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Federal nuclear regulators are so worried about the poor operating record of a Pembroke, Ont., manufacturer of glow-in-the-dark signs made using radioactive tritium that they are not prepared to give it a licence to continue making its products.
In an unprecedented move, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission says that because of concerns over the company’s tritium releases, SRB Technologies (Canada) Inc. will not be granted a licence renewal allowing it to process or use tritium for making signs.
The decision, given to the company late Wednesday afternoon, is tantamount to a long-term manufacturing shutdown order. The CNSC, which oversees nuclear facilities ranging from big atomic power plants to uranium mines, says it is the first time it has taken such action against a major user of radioactive material.
The CNSC said it will issue SRB a licence allowing it to undertake only limited activities, such as storing tritium at its site, for the next 18 months to give the company time to develop a business strategy that would win back the support of regulators.
In making its decision, the commission said SRB’s operations have been “consistently below requirements” and the regulator had little confidence the company would be able to protect the environment if it were allowed to continue manufacturing.
“The commission is not satisfied that SRBT can, at this time, continue its operation of the facility,” the CNSC said in a document known as a record of proceedings.
SRB could not be reached for comment yesterday.
The action is a dramatic about-face for the CNSC, which had regularly renewed the company’s licence, even as local citizens became increasingly vocal about radioactive releases from its factory, located in a strip mall near a residential area.
As early as 1999, nearby residents had discovered that cucumbers grown in gardens contained tritium, as did the ice of a local hockey rink and human urine. At the time, concentrations of tritium, a radioactive form of hydrogen, were up to 1,500 higher than levels in rainwater, and the results were reported to the CNSC.
One of those who detected the radioactive vegetables was relieved yesterday that regulators have curbed SRB’s manufacturing, but she expressed dismay that it took nearly eight years of complaining for the government agency to take this step.
“I think they’ve completely failed in their mandate,” Lynn Jones said. “The fact that it’s taken this long is just an indication that there are serious problems at the CNSC.”
The CNSC defended its actions yesterday, and said in an e-mail statement that it has conducted “enhanced regulatory oversight” of the facility in recent years and, in 2005, began restricting its operations.
But since 1999, more contamination has been found around the site. In 2005 and 2006, regulators discovered that water extracted from soil around the factory was polluted, with one sample having tritium levels 80 times higher than Canada’s drinking-water standards, according to regulatory filings. The exact cause and extent of the groundwater contamination are currently unknown, also according to the CNSC.
Under the previous licence for the company, the CNSC had been trying to limit radioactivity in the immediate vicinity of the sign plant by requiring SRB to pump tritium escaping from its manufacturing process up its smokestacks with sufficient velocity to spread the contaminant over a wider area of Pembroke, thereby diluting it.
The CNSC said in its record of proceedings that residents haven’t been harmed by radiation. The highest exposures in 2005 were equal to the radiation a person would receive from about 13,000 kilometres of high-altitude flying or about two chest X-rays.
SRB makes products such as emergency-exit signs for buildings and runway lights that are able to glow without electricity. The tritium is extracted as a waste product from Ontario’s nuclear power reactors.
SRB is a subsidiary of a Dutch company, which in turn is owned by a corporation in a Caribbean tax haven, according to a corporate record search conducted last year.
Even though it has been operating for more than a decade, the CNSC has never forced the company to fulfill a long-standing licence requirement to have funds available though a financial guarantee to decommission its site. The new licence, however, sets a deadline for the company to have the guarantee in place by July 31.
Testimony at a regulatory hearing in 2005 revealed that the CNSC wasn’t aware of who owned SRB. The commission said yesterday in its e-mail statement that it isn’t required under law to know the identities of the people who own the companies it regulates, so it doesn’t routinely seek this information.
Gordon Edwards, president of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility, an anti-nuclear group, said these types of omissions lead him to view the CNSC as a weak regulator. “I think there is a really serious problem with the organization.”