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Radioactive tritium has been found at levels 80 times higher than Canada’s drinking-water guideline in water extracted from soil collected outside a factory in Pembroke, Ont., that makes glow-in-the-dark signs, according to federal nuclear regulators.
The finding, released yesterday in a report by the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, also says high tritium levels have been detected in water drawn from a well deeper under the property, which is owned by SRB Technologies (Canada) Inc. The most contaminated well sample had radioactivity about eight times the amount deemed safe in water supplies.
The commission concluded that SRB’s emissions have “resulted in an unreasonable risk to the environment,” and it rebuked the company by saying it “has not taken all reasonable precautions to control the release of a radioactive nuclear substance.”
But SRB president Stephane Levesque defended the company, saying it has kept its radioactive discharges under the amounts allowed by government regulations. “The level of our emission is within the limits that have been set by the CNSC,” he said.
The report outlining the radioactive contamination will be used by the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission next month at a hearing that will determine conditions of a new operating licence for SRB, whose plant is located near a residential area in the Ottawa River community of 15,000.
In response to the discovery of highly contaminated water, the commission is proposing a dramatic cut in the amount of radioactivity the company will, in future, be allowed to discharge from its smokestacks. The recommended reductions are 94 per cent and 99.5 per cent below current limits for two types of tritium.
Commission spokesman Aurèle Gervais declined to answer a question on whether the previous emission standards had been too lax.
Although radioactivity from the factory is also being found in well water farther away from the site, the levels remain under drinking-water standards. But a local resident says the discovery of significant radioactive contamination at the plant site is a worry because there are homes only a few hundred metres away.
“It’s definitely troubling,” said Ole Hendrickson, a researcher with Concerned Citizens of Renfrew County, a local environmental group. “We’re asking how extensive this contamination is and whether there should be restrictions on human activities where there is high contamination.”
Mr. Hendrickson wants the commission to have the sign-making plant relocated away from residential areas.
Tritium is a radioactive type of hydrogen formed as a waste product from Canadian-style nuclear reactors. It is extracted from the reactors to reduce radioactivity exposures to power-plant workers and then sold to companies to make products, such as emergency-exit signs, that glow in the dark without the need for electricity.
In the past, SRB has had difficulties estimating its radioactive emissions, and last December the company temporarily halted operations while it put in place better pollution controls.
The company has also raised concerns at Foreign Affairs Canada for selling products to Iran. Tritium can also be used to make hydrogen bombs, although the amounts sent to Iran were well under the threshold needed for weapon manufacturing.
In its report, the nuclear safety commission said the survey at the factory is not complete enough to determine the magnitude of the contamination at the site and the potential impact on future uses of the property.
Original Story here.