Port Hope’s radioactive past fuels pushback against proposed nuclear reactor

When the Ontario government announced plans earlier this year to build what could become one of the world’s largest nuclear power plants in a picturesque community of roughly 18,000 people, the news came wrapped in a series of celebratory speeches.

The province’s energy minister, Stephen Lecce, hailed the project as “another positive step” toward a secure energy future, while the local mayor said it would help usher in a “stronger and more resilient future” not only for the community about 100 kilometres east of Toronto, but for the entire province and country.

Though the news was welcomed by some, it shocked a generation of Port Hope residents old enough to have lived through the community’s fraught history with the nuclear industry, a legacy that permeates backyards and public properties to this day.

“I personally was outraged when I heard this announcement, and elected officials of every level were lined up here making this announcement as if this was good news,” said Faye More, a 75-year-old resident rallying opposition to the project in the community.

The community has felt “invisible for about 80 years in the matter of the operation of these plants,” and is feeling the same once again as the province forges ahead with the new project, More said in an interview.

It has been almost a century since the Eldorado mining company, which later became a Crown corporation, opened a radium refinery plant in Port Hope in the 1930s. When uranium suddenly became a prized commodity about a decade later, ore that was once considered a waste product was in demand. The plant began refining uranium instead, supplying the material to the United States military during the Second World War where its uses included the Manhattan Project, the U.S. government program that produced the first atomic bombs.

Over several decades, the plant dumped contaminated soil, rocks and building materials across Port Hope. The materials were used mainly as backfill, but also in the construction of parks, roads, schools and homes — including the home where More grew up and the one where she later raised a family of her own.

In 2001, the federal government signed an agreement with Port Hope and nearby Clarington, committing to cleaning up, isolating and managing the historic, low-level radioactive waste that contaminated the region.

The project, known as Port Hope Area Initiative, in being implemented by the Canadian Nuclear Laboratories, which manages historic waste sites on behalf of the Crown corporation Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd.

The provincially owned company in charge of the new nuclear power project is assuring residents that the sector operates much differently than when it was in its infancy.

“Today’s nuclear industry operates under one of the world’s most rigorous regulatory frameworks, with stringent federal oversight governing every aspect of nuclear safety, environmental protection and waste management,” Neal Kelly, a spokesperson for Ontario Power Generation, said in a statement.

OPG has owned the land for more than 50 years specifically for the purpose of electricity generation, the statement said.