and birth defects to permanent genetic damage and cancer.
Read more…