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.”

From the Federation of American Scientists, Special Weapons Primer, Weapons of Mass Destruction (www.fas.org/nuke/intro/nuke/tritium.htm)

“Tritium ( ³ H) is essential to the construction of boosted-fission nuclear weapons. A boosted weapon contains a mixture of deuterium and tritium, the gases being heated and compressed by the detonation of a plutonium or uranium device. The D-T mixture is heated to a temperature and pressure such that thermonuclear fusion occurs. This process releases a flood of 14 MeV neutrons which cause additional fissions in the device, greatly increasing its efficiency.

“Tritium is rare in nature because of its 12.4-year half-life. It is produced by cosmic radiation in the upper atmosphere where it combines with oxygen to form water. It then falls to earth as rain, but the concentration is too low to be useful in a nuclear weapons program. Most tritium is produced by bombarding ⁶Li [ ⁶ Li(n, a) ³ H] with neutrons in a reactor; it is also produced as a byproduct of the operation of a heavy-water-moderated reactor when neutrons are captured on the deuterons present.

“Tritium can be stored and shipped as a gas, a metal hydride (e.g., of titanium) or tritide, and trapped in zeolites (hydrated aluminum silicate compounds with uniform size pores in their crystalline structure). Stainless-steel cylinders with capacities up to 5.6 ‘ 10 ⁷ GBq (1.5 MCi) of tritium gas are used for transportation and storage and must be constructed to withstand the additional pressure which will build up as tritium gradually decays to 3 He.

“All five declared nuclear weapon states must have the underlying capability to manufacture and handle tritium, although the United States has shut down its production reactors due to safety considerations. Canada manufactures tritium as a byproduct of the operation of CANDU reactors. (emphasis added) In principle, limited amounts of tritium could be made in any research reactor with the ability to accept a target to be irradiated.

          Sources and Methods

• Adapted from - Nuclear Weapons Technology Militarily Critical Technologies List (MCTL) Part II: Weapons of Mass Destruction Technologies”

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