Project Save the World Podcast / Talk Show Episode Number: 222
Panelists: Zach Ruiter and Adam Wynne
Host: Metta Spencer

Date Aired:  9 April 2021
Date Transcribed and Verified:  10 June 2021
Transcription: Otter.ai
Transcription Review and Edits: Adam Wynne

Note: This transcript has been edited. 

Metta Spencer  

Hi, I’m Metta Spencer. Today we’re going to look at some of the effects of uranium and particularly if you happen to live in the Great Lakes area. I’m in Toronto. We are very concerned about some of the ways in which uranium is being processed and handled in our area. And so, my assistant Adam Wynne will join me in talking with a man named Zach Ruiter, who is also in Toronto at the moment. And both of them are quite aware of some of the risky things going on in the Toronto area involving uranium. So, hello, Zach, how are you? 

Zach Ruiter  

Good. Thank you. 

Metta Spencer  

Good. Nice to see you here. And Adam, say hello to the whole world.

Adam Wynne  

Hello. It’s good to be here as well, instead of just watching behind the scenes.

Metta Spencer  

Adam is my right hand, whatever that means. Anyway, hello Zach. Let’s talk about the BWXT. Is that the name of the company? I had never heard of it until recently. It’s not a brand name that I’m familiar with. Tell me all about what they do and why we should be a little bit apprehensive.

Zach Ruiter  

BWXT is the acronym for Babcock & Wilcox Technologies. They are a longtime player in the nuclear weapons and nuclear power industry. They were the ones, I believe, who manufactured the Three Mile Island reactor which had a catastrophic accident and polluted the town in Pennsylvania. Of which, a shout out to Libbe HaLevy, of the Nuclear Hotseat Podcast, who is a survivor of the Three Mile Island accident. 

Metta Spencer  

She was, by the way, one of my guests. I did a talk show with her. 

Zach Ruiter  

Oh, great. 

Metta Spencer  

She is a fabulous person because every week she does a talk show about risky things having to do with radiation. bless her heart. Wonderful work. 

Zach Ruiter  

Yeah. Really thorough work, really passionate work. We’re really lucky to have someone like Libbe HaLevy as a journalist who’s covering issues of radiation, especially in a time when mainstream media is contracting and also largely bought by large interests. So, it’s crucial to have independent media like Libbe HaLevy on the scene. 

Metta Spencer  

I agree. 

Zach Ruiter  

Yeah. Back to BWXT, I first became aware of them in 2015 or 2016, when they signed an agreement with General Electric Hitachi to purchase their nuclear fuel fabrication facilities in Toronto and Peterborough. These are 2 facilities that have been really embattled over the past few years due to the public’s increasing awareness of the effects of their operations. I got involved in 2010 when then General Electric Hitachi got permission to process enriched uranium 25 meters away from an elementary school in Peterborough in secret, but in the form of a license amendment by the Nuclear Safety Commission. One of the requirements of their license was that they consult the public and their version of consulting the public was sort of slipping a little flyer, a little advertising note in a larger sort of portion of junk mail, you know, like the advertisements from Canadian Tire and stuff like that saying: We’re General Electric Hitachi, we’re your neighbor, let us know if you have any questions. They counted that as public consultation. And then, at the hearing when I heard Peter Mason, then CEO of General Electric Hitachi, saying: We went above and beyond our duty to consult the public. And it’s quite natural to think the public was satisfied because we didn’t hear anything from them. I knew then that if they were willing to blatantly lie to the commission and regulator about that, that they must be lying about other things. And then that has started a now almost close to now 11 or 12 year battle for transparency with that entity. So, it used to be General Electric and now it’s BWXT.

Metta Spencer  

When they became BWXT was 11 years ago? 

Zach Ruiter  

No, sorry, it’s hard to remember. I think it was 2015. It was just recently. They never really explained why they sold. 

Metta Spencer  

You were fighting General Electric Hitachi even before they became BWXT? 

Zach Ruiter  

Correct. And General Electric in Peterborough is known for poisoning generations of workers and families with PCBs, asbestos, and contaminating Little Lake and the Otonabee River system up there. There’s a huge number of former workers who have ongoing Workplace Safety Insurance Board claims. There’s been big exposés about the number of workers with terminal cancers there. And there’s also a Toronto General Electric facility, but that’s now turned into Davenport Village condos. And think because it’s in a large city, it’s kind of easy to lose track of all the people who come and go; whereas in Peterborough there’s a lot of community and a lot of visibility to the fact that all these workers and their families and people living around there have become really sick over the years.

Metta Spencer  

Okay. Now, but how much was that known and how much did you contribute to the exposé? 

Zach Ruiter  

Well, it was known and the way that General Electric explained it is: We’ve always worked with the best information available to us at the time. So, when I was at the commission in 2010, I found out that there was there was a joint license for a facility in Toronto not far from where I grew up in Toronto. And then when I went to Toronto, when I sort of started knocking on doors in 2011 or 2012 and asking people do you know what this facility does in Toronto? And most of them thought it made televisions or air conditioners. They were surprised to find out that it was indeed a nuclear fuel fabrication processing facility that processes about 150 tons of uranium per month. They take yellowcake uranium dioxide fuel powder — 

Metta Spencer  

All of that goes on right here in Toronto? 

Zach Ruiter  

Yes.

Metta Spencer  

Whoa. That’s news to me.

Zach Ruiter  

That’s news to you? Okay, yea. And it was news to the people living around there.

Metta Spencer  

What’s the difference between what they do in Toronto and what they do in Peterborough?

Zach Ruiter  

Toronto is by magnitudes exponentially more radioactive than what they do in Peterborough. In Toronto, they take the uranium fuel that comes in drums and the powder and they cook it at 1650 degrees centigrade into fuel pellets that will then go into the zirconium fuel rods. And basically, in Peterborough, they received the pellets from the Toronto facility and they shave them down, they coat them with a toxic heavy metal called beryllium which is a lubricant of sorts, and then they insert them there. So, the real current issue with toxic exposure in Peterborough is actually from that beryllium process. There’s a beryllium stack that is like 2 feet away from the sidewalk and right across the street from the [Prince of Wales] elementary school. And there’s been increasing levels of beryllium in the soil, but they have done tests and they’ve concluded that there’s no way that the beryllium stack that releases the beryllium across the street could have impacted the rising levels in the soil. 

Metta Spencer  

Where else did it come from? Please.

Zach Ruiter  

I think they think that it kind of occurs naturally as well. Beryllium is very difficult to test for. But back to Toronto —

Metta Spencer  

Now wait a minute, I don’t want to let go of this. What do you believe? What do you think? I mean, they’re finding beryllium out in the kids’ playground? 

Zach Ruiter  

In the kids’ playground, yes. 

Metta Spencer  

You’re finding beryllium and you would not normally find beryllium out in my backyard, would you?

Zach Ruiter  

I think you might find trace amounts, but there were elevated levels. Even the Medical Officer of Health said it was concerning. But the trick of the regulator and the industry – and the regulator, which is like an industry captured regulator – is to always say it’s within the background, and it’s definitely below the safety standard. The safety standard is usually set so high, as to say that anything that goes on below is not a problem, but when you see increasing levels and there are air emissions right across from where there are increasing levels: to me, it just says that the precautionary principle should apply and they shouldn’t really be releasing beryllium, especially next to an elementary school.

Metta Spencer  

And do they release it? Do they say it’s constant? Well, it has to get in and out of the container somehow. So where does it come from and what do they do with it? Where does it go to? Where do they send it? 

Zach Ruiter  

I’m not an expert on beryllium, because it’s a coating and lubricant between the zirconium fuel rods and the pellets. In that process, I mean, just anecdotally, the workers kind of – you know, I’ve heard this in nuclear facilities and in places that I’ve toured in United States and stuff like that – former workers will say there’s a death room in the facility. In Peterborough, in the nuclear operation of General Electric, which is now BWXT, the beryllium room is known as the death room, because it is so highly toxic.

Metta Spencer  

So that means don’t go in there or you die? — or a lot of people who’ve been near that that room have died? When you call it a “death room” what does that mean?

Zach Ruiter  

It means working there is associated with toxic exposures that can lead to and have led to long term terminal illness. 

Metta Spencer  

Okay. That’s a good enough warning for me. Anyway, I’m leading you off your narrative. Why don’t you go back to telling the story you want to tell?

Zach Ruiter  

So, in Toronto, people really didn’t know what this place does and they are releasing uranium up the stack into the air and down the drain. In 2009, they released 2.2 kilograms of uranium down into the Toronto stormwater sewer. And then we’ve seen flooding events afterwards. So basically, if it doesn’t make it out to Lake Ontario, uranium is a heavy particle, it’ll sink to the bottom of the sewer. And we’ve seen flooding events since then. So basically, the flooding events can kick that uranium back into the local environment and into the neighborhood. But I’m more concerned with the air exposure to the people living right there. Their lungs are inhaling and exhaling. And the company will say: Oh, the radiation that’s released from these stacks is so little compared to an X -ray or a pack of cigarettes or a flight from Montreal to Vancouver, but that’s measured in something called gamma radiation, which a long wave radiation. The chief concern with the inhalation of uranium particles from this plant and this operation is alpha radiation. Natural uranium is an alpha emitter, so that means it’s a very short wave. So, if you inhale one of those particles, it won’t penetrate the skin, but if you’ve got a cut or you inhale it, that can lodge in the lung or cross the blood-brain barrier and then it can kind of act like a little ember or a little radioactive disintegration. And the danger is, if you inhale that and it’s in you forever, that’s going to be disrupting the cells. If it kills the cells, that’s fine; but if it damages the cell and the cell replicates, that’s where you can induce cancer. But you could die of natural causes before that cancer metastasizes. So there’s no way of knowing what your cancer is from, but anecdotally, in that area in Toronto where there was PCB work and where there has been nuclear fuel processing since the 1950s, there’s a lot of cancer in that area. 

Metta Spencer  

You use the term PCB work. Can you explain that? 

Zach Ruiter  

They were working with PCBs for transistors, the sort of electric transistors that you see on poles and stuff like that. So, at General Electric in Toronto: on the east side of Lansdowne Avenue had the nuclear fuel operation and on the west side of Lansdowne Avenue they worked with PCBs for electric transistors and things like that.

Metta Spencer  

And that stuff is dangerous itself?

Zach Ruiter  

Yeah, it’s dangerous, but now that’s all been sort of taken away. The soil has been taken away and now there’s townhouses on that site.

Adam Wynne  

If we could maybe talk a bit more about the site history within the Toronto context, I think that’s a very interesting element that we should maybe delve into in a bit more detail. You mentioned the 1950s and the 1960s. When this plant opened in the 1950s and 1960s, the area surrounding it was largely industrial. As you mentioned, the sites across the street were also owned by General Electric and they made all sorts of different components there. In the present day, most of the industrial facilities in this neighbourhood have moved out of the area. The former industrial building just up the street – formerly a metal foundry – is now a multimillion-dollar redevelopment that has high end lofts. There’s a townhouse development across the street and as Zach mentioned they’re now doing soil excavation. I’ll show you some photographs.

[Adam Wynne put photograph of the BWXT Toronto plant on screenshare]. 

So, this grey-beige building here is the processing plant [at 1025 Lansdowne Avenue] and this site here across the street, which is presently a big hole in the ground is being prepared for a new residential development. Now, I’ll draw your attention to this brown building here. This high rise is 1011 Lansdowne Avenue. It’s one of the most notorious addresses in Toronto for emergency services. They generally have multiple emergency calls and also false alarms every week for fire, police, and ambulance. This can lead to alarm fatigue and desensitization of the residents to emergencies. The building’s management has also partnered with CAMH [The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health] and UHN [University Health Network] to provide outpatient housing for clients of their schizophrenia programs and for others who are recovering from mental health challenges. It’s a very notorious building for all sorts of things, like drugs, prostitution, squatting, and violent crime. This building is immediately next to – and less than 100 meters – from this uranium plant. So, if there is a radiological accident, it’s going to be incredibly difficult to do any type of evacuation. 1011 Lansdowne Avenue was built in the 1970s. So even starting a few decades after this plant was opened, the area began to have development intensification into more residential uses. And now it’s almost entirely residential around the plant. I also want to draw your attention to the active rail corridor that’s located less than 15 meters from the plant. So, this is another concern. This rail corridor – which was put in during the 19th century – is only 15 meters from the uranium processing facility. 

Metta Spencer  

Is that a freight train or something there in the photograph? 

Adam Wynne  

Yes, it’s a freight train. There’s been at least two derailments in the past decade on this stretch of rail corridor within five kilometers of the BWXT plant. So, if you see here, this is another photo. This is a freight train going by the plant. I’ve heard that there’s also – maybe Zach could speak more to this – there’s also an external tank of something like 9000 gallons of hydrogen sitting outside this plant which is used in its industrial purposes. The rail corridor is now only 15 meters away from parts of the uranium processing facility. Now, the present-day guidelines in Toronto say that you have to build at least 30 meters away from the rail corridor and have a safety barrier or berm as to have a buffer zone if there’s a rail accident. This plant is only 15 meters. There’s no real safety barrier or berm other than a chain link fence. The plant has been grandfathered in from an era back when safety standards were laxer. Here’s another angle of the plant and I want to draw your attention again to this building on the left. That’s 1011 Lansdowne Avenue – the very notorious high-rise I mentioned earlier. Immediately across the street are 2 condos known that were built in the 2010s. These are 20-to-30 condominium towers. They did keep the base of the old factory and warehouse building, but then built on top of them. So, there’s an industrial heritage element where there’s now a grocery store and pharmacy, but this area that’s surrounding the plant is now almost entirely residential. This uranium processing facility is a relic from the mid-20th century and perhaps from even before then, when this area was largely General Electric lands and other industrial facilities. The industrial area – the former buildings, as I mentioned – are now residential and in other cases they have been turned into theaters, art galleries, and things like that. So, this plant is really a relic in the surrounding area in the Toronto context. I am not so familiar with the Peterborough context. I do know of the Prince of Wales Public School that you mentioned, which is across the street from the facility, but maybe we should talk a bit more about that. 

Zach Ruiter  

Wow. That was a really an excellent summary, Adam. That’s really good. I’ll just quickly mention – which may be of interest to Metta – BWXT is also a currently active nuclear weapons manufacturer. They work with ballistic missiles that come from submarines. They make casings for plutonium cores and pits and those plutonium pits are used in warheads and Trident missiles. They can kill millions of people as well. They also export some depleted uranium.

Metta Spencer  

My impression is that Canada has a rule that we don’t produce plutonium, uranium or any other fissile materials that are to be used in weapons.

Zach Ruiter  

That’s correct. So, this is BWXT US. That’s their operations in the United States. 

Metta Spencer  

But our stuff does not make its way into warheads, or does it? 

Zach Ruiter  

It’s unclear. BWXT – this company – for two weeks of the year processes fuel to be exported to the United States. Where that goes and what it’s used for is quote unquote: “proprietary commercial information.” So they’re not really willing to share what that uranium that they export to the United States is used for.

Metta Spencer  

If we have this principle that we don’t make stuff for nuclear warheads, then I mean, what you’re saying is, if I understand you: That we don’t know whether that’s being enforced or not. Is it a principle or is it a real treaty? What kind of teeth does this agreement have? Is it binding and how official is it? Or is it just a gentleman’s agreement kind of thing?

Zach Ruiter  

Yeah, I think it is. It’s sort of like how the Non-Proliferation Treaty is actually the vehicle for nuclear proliferation in the way that Canada loaned CANDU technology to India and Pakistan. India and Pakistan then renounced their membership in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty on the eve of their test explosions. So, Toronto has a Peace Garden. We are calling ourselves a nuclear weapons free city, yet we have an active nuclear weapons manufacturer working with uranium. You know, back in the Iraq War, there was supposedly weapons of mass destruction in Iraq; but it turns out we have a huge stockpile of uranium in Toronto’s West End. But back to Adam’s questions. It was largely industrial, but there were also homes for workers in that area, predating the establishment of the General Electric campus. So you’re definitely right on that. There have been a lot of rumors over the years that surrounding buildings – even south of DuPont Street – are connected by way of tunnel and there was weapons development that went on there. But all of that is kept really kind of secretive.

Adam Wynne  

If I may build on that point a bit, regarding that kind of complex in the Dupont Street area. The infrastructure in that area is still World War 2 era in some cases. There certainly has been a recent increase in development in the area. However, I went over and took some photos a few months ago. You mentioned the sewers and how the facility has a permit to release uranium into the sewers. I think the facility’s release limit is 9000 kilograms of uranium into the Toronto sewer system each year, but Pippa Feinstein mentioned to me yesterday that that limit may have been recently reduced. If you look at the manhole cover underneath the BWXT sign right outside the Toronto plant, it has the date 1949 stamped on it.  While I am not entirely sure if the sewers have been fully updated, some of sewer infrastructure underneath this plant may still date to just after World War 2. If you walk around the outside of the plant, you’ll notice the retaining walls on the east side of the plant are damaged and need repair. There are also open drain holes on the north side of the plant along Brandon Avenue, which are next to the downspouts and date to when the downspouts used to connect directly to the sewer system. I have some photos here showing this. 

[Adam Wynne puts another photograph on screen via screen share.]

Adam Wynne  

This is just outside the uranium processing facility. If they are releasing uranium into the sewer system, that drain hole is venting immediately from the sewer system under the plant. As Zach mentioned, there’s also the risk of flooding with these sewers.  

[Adam Wynne changes photograph to a view looking south-east at the BWXT Toronto plant.]

Adam Wynne  

This red object in the foreground – diagonally opposite from BWXT – is a decades old fire line valve. Potentially from the wartime period. I asked municipal staff about it. It’s still not clear to me if it’s still connected to something or not. This large excavation is the residential development going in across the street. And I want to draw your attention to the bridge as well. Ann Frisch, about a year or so ago, sent me some materials about infrastructure and the transportation of radioactive materials. So, I previously mentioned this rail corridor that is only 15 meters from the plant. The rail bridge, which immediately abuts the corner of the facility, is from 1931. It is mere meters away from the BWXT facility. We know that the aging bridges on rail corridors are a major concern in both Canada and the United States because they are not maintained properly. Some bridges are crumbling. They can also be the target of terrorism incidents. If someone drives a truck into that and collapses the bridge, you can have a rail accident. Now I mentioned there were 2 derailments along this rail corridor in the past 10 years. Another thing to mull over is that this rail corridor is a major east-west corridor for the transportation of hazardous materials, including explosives and radiological materials. 

Zach Ruiter  

The Lac-Mégantic rail cars rolled right past the uranium plant and exploded in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec. 

Adam Wynne  

That specific train went past the Toronto plant?

Zach Ruiter  

Yeah, and then exploded in Quebec. It was a terrible fracked gas, explosive disaster.

Adam Wynne  

From my understanding, for many years in Canada, the rail companies were not disclosing to the municipalities what was being transported on the rail corridors. The Toronto Star did an investigative piece where they stood on one of the bridges over this rail corridor for about a 12-hour period and took photos of all the hazardous material warning tags on the rail cars passing through Toronto. You can cross reference the numerical identifiers on the tags to an international database of hazardous materials. They found stuff like explosives, highly toxic pesticides, and in some cases radiological materials that are going through this rail corridor through the middle of downtown Toronto.  And as I mentioned, there’s been at least two derailments that have happened on this stretch of rail corridor in the past few years. Fortunately, neither were at the uranium processing plant, but one was just by Christie Street and the other near Bathurst Street. In one case the train had gone over the switch and the other train going the other way had not fully cleared the track and they collided. And in the other case, a train had 2 of its cars derail off the track. Another concerning thing is that people have cut holes in the rail corridor’s safety fence next to the BWXT facility, as to cross the tracks at Saint Clarens Avenue. They do not want to have to walk all the way around the plant to get to the other side of the tracks. So, they just cut holes in it and cross the tracks there. I do not want to be an alarmist, but this opens up a whole slew of concerns around safety and security of this plant. If you have people trespassing onto the rail corridor immediately next to the uranium processing plant, there’s a risk that someone could cause a derailment accidentally or otherwise. 

Metta Spencer  

I’m going to have nightmares tonight. I’m afraid. But thank you, go ahead. I’m a big girl. I’ll take it. I imagine the rest of us need to know this.

Zach Ruiter  

So yeah, that’s a concern. They’re not really willing to speculate on what would happen if there was an explosion of that hydrogen tank. Anecdotally, hydrogen explosions – like what has happened in Germany or something like that – have shown the capacity, potentially, to level the building. So, if you have 150 tons of uranium in power or pellet form, you have the possibility to make a huge dirty bomb there. I don’t like to speculate on this. It’s dangerous there. In 1999, they had a near disaster with a hydrogen explosion that resulted in a big fire in the stack. It resulted in an evacuation.

Adam Wynne  

Really? I had not heard of that specific incident. 

Zach Ruiter  

Yea. I can send you some links on that. Someone should file a Freedom of Information Request to get better details on what actually happened there. But the thing is, you’re cooking uranium 24/7 at 1650 degrees centigrade with a lot of propellant. That’s a lot of heat. They have cooling towers that are releasing vapour all the time. But they also have six stacks that release uranium into the air. So, the uranium that they release is really fine particles, like smaller than a hair. These are the particles that make it out of their filter. So, they have several sorts of carbon filters. And then they’re releasing it in six directions. So, if you’re living in one of those new condos or anywhere, you could be inhaling particles of uranium. Especially, if you it’s snowing, raining, or foggy and there’s lots of condensation, those particles are just hanging in the air. Yeah. So, you know, they’ll say: Oh, you know, we only release like, five grams a year. Like, first of all, when we had a meeting at the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission in 2013, I said: Well, how can we believe that you’re releasing only this much per year? They say: We have independent third parties that verify our testing results. And then I’d say: What’s the name of the independent third party? And then they’d say: That’s proprietary commercial information. So, there’s just all these cul-de-sacs. There are all these dead ends. But even if you take the numbers that they’re giving you, in every gram of uranium that release – in these microscopic, tasteless, odorless, sightless particles – are the tiniest particles. There are trillions of particles per gram. In Toronto, I live near the Cadbury Chocolate Factory. If the wind is blowing, south west from the factory, it smells like chocolate. In Peterborough, where I lived maybe a block away from General Electric, but five or six blocks over was the Quaker Oats factory. When the wind was going in that direction, it smelled like oatmeal. So, with uranium you can’t smell it; you can’t taste it; you can’t see it. It’s a silent killer. And it’s carcinogenic. It is a deadly, deadly toxin. And it’s not only carcinogenic, it’s heavy metal. So heavy metals are also dangerous, as well, for your liver and kidneys.

Metta Spencer 

Do they do anything valid, anything worthwhile with this stuff? 

Zach Ruiter  

I’d say no. It’s not all bad. I mean, the energy that we’re using right now is most likely coming from Pickering and Darlington, and they’re supplying all of the pellets that go to Pickering and Darlington. We’re using that right now. Their customers are Ontario Power Generation. So, this is really kind of collectively owned as a burden. You know, we’ve taken the benefits of this electricity, but now we’re saddled with over 50 years of the result, which is highly toxic and highly radioactive waste that has accumulated. It’s come through Toronto and gone through Pickering. It’s been mined in Dene and Cree territory. So not only have they created power for us, they’ve created a burden of this toxic legacy of this nuclear fuel waste, that they’re now trying to find a place to bury. And I think what we really need to say is: Before you can bury it, so that you can just keep on making more because you say you have the solution, is that we need to stop producing it. Full stop. 

Metta Spencer  

Which means stop nuclear power plants.

Zach Ruiter  

Stop nuclear power plants. Yeah. I mean, here’s where I get a little bit controversial. I’m not a proponent of green energy. I think that there are environmental tradeoffs there that I personally am not willing to make for any communities that are affected. So I think that we really need to, we really need to prioritize energy conservation. But I think we need to sort of reframe the logical sequence of how do we keep the lights on and save the planet? It’s always one then the other. Keeping the lights on and then save the planet. And I think if we reverse the order, in terms of the way we discuss our energy use, and the planet by saying: how do we save the planet and keep the lights on? But why don’t we save the planet before anything else? So even if that means turning off the lights, but I think that if that’s the impending threat of turning off the lights, we will find ways to adapt. So, when you reverse the order of: how do we keep the lights on and then as an afterthought save the planet? You’re always making tradeoffs. There’s some alarming statistics about covering the whole world with solar panels and windmills and all of these things. But when it comes down to it, I think that we need to shift the way we think of energy.

Metta Spencer  

Well, I know that I have a lot of conversations about this kind of thing, every week almost. And even a couple of days ago, one of the people I interviewed was saying that because of the expansion of technology, growth, and stuff around the world, there will be a need for three times as much electricity as we’re producing now. So, it is not just a matter of keeping the lights on, but turning on a lot more lights. And I don’t think that many people have the same concerns you do about the side effects of wind and solar. But that’s a different conversation. If you want to talk about that and talk about those negative effects, you can come back and be on a show with somebody who believes in it. It would be a good conversation because I haven’t heard anybody else say that there are as many negative side effects of renewable energy as there are from fossil fuels and nuclear.

Zach Ruiter  

Right. You know, I agree with that. But I think even if the climate concern were solved, I think that the problem is the amount of energy we’re using and what we are doing with that energy. And we really need to focus as a society not only on efficiency, but reductions and reducing the amount of energy we use.

Metta Spencer  

So, as I understand it, there’s a lot going on. There is a real move in the direction of conservation. Things are becoming more efficient. People are finding ways of doing things with less energy. So, in that sense, there is a reduction in the amount per whatever that you create, but the amount that you create is going to increase. So, we are actually going to need three times as much energy even if we do conserve. So that’s, you know, I’m not the expert here and this isn’t what we wanted to talk about today, so I think we need a different conversation, which we have that that discussion was somebody who knows more than I do. Or not. You’re welcome to be part of it. 

Zach Ruiter  

Thanks.  

Metta Spencer  

Go on. I keep side-tracking you. 

Adam Wynne  

Zach, I want to go back to one of your previous points. Specifically, the intergenerational connection of General Electric in Peterborough and how you said multiple families have been poisoned by the activities of General Electric in Peterborough. The CBC just did a documentary on this within the past year or two called Town of Widows which documented the levels of cancer and illnesses of former workers at the General Electric plant. In some case, there’s reports of General Electric workers who worked with asbestos coming home and their wives would shake out their work clothes and asbestos would come raining down from the clothing. What is the public opinion of these type of activities in the Peterborough context? Is there any resistance? Peterborough has been described as a company town at times, particularly around and just after the wartime period and its legacy with the activities of General Electric and Quaker Oats. There were a few very large companies that many, many people in the city worked for. Was there resistance to recognize the activities and danger of this kind of work? What type of reactions came from the public in Peterborough? 

Zach Ruiter  

It is. So, notwithstanding this company has been proven to have poisoned workers and families and it’s well known. Not only that, but they’re wanting to move the Toronto facility from Toronto to Peterborough. Possibly because the development going on around the Toronto facility is massive. Davenport Village has another 3000 units. Condos right across the street. But, because the Pickering nuclear station is going to be going offline, hopefully sooner rather than later, but it’s going offline in a few years, they’re going to be losing half of their market. So right now, they’re producing half of all uranium using Canadian reactors, but they’re going to be only making half of that. So, a quarter. BWXT is heavily invested in developing the next generation of small modular nuclear reactors. A new breed of nuclear reactors, which, Libbe HaLevy has called “mobile Chernobyl” because there’s going to be these small reactors all over the place, because the public’s largely against building new reactors. These reactors run on enriched uranium. So, there’s precedent to show that company in that site in Peterborough has already worked with some enriched uranium and has already tried to work with enriched uranium. The huge speculation is that they’re not just going to be working with natural uranium for CANDU reactors, but they’re going to want to use that site in Peterborough for enriched uranium. Sometimes they have acronyms like low enriched uranium or slightly enriched uranium, but these are just euphemisms for enriched uranium. So, the public is divided. So, the public is really divided right now. There’s a group called CARN – Citizens Against Radioactive Neighborhoods – that are fighting it. They’re taking the Nuclear Safety Commission to federal court right now to review the decision. But they’re taking the CNSC and BWXT to court, largely over a technicality. That technicality is that under the Nuclear Safety Control Act, there was a requirement for the license fulfillment, that they submit their site plan and their detailed environmental monitoring plans. But they didn’t release those detailed environmental monitoring plans, because of possibly sensitive and potentially damaging information. And that information might be able to tip their hand and reveal if they’re planning on not just building the facility for relocating the Toronto factory, but also outfitting themselves to be processing enriched uranium as a separate process there. There is other sort of anecdotal points in terms of why that might be happening. CARN – Citizens Against Radioactive Neighborhoods – has been seeing a lot of website traffic from places in the United States that are associated with developers of small modular nuclear reactors, such as the NuScale and also a lot from Lynchburg, Virginia which is where BWXT is based. So, I think that they’re really kind of looking for a home for this. And because they already sort of have a site in Peterborough, I guess they think it might be easier to place it there and then trying to place it somewhere where they have not grandfathered in an operation.

Metta Spencer  

So, the plant in Peterborough would just expand? They wouldn’t move it to someplace out in the country.

Zach Ruiter  

No. For now, they’re not doing that. They’re constantly shifting the goalposts. They’re wanting to expand the current operation to bring the pelleting operation or the fuel fabrication operation. And the speculation is that they’re going to want to also then fabricate enriched uranium fuel.

Metta Spencer  

Can you tell me what are the procedures and what are the hoops that they have to jump through to get permission to make these changes? And are these additional safety inquiries or public testimony events? Where are the things that you’re trying to intervene? How do you foresee you or Adam or the people watching this could take part in a discussion of whether to allow this?

Zach Ruiter  

Well, I’ll be only working in my capacity as a journalist and sharing information. If they want to go ahead with this, it’s – as the past has shown – simply just a license amendment that would be required. And of course, they’ll say that everything is safe and that they’re trustworthy. In the United States, where they’re co-operator of the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant, BWXT is now named as a co-defendant in several class action lawsuits over the contamination of a local school in Piketon, Ohio called Zahn’s Corner Middle School where they had to actually shut down the school because of the amount of uranium and other radioactive toxins discovered on the school and where several students over the past few years have died of cancer. So, in terms of the fight to stop it, you know, I think that CARN has really – with the assistance of CELA, the Canadian Environmental Law Association – jumped through the hoops. They’ve really dotted there Is and cross their Ts. It comes down to political will, because the client for this company is the Canadian government. It’s the Ontario and federal governments. And the local MP Maryam Monsef has been very reticent to say anything. The mayor of Peterborough – Diane Therrien – has kind of spoken out of both sides of her mouth. So, she says she’s concerned, but she’s been assured that it’s safe. But really the group in Peterborough is really a polite group. I mean, they’re calling themselves Citizens Against Radioactive Neighborhoods. They participate in Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission hearings. They’ve held some pickets, but in the absence of direct action and increasing public pressure, I really don’t see how they’re going to stop this company from incrementally increasing their toxic load on the local neighborhood and the kids in the elementary school. It’s not just the kids that are more radio-sensitive to radiation than adults. It’s the entire town. That facility is located right downtown, in the middle of town. 

Metta Spencer  

Yeah, well, it sounds to me as if the lynchpin is the notion that there’s a certain definition of what is the safe amount of radiation. How much can safely endure? I guess they know that every bit of radiation has some risk and can maybe harm you, but that we just have to live with a certain amount because in nature, it occurs. So, I wonder, how much can be done to question that or even whether we should question it? Maybe we should believe them, maybe we should say: Okay, you think that I should except a certain amount of radiation in my life. So I will do it. And so, let’s go on and talk about other matters. I’m a little uncomfortable about that. Is there anything that we can do to kind of challenge that or at least take it seriously and not just simply believe what we are told? 

Adam Wynne  

If I may add a point. How accessible is this information? In the Toronto context of the BWXT plant – for many years before the facility was purchased by BWXT in 2016 – it was operated by General Electric, as you mentioned. And for many years, the Toronto plant was classified as a ceramics factory. It was not until a 1986 municipal bylaw probe that it actually came to light that the plant was not actually manufacturing ceramics in the sense of what most people would interpret that as, but the type of nuclear products that the plant was manufacturing may have been considered ceramics under a technicality. So, one of my questions, building on what Metta is saying, is how accessible and how clear is the public’s information about the safe limits? Another thing with the Toronto context, is that the release limit of 9000 kilograms of uranium into the sewers sounds absolutely absurd. What is meant by that? There’s often a lot of highly technical language in the reports. How accessible is it for a member of the public to go and read one of these documents and know what they are referring to and what are the actual meanings of the safe limits? 

Zach Ruiter  

It’s completely inaccessible. It’s a rubber stamp. The 9000-kilogram release to the sewer allowable for per year, is calculated based on a dose of 1 millisievert per year to a human body of the public. There are different limits for workers. Workers are technically allowed to be exposed to even more radiation. This is all creative accounting. This is all fun with decimals. It’s all manipulating graphs and charts to minimize the fact that half of all nuclear fuel used in Canadian reactors is cooked in a process that releases it to the environment. And also, when we look at it as a hyperlocal issue, it’s problematic, but when we look at it as a global issue, it’s problematic. From mining to waste. How accessible is the information? It’s not. You know, a Geiger counter isn’t really going to test for it, because Geiger counters are measuring gamma radiation. So, unless you have very, very expensive equipment, you’re not really as a citizen going to be able to show or prove what’s going on there. But I think that we can continue asking for transparency and we can continue demanding. This is where the fight kind of goes more into the area of a social license. Is this company trustworthy? No. Have they heavily been caught lying to the public and the regulator? Yes. Have they been named in class action lawsuits for contaminating and killing children in an elementary school? Yes. There is not a deficit of reasons to not use the precautionary principle here to say that there isn’t a risk that outweighs the benefit to the public. So argumentatively, why does it have to be next to an elementary school? Or why anywhere at all? But if you really get down into the weeds of it, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission is a quasi-judicial tribunal. They’re the poster child of industry capture. There was, I believe, a poll of federal scientists about five years ago. That asked them: Do you feel like you can speak without being censored and you can share your results? CNSC had, I think, a resounding majority of their own scientists saying that they felt muzzled. That their work was either changed and they couldn’t be transparent about their information. And that’s not just for these nuclear fuel processing facilities. It’s for nuclear reactors. It’s for uranium mines. The Pickering nuclear reactor, you know, we hear lots of information and lots of public information has just come to light about how they’re basically guesstimating how safe are these pressure tubes on a reactor that is so many years past it’s expected like design and they’re not even going to replace the tubes. So, they’re really risking everything for their own benefit. Pickering is one of the closest reactors to a major metropolitan center. This industry has always been known for playing fast with people’s health and safety and the environment. I think there’s more than enough reasons to say why they can’t be trusted. And back to Metta’s points. Okay, yes, there is natural background radiation and that is dangerous. Radon gas is dangerous. Radiation is dangerous. We shouldn’t be adding any more. But there’s a difference between background radiation. You’re not inhaling background radiation. You might be if you’re exposed to radon coming from underground in a basement. And that’s why we have radon testing. But inhaling particles of uranium directly into those sensitive tissue and especially for the kids who are radiosensitive because their cells are multiplying all the time. But if you actually look at like smoking cigarettes or arsenic, there is no safe level. So, there’s no good argument for exposing all these people. The argument for it is really to turn Peterborough or continue to make Toronto into a sacrificial zone, in the name of nuclear power. We’re constantly being bombarded with the idea that it’s clean and that it’s a solution to climate change. Which I argue that it isn’t. It’s neither clean nor is it a solution to climate change. 

Metta Spencer  

You’ve come to the right person, if you want to make that case. I agree with it. I’m predisposed to say let’s do something else. Absolutely, yes.  

Adam Wynne  

I want to bridge to a broader issue within multiple communities regarding the Canadian nuclear industry. And that’s the accessibility of information within a language context. I don’t know if you are following the ongoing CNSC hearings [on nuclear waste] right now, but there’s been a lot of outcries from Canada’s Francophone community. The CNSC offered to provide live interpretation of proceedings and materials in French, but then allegedly only provided it in English.  I want to ask within the BWXT context, are materials being made available in both English and French, but then also other neighbourhood languages? In Toronto – and this may be relevant in Peterborough too – the Canadian Census shows the residents in the area surrounding the plant speak a diverse range of languages as their predominant household language, including English, French, Portuguese, Italian, Spanish, Vietnamese, Chinese, Tagalog. Many different languages. Some of these residents may not be able to participate in proceedings or read highly technical reports that are being conducted solely in English. Are any attempts being made to make this material available in both of Canada’s official languages – as well as other neighbourhood languages? 

Zach Ruiter  

No. All of their attempts are to suppress information and to minimize the information that gets out. So, the information that they distribute even now, basically, even in English is substandard. In English, it basically just says: We’re your neighbor, everything is fine, nothing to worry about. And then they may translate that paragraph into French. No, it’s not translated into Portuguese, Italian, Chinese, and some of the languages that a lot of people, especially people who’ve been there for decades, speak as a primary language. But even in terms of the language of the English communications, the English communications are always just to say that we are regulated by the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission. We have thorough inspections by the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission and it’s shown that there’s no risk to public health of the environment. That’s their communication. But before that their communication was nil. People did not even know it was there. The nuclear industry operates on the less information the public knows the better for them, because they think the nuclear industry is unfairly stigmatized. I would argue that when the public finds out more information, it’s just more cause for concerns and leads to more questions that they’re not usually able to answer without the appeal to the rubber stamp of their own authority to say that everything’s within safe levels.

Metta Spencer  

Well, you are doing really heroic work as a journalist addressing these issues. So, bless your heart and carry on. And maybe we need to keep in touch. 

Zach Ruiter  

Thank you. 

Metta Spencer  

Thank you so much for this. It’s been fascinating. Good luck.