Atomic Energy of Canada selected a new consortium to carry on with the gargantuan task of cleaning up heavily contaminated nuclear sites.CHRIS WATTIE/Reuters
Cold War research on nuclear science and technology saddled Canada with heavily-contaminated sites. A cleanup effort that has consumed more than two decades, and billions of dollars, has so far failed to make a dent in the associated financial liabilities.
Earlier this month, Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. selected a new consortium, known as Nuclear Laboratory Partners of Canada Inc., to carry on with this gargantuan task. This means new leadership for a subsidiary known as Canadian National Laboratories (CNL), which manages AECL’s assets and liabilities under an arrangement the government describes as a “government-owned, contractor-operated” (GoCo) arrangement.
CNL was controlled for the last decade by a consortium called the Canadian National Energy Alliance, which lately included Montreal-based AtkinsRéalis Group Inc. and two American companies, Jacobs Engineering Group Inc. and Fluor Corp. Its contract expires in September. Taking over is the new consortium led by Lynchburg, Va.-based BWX Technologies Inc. It also includes BWXT’s recently acquired Canadian subsidiary Kinectrics, along with Chantilly, Va.-based Amentum and Battelle of Columbus, Ohio.
“I have no doubt that the next contract period will prove to be just as productive and successful for CNL as the last,” said Jack Craig, CNL’s outgoing chief executive officer, in a statement that praised the GoCo model’s effectiveness.
When it comes to reducing the massive cleanup liabilities, however, Canadian taxpayers might hope for a better outcome.
The largest contract Treasury doesn’t know about
AECL is a Crown corporation that once employed thousands of people. But its work force was transferred to CNL during a restructuring completed a decade ago, leaving just 40 people; its role is now largely confined to setting CNL’s priorities and monitoring its performance. CNL, which employs 4,000 people, is controlled by a single share owned by whichever contractor AECL hires.
AECL said the six-year contract is worth about $1.2-billion annually and can be extended by an additional 14 years.
“This could be the federal government’s single largest contract,” said Ole Hendrickson, a researcher with Concerned Citizens of Renfrew County and Area, and a critic of the GoCo arrangement.
“There is a [Royal Canadian Air Force] contract worth $11.2-billion, but it is spread over 25 years.”
Yet if that’s true, federal representatives seem entirely unaware of it.
In 1953, workers prepares to bury the calandria of the NRX nuclear reactor in Chalk River, Ont. Seventy years later, a platform has been built over the site to allow workers to excavate down to it.Supplied
The federal government publishes contracts on its proactive disclosure website, but CNL’s doesn’t appear on it. AECL spokesperson Jeremy Latta said he couldn’t compare its value to other federal contracts. Nor could the Auditor-General’s office. Nor could the federal Treasury Board Secretariat, which is responsible for reviewing federal programs for efficiency and effectiveness, and for promoting sound use of tax dollars.
“The AECL falls under Schedule III of the Federal Administration Act and does not follow the policies of Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat,” spokesperson Rola Salem wrote in a written response to questions.
“We do not have information on this specific contract.”
The contractor’s profits are similarly elusive. AECL paid CNL an average of more than $240-million in annual contractual payments and fees since the GoCo arrangement was established. But this line item includes expenditures toward furthering AECL’s science and technology objectives, obscuring the fee payments.
Mr. Latta said the fees are commercially confidential, but approximately 95 per cent of the contract’s value goes to “projected CNL expenditures.”
A daunting task
Most of AECL’s waste is temporarily stored (often in bunkers, or simply buried underground) at the still-operational Chalk River Laboratories in Deep River, Ont. There’s more at Whiteshell Laboratories in Manitoba (which closed in the 1990s and is being permanently decommissioned), and at AECL’s other sites, but it’s gradually being centralized at Chalk River. There are also six long-defunct research and demonstration reactors.
The government first attempted to do the work itself. In 2006, it established the Nuclear Legacy Liabilities Program, through which AECL and the Natural Resources Department remediated a defunct heavy water plant in Glace Bay, N.S., and a disused test reactor at Chalk River. An underground laboratory near Whiteshell was also decommissioned, and more than 30 buildings at Chalk River and Whiteshell removed.
The NLLP aimed to reduce AECL’s liabilities but achieved the opposite result: They rose from $3.1-billion to nearly $6.5-billion between 2009 and 2015. This was expected – the government understood that as it learned about its environmental liabilities, cleanup estimates would climb.
Spending and activity greatly increased after CNL took over in 2015. Since then, AECL reports 155 buildings and structures have been demolished.
AECL is responsible for cleaning up radioactive wastes at sites along the shores of Lake Ontario east of Toronto, including more than 2.1 million cubic metres of waste and contaminated soils from radium and uranium refining. CNL piled much of it in an above-ground mound 700 metres inland that was completed a few years ago, eliminating $1.5-billion of liabilities.
CNL also shipped highly-enriched uranium back to the United States, where it originated, reducing liabilities by $260-million.
Workers wear protective clothing after a reactor at Chalk River atomic plant leaked, in February, 1954The Canadian Press
But Mr. Hendrickson said liabilities “haven’t really gone down” at many AECL sites because waste is stored temporarily, not in permanent waste facilities.
“I don’t see how they can legitimately take it off the books,” he said, adding that “the way that they calculate liabilities is completely non-transparent.”
Mr. Latta said the Crown corporation was focused on reducing physical liabilities, not financial ones.
“The manner in which risks and hazards are managed/addressed and strategies chosen does not necessarily equate to a reduction in AECL’s reported liabilities,” he wrote in a written response to questions.
He added that although AECL’s liabilities decrease as it spends money to address them, estimates are revised frequently. “As projects near, they are examined in more detail to plan for execution, which can lead to increases in estimates.”
Several of CNL’s signature projects have languished in protracted regulatory reviews or have suffered other delays.
Much of AECL’s radioactive waste is characterized as “low-level,” meaning it requires isolation for only a few hundred years. CNL intends to place it in a landfill at Chalk River called the Near Surface Disposal Facility (NSDF). It was scheduled to be receiving waste by now, but the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission authorized its construction only last year.
The Federal Court of Canada ruled in February that the CNSC hadn’t met its duty to accommodate Indigenous peoples, and it sent the matter back to the CNSC for further consideration. The CNSC plans to make a redetermination in late 2026.
The environmental assessment for disposing of the WR-1 research reactor, at Whiteshell, has been under way since 2016. The reactor is located underground; CNL wants permission from the CNSC to fill its structures with grout.
In 2023, inadequacies were discovered in CNL’s firefighting training at Whiteshell, which the CNSC said raised “significant concern on the current fire posture” at the facility and violated the terms of its licence. Work there halted for months.
Aerial view of the 200,000 kilowatt Douglas Point Nuclear Power Station on Lake Huron’s eastern shore.Dennis Robinson/The Globe and Mail
Complex cleanups
Radiological and other hazards greatly complicate CNL’s work, ensuring demolitions are far more complicated than tearing down an old garage.
“Advanced modelling, detection, robotics, engineering all come into play to make sure that the work is being delivered safely and responsibly,” CNL spokesperson Philip Kompass wrote in an e-mail.
CNL recently decommissioned the “Bowser Room,” which was used to support Chalk River’s research reactors and contained radioactive tanks and components. Before demolishing, it had to install a ventilation unit to capture airborne contamination. Robots removed much of the waste.
At the former Douglas Point power plant, on Lake Huron’s eastern shore, CNL dug a trench down to bedrock (up to about two metres below grade) around the entire administrative building it was demolishing, to make sure utilities such as electricity and water were found and isolated.
Wastes at Whiteshell are stored in bunkers and concrete tubes (known as standpipes) embedded in the ground. CNL built bespoke equipment to smash through bunker lids and dig up to 16 feet into the earth to retrieve them while allowing workers to remain at a safe distance. This equipment – all 1.4 million pounds of it – is being tested it in Cambridge, Ont. CNL says it will be disassembled and shipped to Whiteshell this winter, requiring 90 truck trips.
The taxpayers’ lament
All this is expensive. Among federal Crown corporations, AECL was second only to the CBC last year as a recipient of appropriations: Last year it got more than $1.3-billion. By comparison, the federal Public Safety Department (whose core responsibilities include emergency response, public safety and national security) spent an annual average of $1.5-billion over the past five years.
In the next six years, AECL expects CNL will finish constructing disposal sites at Chalk River and Port Hope, and it will make “significant progress” in decommissioning the old reactors. In its latest corporate plan, AECL forecast its liabilities will decrease significantly (to slightly more than $5-billion) by 2029.
Yet it has warned that “there remains an ever-present risk” they’ll keep rising. One factor is environmental assessments, which are subject to frequent delays arising from consultations with the public and Indigenous peoples. Some remediation work has also proven more challenging than expected due to unanticipated conditions or higher levels of contamination.