John Curran
Northern News Services
Published Monday, August 27, 2007

Port Radium - Work to cleanup Port Radium began in earnest at the start of the summer and it should conclude by September's end.

Between 1930 and 1982, three mines operated at the site producing a total of 1.7 million tonnes of tailings as well as a mountain of waste ranging from old vehicles to scrap metal - much of which will remain radioactive for years to come.

"A lot of the tailings ended up in Great Bear Lake," said Julie Ward, Sahtu region project manager with the Contaminants and Remediation Directorate.

"There are about 800,000 tonnes worth of tailings in the water around LaBine Point."

Anything that's already in the lake will be left there, she said, adding it's safer than trying to remove the waste.

"The water quality is good except right near the shore," she said.

Deline's Chief Raymond Tutcho, however, is unconvinced the submerged tailings aren't having adverse affects on the fish in Great Bear Lake or the people of his community.

"About 800,000 tonnes of tailings? That's a little hard to swallow," he said.

While federal officials insist sufficient testing has been done and the water is safe, other community leaders share the chief's concerns.

"Towards the end, my personal feeling is that a lot of the studies were rushed," said Leroy Andre, president of the Deline Land Corp.

"But we butted heads with government for a long time ... we needed to move forward."

Water issues aside, the overall project encompasses some 21 square kilometres, though the main cleanup is focused on an area measuring 1.5 km by 500 metres.

"This is one of the largest and oldest sites of its kind in the country and it's in pretty good condition compared to some of the others in northern Saskatchewan," said Ron Stenson, a project officer with the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission's waste and decommissioning wing, during a site inspection.

His job is to ensure post-cleanup radiation levels around Port Radium don't exceed 250 microrads averaged over any 10-square-metre area and no spot individually spikes higher than 500 microrads.

To accomplish this, contractor Aboriginal Engineering's crews bury any exposed tailings and other contaminated waste under a range of materials from rock and organic material mined from the site to concrete in the case of some of the larger mine openings.

The amount of fill needed varies greatly from spot to spot.

"Generally it takes anywhere from half a metre to a metre-and-a-half," said Stenson.