Citizens groups in communities affected by slightly enriched uranium (SEU) are now joining forces to call for highest level of scrutiny.

Local citizens groups opposed to Cameco’s plans to process SEU announced Thursday that they have joined other groups across Ontario to request an independent panel review of the company’s application.

Families Against Radiation Exposure, the Port Hope Community Health Concerns Committee and the Nuclear Environmental Watchdogs held a joint press conference just outside the Cameco plant Thursday evening while at the same time, citizens groups in Kincardine, near Cameco’s Bruce nuclear reactor site, met with their local media. Press in Ottawa watched also as the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission was presented with affidavits spelling out the concerns of the people living in the affected communities.

The affidavits were conveyed to the CNSC by Lake Ontario Waterkeeper, a branch of an international organization of environmentalists led by Robert Kennedy Jr. The organization is intervening in the hearings to consider an environmental self-assessment of the Bruce nuclear power operation, which is partially owned by Cameco. The Bruce licence would allow the plant to operate until 2048 and to use SEU fuel, which would be blended by Cameco in Port Hope.

FARE president John Miller explained the Waterkeeper is attempting to have the Bruce and Port Hope SEU environmental assessments merged to encompass the concerns/effects of SEU from the beginning to the end of its life cycle — that is, from Cameco in Port Hope, to Zircatec, along Ontario’s roads, to the Bruce plant, and finally to waste.

“Waterkeeper’s goal is to ensure that SEU is not created or used in the province of Ontario without first undergoing the highest level of scrutiny possible,” he said.

That kind of scrutiny, he explained involves an independent panel review, ordered by the federal environment minister.

“Under the present screening process, Cameco is doing its own environmental self-assessment, and the CNSC is responding to that,” said Mr. Miller.

Several key concerns of residents, such as health testing of humans and the economic impact on the affected communities, are outside the scope of the screening process.

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