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Radioactive waste sites all around town of Port Hope

Atomic Energy Canada Ltd. has begun a 10-year, $260-million project to dig up 1.2 million cubic metres of low-level radioactive waste buried in numerous sites around town and store it in a huge covered mound.

Sue government over toxic town, activist tells Port Hope – thestar.com, 17 Nov 10 “…………. Radium is leaking into Lake Ontario and uranium from the Cameco refineryPort Hope’s air, drinking water, fish, beach, soil — virtually everything in the town of 16,000 poses a health risk from radioactivity, anti-nuclear activist Dr. Helen Caldicott warned an overflow crowd Tuesday night.

Atomic Energy Canada Ltd. has begun a 10-year, $260-million project to dig up 1.2 million cubic metres of low-level radioactive waste buried in numerous sites around town and store it in a huge covered mound. The contamination was the result of 50 years of radium and uranium refining at the Cameco refinery, formerly Crown corporation Eldorado Nuclear Ltd………………Aghast at cancer-causing smokestack emissions that are “blowing over town,” she said Cameco should be shut down. The refinery is a “secretive, diabolical factory” that is adding to the proliferation of nuclear weapons, she said.The federal government should pay to relocate everyone, insisted Caldicott, who was shocked to see people fishing in the harbour and river.“Everyone should be totally compensated financially . . . No one should suffer.”While the people doing the work are “sincere and caring,” they failed to ease her safety concerns, Caldicott said.
Caldicott’s warning to relocate or risk soaring cancer rates and genetic disease triggered nasty phone calls to the local environmental groups who invited her to Port Hope to speak and prompted the church that was hosting her talk to pull the plug.

At a dinner in Caldicott’s honour on Monday, legendary author Farley Mowat, who lives in Port Hope, lashed out at “certain elements” for treating her “as if she was the bearer of the plague itself.”

He urged everyone to listen to what she has to say. “Our lives, and those of generations yet unborn, depend upon it.”

Sue government over toxic town, activist tells Port Hope – thestar.com

November 18, 2010 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Canada, environment | antinuclear, nuclear, nuclear costs, nuclear wastes, nuclear weapons, radiation, radioactive