Part H : REGULATING TAILINGS MANAGEMENT H.1. Who is responsible for regulating tailings management in Australia?
H.2. What do the regulations require?
H.3. Are the regulations effective?
H.4. Are the regulators independent of the industry?
H.1. Who is responsible for regulating tailings management in Canada? As long as the uranium mine/mill complex is operating, the management of the tailings is regulated by the Atomic Energy Control Board (AECB) and by the appropriate provincial authorities. However, once the tailings have been abandoned, particularly when the owner/operator ceases to exist or disappears, there is considerable confusion as to who is responsible for managing the tailings.There have been numerous cases in Canada and elsewhere where hundreds of thousands of tonnes of radioactive mine tailings or refinery wastes, neglected by the authorities, have been used in the construction of homes and schools, resulting in unacceptably high levels of radiation exposure in those buildings. In Ontario, there are several cases of abandoned uranium tailings which are still not properly fenced or posted with adequate warning signs. These vast stretches of radioactive sand are freely accessible to animals, bikers, children, berry-pickers and picknickers. There is also the ever-present danger that this innocuous-looking sand will be used as fill or in home construction.
H.2. What do the regulations require? The regulations require the design, construction, maintenance and monitoring of an engineered facility for storing tailings as long as the mine/mill complex is operational. There are also requirements for treating effluents and limiting access to the site, and there are close-out criteria to be followed in preparing the tailings for abandonment.
During the operational phase, the tailings must be physically confined behind some kind of retaining wall. The regulations require that provision be made for controlling the blowing of radioactive dust and limiting the atmospheric releases of radon gas. In addition, design measures to prevent the seepage of chemicals and radionuclides into the underlying soil, and to reduce the levels of radioactivity in the liquid run-off, must be approved. In unusual cases, where some portion of the tailings contains unusually high concentrations of radioactivity, special design requirements may be laid down by the regulators.
H.3. Are the regulations effective? Over all, tailings management during the operational phase has greatly improved in the last fifteen years. Nevertheless, even at the newest mines, radioactive spills are frequent. Inspectors are not highly trained, and they often fail to notice flagrant violations of the regulations.
The long term containment of uranium tailings remains a major unsolved problem. Two of the most significant failures occurred in 1979, at Churchrock, New Mexico, when (as already mentioned) a huge state-of-the-art tailings dam collapsed without warning, and in the early 1980's, at Cluff Lake, Saskatchewan, when efforts to store highly radioactive tailings in thousands of concrete "pots" ended as a dismal failure. Although the pots were supposed to last for centuries, dozens of them were found to be cracked and leaking after less than five years of use.
Once uranium tailings have been abandoned, it is doubtful whether any regulations can be effective in preventing large-scale contamination of the environment. The levels of radioactivity in the tailings, and the amount of radon gas produced by the tailings, will not noticeably diminish for more than 10 000 years. How can the natural forces of erosion, migration, dispersion and dissolution be held in abeyance? Who will monitor the wastes and take corrective action? And who will pay for the future effort needed to do all this?
H.4. Are the regulators independent of the industry? The Atomic Energy Control Board (AECB) is supposed to be independent of the nuclear industry. However, it reports to the federal Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources -- the same Minister who is responsible for Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (a crown corporation that designs, builds and sells nuclear reactors) and Cameco (formerly Eldorado Nuclear Limited, another crown corporation that owns and operates uranium mines and refineries).
Moreover, most AECB staff are drawn from various sectors of the nuclear industry, including the uranium companies. In the past, many of the Board members were representatives of the very industries that AECB is regulating. Formal public hearings are not required as part of the licensing process, nor have such hearings ever been held.
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Back to the SEA-US Front Page Special thanks to Dr Gordon Edwards, CCNR (http://ccnr.org/)
for permission to adapt this discussion guide from his original version.