The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

20 PROGRESS EDITION The Canadian Statesman, March 2, 1977 Eldorado Chooses Port Granby Site For New Refinery Eldorado Nuclear Limited announced today that it has assembled a 657-acre property at Port Granby, nine miles west of Port Hope, for a proposed uranium refining and residue-management complex. The refinery would begin production in 1980. "Although the project is subject to a broad array of approvals, we're announcing it at this time so interested members of the public will have an opportunity to exam- ine the plan and express a view", said Gordon Colborne, General Manager of Refinery Operations. The Company has establish- ed information centres in Bowmanville and Port Hope. These will contain models and diagrams of the proposed project as well as other information on current and proposed Eldorado opera- tions. The refinery would cost an estimated $80,000,000 to con- struct, and the payroll, includ- ing total employee benefits, wouid amount to approxi- mately $3,000,000 a year. The plant would employ 150 when in operation and the con- struction workforce would average 225 with a peak of 350. Eldorado Nuclear is a proprietary, financially self- reliant crown corporation and the project will not involve pubilic funds. The Company operates as a commercial firm, and the cost of the Port Granby project can be met from within the Company's own resources. The Company's 1977 capital budget, which includes the praposed Port Granby refin- ery, has been approved by the Board of Directors of the Company. However, the Company is subject to the Financial Administration Act and its annual capitalbudget requires the approvai of the Government of Canada. This approval has not yet been received. Another major form of approval required concerns the environmental effect of the project. This has been under detailed study for more than a year, and will lead to the publication by Spring of an Environmental Impact State- ment (EIS) as required by federal and provincial author- ities. The E 1S will be available for public examination and subject the public hearings about two months later. Because the complex is categorized as a nuclear facility, the project also needs the approval of the Atomic Energy Control Board. "Eldorado is confident that the engineering is sound and that the complex will be safe for everyone concerned--our employees and the public," Mr. Colborne said. "The project's effect on the environment will be insignifi- cant. And if will be of substantial economic benefit to this community, and to ail of Canada." A contract for the design engineering of the refinery has been awarded by Eldor- ado to The Lummus Company of Canada Limited, Toronto. However, construction cannot begin until. approvals have been acquired. Planned capacity of the refinery is 10,000 tons a year of natural uranium in the form of uranium hexafluoride (UF6), which would be shipped to the United States and overseas for enrichment and fabrication of fuel for electrical generating stations by light-water react- ors. Uranium in the form of UF6 now accounts for about four- fifths of the total production of uranium at Eldorado's Port Hope refinery, and the world demand for UF6 is rising sharply as many countries turn increasingly to nuclear energy as a clean, safe and efficient source of steam to drive turbines and generators. However, UF6 is not the form of uranium used in Canadian heavy-water CANDU reactors. These are natural ceramic-grade uranium dioxide (UO2), and Canadian requirements will continue to be met from the Port Hope refinery. That refinery will also expand its development work in uranium metallurgy and reactor fuels. Thus the export of U F6 from the proposed new refinery would be in line with govern- ment policies for the further processing of Canadian raw materials prior to export, and for the protection of Canadian domestic requirements for uranium prior fo sales abroad. The Company's choice of the Port Granby site for the proposed refinery and waste- management system follows an intensive two-year $1,000- 000 study of 17 potential Ontario locations for the project. A selection process which compared environ- mental, demographic and socio-economic factors further narrowed the number of sites and identified Port Granby as the preferred site on which to carry out further detailed environmental studies. One of the several factors strongly favoring the Port Granby site is its topography and subsurface geology, char- acterized by a thick, very dense till through which water flows are extremely slow--a feature unique among the Ontario sites, and a major environmental advantage. Taking advantage of this feature, the Company has designed an engineered resi- due-burial system that will prevent surface and ground water from running through the buried wastes trom the existing Port HOpe refinery and the proposed Port Granby refinery, and thus prevent contaminants from entering Lake Ontario. This burial site would be located about 1,000 yards north of the existing 26-acre burial site operated at Port Granby since 1955, and would be on the northernmost part of a refining and waste-manage- ment complex that would occupy in total about 50 acres of the 657-acre overall site. The burial trenches will extend, on average, about 20 feet below the surface. At this point the deepest buried residues will be well above the water table, which in this area is between 30 and 50 feet below the surface. Only dry solids would be placed in the burial trenches, and each trench would be backfilled with soil and cov- ered with an impermeable layer of bentonite--a heavy day--to prevent water from seeping through the residues into the water table. Residues now buried at the existing waste-management site, doser to the lakeshore, would be moved to the new site. The old site would be filled and landscaped, and to ensure no future contamina- tion of lake water from this area the Company will main- tain a water-treatment system, to be installed this year, that will trap and treat all water moving through the old site before it is discharged into the lake. Establishment of the entire complex. at Port Granby would not take a large amount of land out of agricultural production. Of the 657 acres involved, about 500 now are cropped or grazed and only 50 acres of this would be required for the inner operating section of the complex. The balance could continue to be farmed. Close proximity to the Port Hope operations also argued for the Port Granby site selection, since the Company will be able to use a wide variety of established support- ing services in the area. Moreover, the possibility of staff dislocations will be minimized; Eldorado now employs 450 people at the Port Hope refinery. "The Port Granby location is superior ta ail others considered in terms of its environmental, engineering, and economic aspects," Mr. Colborne said. Part of the detailed propo- sais submitted to the Atomic Energy Controi Board in connection with the project includes the use of the Port Granby site as a permanent repository for contaminated landfill being removed from the town of Port Hope. Some of this material has been hauled to a site at Chalk River, Ontario. This landfill material is very low in radioactivity, and would present no danger if moved to a controlled area. Under Eldorado's plan, uncon- taminated material excavated from the new Port Granby site would be available to replace the material being removed from Port Hope, and the latter material would be used as cover material and for surface contouring inside the waste management area of the new complex. As part of its design criteria for the project, Eldorado will ensure that levels of radiation from this entire complex will ie people who supply ar fuel to the world