We have just posted several archival news stories here on the TAP website, dealing with tritium pollution from SRB Technologies Inc. in Pembroke, Ontario. This story is incredible but true.
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.
Tritium-laced plants found near town’s glow-in-the-dark sign factory
MARTIN MITTELSTAEDT Environment Reporter, The Globe and Mail
Tuesday, September 28, 1999
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. Read more…
MARTIN MITTELSTAEDT, ENVIRONMENT REPORTER, The Globe and Mail
November 12, 1999
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. Read more…
One day just before Christmas in December 2000, after a particularly depressing relicensing hearing for SRB Technologies (the tritium light factory in Pembroke Ontario) I picked up the Ottawa Citizen and noticed a tiny little blurb about boxes of radioactive material falling off a Purolator truck in downtown Ottawa. SRB had just been granted a 5-year license despite our protests about their sloppy and highly polluting practices.
Turns out that a passerby in downtown Ottawa noticed three boxes in the middle of Bank St. with radiation symbols on them. She called the police and several blocks of downtown Ottawa were cordoned off while the boxes were dealt with by emergency services. Personnel from SRB in Pembroke were called to retrieve the material, compressed tritium gas and lights bound for an undisclosed destination in the United States. Read more…
After discovering groundwater contaminated with radioactive tritium, regulatory agency recommends shutting company
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. Read more…
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…
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…