CNSC is proposing to remove licence conditions for safeguards and non-proliferation from SRB’s licence. No reason is given for the proposal.

TAP finds this proposal bizarre and maintains that Canada must uphold its obligation under the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons “to accept safeguards… with a view to preventing diversion of nuclear energy from peaceful uses to nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices.”

In the case of SSI,  there is no signage or any indication  of the tritium hazard. Unbelievably there is a picnic table right beside the stack. Read more in the SAGE intervention for the upcoming hearing at the CNSC on May 2, 2012.

SAGE is being represented by the Canadian Environmental Law Association.

(From the Website of Shield Source Incorporated on April 8, 2012)

“PUBLIC NOTICE – APRIL 2012

On March 28, 2012, we suspended operations to investigate potential errors in calculated HT emission data.  HT is tritium gas that is emitted in small quantities from our exhaust stack during our production process.  The CNSC was notified of this decision on the same day.

After consultation with independent consultants and the CNSC, we have decided to hire a third party consultant to install a parallel monitoring system to verify emission data during a limited production three day test scheduled to commence on April 3rd. Based on the values under consideration, this is not considered a threat to the public.  Verified independent environmental sampling of air, water, and vegetation remains at historically safe levels.  Additional information will be posted on this website as soon as it’s available.”

Note that SSI refers to “small quantities of tritium gas” being emitted from its exhaust stack. In fact, the tritium light factories, SSI in Peterborough, Ontario and SRB Technologies in Pembroke, Ontario are the two largest point sources for tritium gas emissions in the world, as far as we are aware.

The CNSC has refused to release a full report on a February 1, 2010 accident when SSI released roughly 150 trillion Becquerels of radioactive gas in a period of only about five minutes, nearly ten times the company’s weekly release limit, and 30% of its yearly limit.  Groundwater in the area is highly polluted with tritium oxide.  Local vegetation has incorporated tritium into a broad range of organic compounds.

During the current licence period in late 2009, CNSC staff allowed SSI to increase the height of its stack without public notice or environmental review, so that the company could spread its radioactive pollution farther away from the factory.  CNSC staff, commenting on their decision in this matter, claim that “improvements to the design of the stack positively impacted the dispersion of tritium in the environment, consistent with industry best practice.”

For those familiar with the history of serious contamination of Pembroke, Ontario by tritium light manufacturer SRB Technologies, this is an unpleasant case of deja vu.

The risks of tritium on health could be underestimated

The risks of tritium – the radioactive form of hydrogen – could be undervalued because it could be bound into the DNA of cells, according to experts who participated in a White Paper published on Thursday July 8 by the French Nuclear Safety Authority (ASN). In France, the overall impact of tritium releases is low however: ASN officials emphasized at the outset of the press conference: the average annual dose is a thousand times smaller than the threshold limit of 1 mSv, a unit which measures its radioactive effects in the human body.

Tritium is a radioactive element considered “slightly toxic” if one takes into account the average energy deposited in a body, said Dr Patrick Smeesters of the Belgian Federal Agency for Nuclear Control who chaired various “thinking groups” created at the initiative of the ASN in 2009. But tritium may be combined with certain cellular components, even DNA, said the expert noting reports of tritium measurements made in the UK, including Sellafield, which has a nuclear fuel reprocessing plant. “In Cardiff Bay, the tritium concentration in marine fauna is 1,000-10,000 times that of seawater” he said. At Cardiff, “organic molecules containing tritium were released into the sea” which may explain this concentration. “In the case of Sellafield, tritium concentrations in marine fauna concentration were only increased by a factor of 10, but only tritiated water was released.”

Hence his questions: it is assumed that the nuclear plants release only tritiated water, but what is the real nature of their tritium releases? Do marine micro-organisms play a role in the accumulation of tritium? Tritium, when released as tritiated water, would then be ingested by animals and integrated into complex biological molecules. In an embryo with only a few cells, such organic compounds containing tritium could integrate with their DNA and may cause mutations.

Faced with these issues, the Director-General of the Autorite de Surete Nucleaire (ASN), Jean-Christophe Niel, wants the investigation “on new approaches in relation to possible hereditary effects”. After the publication of the White Paper of tritium, the ASN intends to establish a “monitoring committee” and calls on nuclear operators to control their (tritium) emissions. ASN’s action plan also provides for the monitoring of various forms of tritium in the environment and for assessing their impact.

________________________________________________________________

Les risques du tritium sur la santé pourraient être sous-évalués

AFP | 08.07.10 | 20h15

Les risques du tritium forme radioactive de l’hydrogène – pourraient être sous-évalués car il pourrait s’intégrer à l’ADN au coeur des cellules, selon des experts ayant participé à un Livre Blanc publié jeudi par l’Autorité de sûreté nucléaire. En France, l’impact global des rejets de tritium est faible, ont cependant tenu à souligner d’emblée les responsables de l’ASN lors d’une conférence de presse: la dose moyenne annuelle est mille fois inférieure au seuil limite de 1 millisievert, une unité prenant en compte les effets sur le corps humain de la radioactivité. Le tritium est un radio-élément considéré “peu toxique” si l’on prend en compte l’énergie moyenne déposée dans un organe, a expliqué Patrick Smeesters, de l’Agence fédérale de contrôle nucléaire belge, qui a présidé un des “groupes de réflexion” créés à l’initiative de l’ASN. Mais lorsqu’il est associé à certains composants des cellules, il peut agir au coeur même de d’ADN, a souligné cet expert faisant état de mesures effectuées en Grande-Bretagne, notamment à Sellafield, où se trouve une usine de retraitement de combustibles nucléaires. “Dans la baie de Cardiff, la concentration en tritium dans la faune marine est 1.000 à 10.000 fois supérieure à celle de l’eau de mer”, a-t-il expliqué. Alors qu’à Cardiff, “des molécules complexes contenant du tritium étaient rejetées dans la mer”, ce qui peut expliquer cette concentration, “dans le cas de Sellafield, l’augmentation de concentration n’est que d’un facteur 10, mais seulement de l’eau tritiée (avec du tritium) était rejetée”. D’où ses interrogations : on présume que les centrales ne rejettent de l’eau tritiée, qu’en est-il de la nature réelle des rejets? Est-ce que les microorganismes marins ne jouent pas un rôle dans l’accumulation du tritium? Cet isotope de l’hydrogène rejeté sous forme d’eau tritiée serait ensuite ingéré par les animaux et intégré à des molécules biologiques complexes. Pour un embryon de quelques cellules seulement, de tels composés organiques à base de tritium s’intégrant à leur ADN risquent de provoquer des mutations. Face à ces questions, le directeur général de l’ASN Jean-Christophe Niel, souhaite des investigations “sur de nouvelles approches par rapport à d’éventuels effets héréditaires”. Après la publication du “Livre blanc du tritium”, l’ASN entend mettre un place un “comité de suivi” et invite les exploitants d’installations nucléaires à maîtriser leurs rejets. Son plan d’action prévoit aussi la surveillance du des différentes formes de tritium dans l’environnement et l’évaluation de leur impact.

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.