PORT HOPE, ONT. Plans for a major new nuclear power plant in Port Hope, Ont., are facing strong opposition from residents who say the community’s decades-long experience with radioactive contamination should not be overlooked as the province moves forward with the project.
The Ontario government announced plans earlier this year to build what could become one of the world’s largest nuclear power plants in the community of roughly 18,000 people, presenting the project as a step toward a more secure energy future.
Energy Minister Stephen Lecce described the proposal as “another positive step,” while Port Hope’s mayor said it could help create a “stronger and more resilient future” for the community, which is located about 100 kilometres east of Toronto, as well as for Ontario and Canada.
The announcement, however, deeply concerned residents who have lived through Port Hope’s complicated history with the nuclear industry.
“I personally was outraged when I heard this announcement,” said Faye More, a 75-year-old resident who is helping organize opposition to the project. She said the community has felt “invisible for about 80 years” when it comes to decisions surrounding nuclear facilities and fears that history is repeating itself.
Port Hope’s connection to the nuclear industry dates back almost a century. In the 1930s, the Eldorado mining company, which later became a Crown corporation, opened a radium refinery in the community. When uranium became strategically important about a decade later, the plant shifted to uranium refining, supplying material to the United States military during the Second World War, including for the Manhattan Project, the U.S. government program responsible for developing the first atomic bombs.
Over the following decades, contaminated soil, rocks and building materials from the plant were distributed throughout Port Hope, primarily as backfill. Some of the material was also used in parks, roads, schools and homes, including properties where More grew up and later raised her own family.
In 2001, the federal government reached an agreement with Port Hope and nearby Clarington to clean up, isolate and manage the region’s historic low-level radioactive waste.
The resulting Port Hope Area Initiative, being implemented by Canadian Nuclear Laboratories on behalf of Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd., has become one of the country’s largest environmental remediation projects.
The organization overseeing the cleanup says approximately 5,000 sites in the municipality have been tested, with about 1,200 found to have some level of contamination. More than 400 private properties and more than a dozen major public sites have been fully remediated and restored.
Almost three million metric tonnes of low-level radioactive waste, primarily dirt and rock, have also been transported to a storage facility outside the municipality.
The $2.6-billion remediation program is described by Bill Daly, director of communications for the Port Hope Area Initiative, as “pretty much the largest environmental cleanup that’s ever been undertaken in the country.”
Work on the two remaining public sites is expected to be completed next year, while remediation of approximately 800 private properties is expected to continue until 2032. Individual property cleanups can take several years.
The scale of that ongoing work is one of the main reasons some residents oppose the proposed new plant.
Ontario Power Generation, the provincially owned company responsible for the proposed nuclear project, says the industry has changed significantly since the early days of nuclear development.
“Today’s nuclear industry operates under one of the world’s most rigorous regulatory frameworks,” Neal Kelly, an OPG spokesperson, said in a statement, pointing to federal oversight covering nuclear safety, environmental protection and waste management.
OPG has owned the land for more than 50 years for electricity-generation purposes. The proposed project is expected to support more than 10,500 jobs across Ontario and contribute approximately $235 billion to the province’s GDP over its lifespan, according to the company.
If fully developed, the site could reach 10,000 megawatts of generating capacity, according to OPG’s project description. That would make it the largest nuclear power station in the world. By comparison, Bruce Power’s eight reactors in Kincardine, Ont., have a combined capacity of about 6,500 megawatts.
The province says OPG hopes to obtain construction and operating licences in the 2030s, with the plant beginning operations in the 2040s.
Port Hope Mayor Olena Hankivsky has emphasized that the existing radioactive-waste cleanup and the proposed nuclear development in the municipality’s Wesleyville neighbourhood are separate initiatives.
“While both subjects relate to the nuclear sector, they involve fundamentally different circumstances, timelines and regulatory frameworks,” she said.
She argued that the cleanup addresses a historical legacy, while any new nuclear facility would be designed, constructed, operated and regulated according to current standards.
Chris Malcolmson, acting health physics director at McMaster University, supports that distinction. He said Canada manages radioactive waste according to robust national and international standards that are continually reviewed and improved.
According to Malcolmson, the low-level radioactive waste being removed from Port Hope has a low hazard potential. It is being cleaned up because it slightly exceeds the criteria for “unconditional clearance levels,” under which radioactive material would not require a formal regulatory licence to be possessed, used or transferred.
“The risks associated with radioactive materials and exposure to radiation from those radioactive materials is extremely low,” he said, adding that extensive controls remain in place.
Malcolmson also said the potential benefits of the proposed nuclear plant “far outweigh” its potential safety risks.
Those assurances have not convinced residents who remain opposed to the project.
More said Port Hope already hosts two nuclear operations while the decades-long remediation effort is still underway. She believes the community should not be asked to accept another nuclear facility.
“The people here have been exploited and they have borne the price of this and we say no more,” she said.
More and other opponents say they remain hopeful that public pressure could influence the outcome. More, who heads a local committee focused on health concerns, plans to continue raising awareness and lobbying the government to reverse its decision.
In June, she submitted a petition to Canada’s auditor general seeking protection under the forthcoming National Strategy Respecting Environmental Racism and Environmental Justice. The federal strategy is intended to address existing inequalities experienced by Indigenous, racialized and otherwise marginalized communities when environmental decisions are made.
Consultations on the draft strategy closed this week, with the final version expected to be tabled this fall. More has also suggested that legal action could be considered.
The mayor says the proposal remains in the early stages of review. A comprehensive assessment is expected to examine its environmental, health, social and economic impacts, including potential effects on Indigenous peoples.
“We are committed to ensuring local voices help inform the municipality’s position as this process unfolds,” Hankivsky said.
For residents living through the current cleanup, the debate is far from theoretical.
David Erland and his partner are among those whose property is undergoing remediation. Their backyard, shed and deck have been subject to cleanup work, while a sign on their front lawn reads: “World’s largest nuclear station? Not in our Northumberland.”
Erland, 66, said he finds it difficult to understand why Port Hope was selected for another nuclear development while remediation is still taking place on local properties.
“The irony couldn’t be lost,” he said, noting that his property is being cleaned up at the same time residents are learning about plans for what could become the world’s largest nuclear power plant.
Work on his partner’s property began last September and is expected to finish by early fall.
For other residents, the disruption has lasted much longer. Autumn Woolsey said her family has endured years of testing, remediation and restoration.
“This summer has been the first summer in eight years that we have not had anything going on,” she said.
Woolsey also said that no health monitoring was conducted during that period, despite her repeated requests. She strongly opposes the new reactor and says her efforts are motivated by protecting future generations.
“I can’t change what has happened and what we’ve been exposed to, but if I can advocate and fight for my children, their children … that is what my goal, my mission is in life,” she said.
Another resident, Sarah Sculthorpe, could be directly affected by the proposed project. The farm where she has lived for nearly 50 years after marrying an eighth-generation Port Hope resident is located beside the land selected for the development.
Sculthorpe has spent recent months speaking with neighbours, contacting politicians and nuclear experts, researching the proposal online and documenting what she learns.
“The only way to win a battle is to raise the knowledge and the voices of people,” she said, warning that the project could proceed if residents are not informed about its potential consequences.
The proposed plant site covers approximately 1,300 acres, including 700 acres considered environmentally sensitive, according to Sculthorpe.
One of her main concerns is whether a project of this scale would leave sufficient space for a buffer zone between the nuclear facility and neighbouring properties.
Sculthorpe has also questioned whether Ontario Power Generation has been transparent enough with residents living near the proposed site. OPG denies the accusation, saying it has “engaged extensively” with residents near the site and across the municipality.
Her husband remembers seeing yellowcake, a powdered form of uranium oxide, in roadside ditches while walking to school as a child. He later became involved with Citizens for Responsible Nuclear Waste Disposal, a grassroots organization that successfully lobbied for the environmental cleanup of Port Hope in the 1980s.
For opponents of the new project, that history remains central to the debate over Port Hope’s nuclear future.
