A tailings field, with Nero Lake, Saskatchewan, in the distance. photo > Gordon Laird

The following is Part Two of a series of excerpts from Gordon Laird’s new book, Power.

A crisis of accountability simmers within Canada’s atomic legacy: environmental health science has evolved over the decades, advocating more stringent standards, while government regulations have lagged. Based on available evidence, the pattern of neglect goes like this: Environment Canada, whose data are the most extensive, will assess risk for plants and animals only; Health Canada, though concerned with human health, doesn’t venture often into radiological contamination, presumably because another federal agency, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, is charged with atomic safety. Yet the commission concerns itself mainly with core operating issues for active mines, research facilities and nuclear reactors — and anything outside the fence, be it historic waste or childhood leukemia, somehow merits less scrutiny.

It was only at the urging of Canada’s auditor general in 1995 that the safety commission (then the Atomic Energy Control Board) assumed responsibility to monitor uranium mine sites for health and safety hazards. Mine waste and tailings from Saskatchewan to Ontario “were never subject to AECB’s current regulatory regime,” chided the auditor general. “Consequently, the AECB does not formally inspect or otherwise monitor these sites to assess their impact on the environment or to ensure that there are no undue risks to health and safety.”

The total cost for decommissioning uranium tailings across Canada could exceed four hundred million dollars, noted the auditor general, but this was no excuse to ignore low-level radioactive waste. “Uranium tailings need to be properly contained and controlled,” said the 1995 report. “Until these unlicensed sites are brought under its regulatory control, the AECB cannot assure the public that the pre-1976 sites are being safely maintained.” The federal government replied to the report, pledging “to bring these tailings under AECB regulatory control.”

For decades, scientists and nuclear officials worked to protect us from big doses at nuclear reactors and high-level reactor waste. Yet now the lower reaches of the waste chain have come into question at a time when open uranium tailings and waste rock still litter a surprising number of Canadian communities. In 2000, Saskatchewan pledged $250,000 for a cleanup of Lorado and Gunnar. But there’s no timeline for action and it may be years before tailings are removed; according to one government estimate, it would still cost between ten and fifteen million dollars to eliminate the immediate hazard posed by the two mines.

As for why many of Canada’s worst radioactive waste sites remain abandoned — including tailings in Port Hope and Deloro in Ontario — the explanation now seems fairly simple: for decades, Canada’s federal government ran uranium production, regulation and marketing operations. For a period of three decades, the federal government ran the regulator (AECB), the uranium mining business (Eldorado), as well as the reactor business (Atomic Energy Canada Limited). Early on, several people held directorships and positions on all three organizations, a pattern that reflected an insider culture that flagged only recently with the sagging fortunes of the nuclear business. Only in 1988 when it sold Eldorado nuclear to Cameco Corporation, a Canadian uranium company, did the government require uranium producers to file decommissioning plans that would address long-term tailings and contamination.

In other words, the federal government and its Crown corporations stood in a long-standing conflict of interest supported by generous public funding and a lack of political scrutiny. Numbers, taken from Canada’s auditor general and the environment commissioner, speak for themselves: since 1946, the federal government has spent $6 billion on nuclear technology, including mining, processing and distribution of uranium fuel. (Factoring in subsidies to Atomic Energy Canada Limited, as well as international development grants to export nukes, activists claim that $16.6 billion has been spent since 1953.) Yet by 1995, Natural Resources Canada, researching long-term solutions for uranium tailings, had spent only $10 million.

Yesterday:Uranium City
Today: “A Crisis of Accountability”
Tomorrow: “Twilight on Fission Avenue”
Friday: “Tilting at Windmills”