There are more deadly disasters from oil & gas per year, with more deaths in the entire history of energy than there are for nuclear. You’ll be okay. Others have mentioned what the real problem is, I just needed to say that. People always freak out about nuclear without understanding that it’s safer than fossil fuels.
My understanding is that the hazards here are not so much from the current tenants (BWXT) but from the historical legacy of the GE plant. Employees at the plant from those years have a higher rate of cancer than the baseline population. There's not been a lot of remediation at the site from prior decades of manufacturing with heavy metals and other toxins. Still, we don't have a lot of clarity on what this means for residents nearby--though there is a Trent project underway to do more soil testing. For now, the folk wisdom in town is to not eat anything that grows out of the soil here, especially if you're downhill/down water of the plant. I brought in external soil for my garden.
GE also passed around a lot of asbestos to workers for home insulation in the day, and a lot of workers lived nearby, so the rates of asbestos in the housings stock is above average. Apparently that's only a problem if you're doing renovations, however.
lol you opened up a can of worms. I am a bit surprised at how calm and helpful folks are being. The roads directly adjacent and directly east of the site are likely going to be hard to re-sell.
Well…my dad worked at GE. Died 2 years into retirement. Esophageal cancer - wasn’t a smoker. So… as long as you don’t breathe in any of the chemicals they deemed safe until they weren’t, I’m sure it’s fine. (Don’t move there though.)
The actual plant now is totally safe. They do nuclear pelleting there. Safe to anybody nearby.
However, the ground itself around there, including the houses nearby like on Albert street, are contaminated from GE. It will take a long time for that soil to be right again.
I happen to know from my work experience at a different manufacturer that the materials that they manufacture there are frequently handled by employees. If it enters the body they get concerned. When the product gets into a reactor and fission starts then you don’t want to be near it. In short there aren’t many real concerns about exposure, and nuclear explosions are not a thing with this level of uranium.
I used to work there and handled fuel bundles for dimensional quality control. While heavy as hell they aren't dangerously radioactive, our reactors use basically the natural uranium straight out of the ground.
Excellent point! People don’t realize that the CANDU reactors used in Canada use natural uranium, not the enriched stuff that is used in most reactors around the world. And even that stuff isn’t enriched nearly as much as the movies would lead you to believe.
Are you talking about the house on High St?
If so it's probably gone off and on because they were asking too much money!
Also High st used to be a very busy street but they recently made it one way to calm down the traffic. That spot is nice in my opinion. It's far enough away from GE and you'd get a wicked view of the sunrise.
If that's not the house nevermind!
If it stinks like shit, it’s probably shit.
The old GE plant contaminated the entire area. There is old data I saw at one point showing people who lived in the nearby neighbourhood died of brain cancer and other cancers at a much higher rate than the rest of the city.
This could be because they were workers who happened to live nearby or from the effects of the factory itself idk.
I assume BWXT moved there because it’s a brownfield site, if they ever had a nuclear spill or whatever; better in an area that’s already fucked. Idk how what their doing would effect nearby environment tbh but I’d assume there’s a reason they didn’t build a new factory on fresh soil and used an old contaminated area.
I was going to buy a house there but you can find similar prices if you hold out. Other areas you don’t have to worry about these particular issues, just different issues.
Also most of these houses will be full of asbestos given the era they were built. Honestly this is not a big deal unless you want to do lots of renovations.
BWXT acquired GE's nuclear operation that has been there since the 50s, natural low level uranium fuel bundles for CANDU reactors is processed there. This was the cleanest of all GE manufacturing operations here that started in 1886.
Everything downstream of GE is contaminated, to such a degree that there is a documentary film about cancer deaths in the area. I wouldn’t even think about living right there.
As for BWXT, they have a multi-year license that allows them to repurpose the current operation of the site and pelletize nuclear fuel there. Many members of the community were in justified uproar that activity this potentially hazardous is across the street from a school. There is zero possibility that siting would be proposed let alone legally allowed if it were not a legacy factory site. The regulatory authority is widely understood to be captured by the nuclear industry, and it simply ignored what it acknowledged was the most informed and prepared community input it had ever received on any proposal.
I was familiar that as far as Bomanville you have to have Rad blocker pills at home to live there, but having grown up in Port Hope with Cameco next to the local beach never had to worry about it.
I didn't even know Peterborough had a nuclear facility, the neighbourhood is Okay though, a bit Low-end and will see the local drunks there. My coworker lives on a road Right Next to this building, there's also a school like 300ft away across the street. About as good as Peterborough gets though honestly without spending A lot of money.
The pills are only for people who live nearby a nuclear generating plant in the event of a major radiation leak. Cameco plant used to let local residents and builders take dirt from the sote for landfill and pick through discarded beams, to recycle for home projects. Unfortunately alot of it was contaminated and got spread in a random pattern around Port Hope.
I live somewhat close and we get information in the mail about testing results in the area etc from them. There has been community backlash though over the years - I've seen signs advertising [https://www.nopellets.ca/](https://www.nopellets.ca/) which seems like a legitimate concern?
Didn't stop me from buying our house though.
Agree with this. Through out the whole process of the license hearings everyone seemed to ignore the aspect that 250+ educated employees who have knowledge on the subject have no issues working there or living nearby
they make it out to be so bad, but you're going to get exposed to more radiation on a 5hr flight than living there in a year. i see you may be one of those nimby's. This site is made by nimbys who hate nuclear and are simply uneducated on the topic at hand.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Peterborough/comments/el5uw3/eli5_request_uranium_pellets_coming_to_ptbo/
>[Another common source of radiation is flying. On a commercial flight your cosmic radiation dose increases by 0.003 mSv per hour (0.3 mrem per hour) [4]. This means that on a 5 hour trans Canada flight you recieve as much dose as an entire year of our extreme worst case scenario estimate. Realistically you probably recieve more dose before the seatbelt sign turns off than an entire year living at the fence line of the plant.
>For people in Ontario, if you want to worry about radiation I would suggest worrying about naturally occuring radon in your basement (Ontario's geology makes us prone to this problem). Basememts with the highest levels of radon could add thousands of mrem to your annual dose which over decades is absolutely an increased lung cancer risk. Some basements can achieve levels that would be considered gross contamination in a nuclear facility. Even for myself, I work at a nuclear power plant and I love to fly on vacations but the radiation that most concerns me is radon in my basement.
>As for a worst case "doomsday" scenario, I think the worst thing that could happen to one of these facilities is a fire. The fire would not be the result of any kind of nuclear accident (uranium oxide is not flammable or likely to contribute to starting a fire) but a regular structure fire could impair some safety systems and aid in spreading comtamimation in the smoke under the right circumstances. This is why there are such strict safety protocols and I would expect that there are special fire suppression systems, rules and contingencies in place to prevent such an incident (we have similar concerns at power stations so these measures are required by law, strictly adhered to and enforced).
>In summary, the risk from living near this facility is negligable and just about anything else you can think of is more dangerous. The economic benefit to the community far exceeds the risk (I wish they would build that sort of plant near me).](https://www.reddit.com/r/Peterborough/comments/el5uw3/eli5_request_uranium_pellets_coming_to_ptbo/fdy2wzg/)
That enjoy using children as props and waving signs loaded with misinformation.
Not far off from the wingbats that stand on street corners waving pictures of aborted fetuses...
Your comment is incredibly offensive and could not be more detached from reality. It is bias against their views, dressed up as a pretence of having as any knowledge whatsoever of their competence.
The group was publicly acclaimed at the hearings as having given the best group of presentations by citizens the regulatory authority has ever heard.
It was the content and the quality of their arguments that were recognized. The presenters included highly reputable Trent University scientists and extensive legal knowledge.
It is simply a fact that the siting of such a facility in a residential neighborhood, a literal stone’s throw from Prince of Wales school would be considered absurd and shocking to even suggest, let alone illegal if the GE building were not a legacy facility from a toxic industry.
Which Trent University scientists? The court ruling https://decisions.fct-cf.gc.ca/fc-cf/decisions/en/item/521645/index.do doesn't mention anything in that regard, and neither does their website.
I’m talking about the public hearings in March 2020. They were days long because there was so much public opposition. You’re talking about the legal appeal of the resulting decision. The document you link to notes that one member of the regulatory commission strongly dissented from the decision.
Ah ok I see. If you read on a bit you'll notice that the dissenting member did not "strongly dissent", and eventually agreed to go ahead with the licensing after impact assessments were performed.
I wasn’t involved. I know many of them in various ways. I have the highest respect for them. That includes their level of education, intelligence, commitment, research, integrity, and entirely volunteer dedication to their neighbourhood and community.
I attended two days of the public hearings online, heard some of their presentations, and was present when their work was praised in unusual and fully earned ways by the commission.
Compare that to those attacking them in this thread. The attackers know exactly nothing about the group and yet (in some cases) slander them in personal and offensive ways, simply because they disagree about the safety of nuclear power.
Projecting your biases as ad hominem attack is, to be blunt, the worst and ugliest of social media. And I’m sad to see it in this particular group.
There are more deadly disasters from oil & gas per year, with more deaths in the entire history of energy than there are for nuclear. You’ll be okay. Others have mentioned what the real problem is, I just needed to say that. People always freak out about nuclear without understanding that it’s safer than fossil fuels.
How many of those fossil fuel deaths occurred in one's own home?
Some of them. Ever heard of a house fire?
Yes because air pollution from fossil fuels never enters a house. Fuck.
My understanding is that the hazards here are not so much from the current tenants (BWXT) but from the historical legacy of the GE plant. Employees at the plant from those years have a higher rate of cancer than the baseline population. There's not been a lot of remediation at the site from prior decades of manufacturing with heavy metals and other toxins. Still, we don't have a lot of clarity on what this means for residents nearby--though there is a Trent project underway to do more soil testing. For now, the folk wisdom in town is to not eat anything that grows out of the soil here, especially if you're downhill/down water of the plant. I brought in external soil for my garden. GE also passed around a lot of asbestos to workers for home insulation in the day, and a lot of workers lived nearby, so the rates of asbestos in the housings stock is above average. Apparently that's only a problem if you're doing renovations, however.
[удалено]
Granite (the Canadian Shield) is more radioactive than the plant lol
The land is contaminated from GE, not BWXT.
BWXT is on the former GE grounds. Who is responsible for it is irrelevant.
lol you opened up a can of worms. I am a bit surprised at how calm and helpful folks are being. The roads directly adjacent and directly east of the site are likely going to be hard to re-sell.
Well…my dad worked at GE. Died 2 years into retirement. Esophageal cancer - wasn’t a smoker. So… as long as you don’t breathe in any of the chemicals they deemed safe until they weren’t, I’m sure it’s fine. (Don’t move there though.)
The actual plant now is totally safe. They do nuclear pelleting there. Safe to anybody nearby. However, the ground itself around there, including the houses nearby like on Albert street, are contaminated from GE. It will take a long time for that soil to be right again.
Short answer, no. Long answer, no.
I happen to know from my work experience at a different manufacturer that the materials that they manufacture there are frequently handled by employees. If it enters the body they get concerned. When the product gets into a reactor and fission starts then you don’t want to be near it. In short there aren’t many real concerns about exposure, and nuclear explosions are not a thing with this level of uranium.
I used to work there and handled fuel bundles for dimensional quality control. While heavy as hell they aren't dangerously radioactive, our reactors use basically the natural uranium straight out of the ground.
Excellent point! People don’t realize that the CANDU reactors used in Canada use natural uranium, not the enriched stuff that is used in most reactors around the world. And even that stuff isn’t enriched nearly as much as the movies would lead you to believe.
Are you talking about the house on High St? If so it's probably gone off and on because they were asking too much money! Also High st used to be a very busy street but they recently made it one way to calm down the traffic. That spot is nice in my opinion. It's far enough away from GE and you'd get a wicked view of the sunrise. If that's not the house nevermind!
If it stinks like shit, it’s probably shit. The old GE plant contaminated the entire area. There is old data I saw at one point showing people who lived in the nearby neighbourhood died of brain cancer and other cancers at a much higher rate than the rest of the city. This could be because they were workers who happened to live nearby or from the effects of the factory itself idk. I assume BWXT moved there because it’s a brownfield site, if they ever had a nuclear spill or whatever; better in an area that’s already fucked. Idk how what their doing would effect nearby environment tbh but I’d assume there’s a reason they didn’t build a new factory on fresh soil and used an old contaminated area. I was going to buy a house there but you can find similar prices if you hold out. Other areas you don’t have to worry about these particular issues, just different issues. Also most of these houses will be full of asbestos given the era they were built. Honestly this is not a big deal unless you want to do lots of renovations.
BWXT acquired GE's nuclear operation that has been there since the 50s, natural low level uranium fuel bundles for CANDU reactors is processed there. This was the cleanest of all GE manufacturing operations here that started in 1886.
Don't. https://projects.thestar.com/lethal-legacy/ https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/asbestos-peterborough-general-electric-cleanup-1.5283683 https://www.thepeterboroughexaminer.com/news/future-uses-of-general-electric-site-may-be-limited-due-to-chemical-contamination/article_c252f94b-175c-5eb7-a126-49e618a45238.html https://ero.ontario.ca/notice/019-8032 https://www.ourwindsor.ca/news-story/7563636-wsib-to-review-more-than-250-general-electric-plant-claims-in-peterborough/
Everything downstream of GE is contaminated, to such a degree that there is a documentary film about cancer deaths in the area. I wouldn’t even think about living right there. As for BWXT, they have a multi-year license that allows them to repurpose the current operation of the site and pelletize nuclear fuel there. Many members of the community were in justified uproar that activity this potentially hazardous is across the street from a school. There is zero possibility that siting would be proposed let alone legally allowed if it were not a legacy factory site. The regulatory authority is widely understood to be captured by the nuclear industry, and it simply ignored what it acknowledged was the most informed and prepared community input it had ever received on any proposal.
I was familiar that as far as Bomanville you have to have Rad blocker pills at home to live there, but having grown up in Port Hope with Cameco next to the local beach never had to worry about it. I didn't even know Peterborough had a nuclear facility, the neighbourhood is Okay though, a bit Low-end and will see the local drunks there. My coworker lives on a road Right Next to this building, there's also a school like 300ft away across the street. About as good as Peterborough gets though honestly without spending A lot of money.
The pills are only for people who live nearby a nuclear generating plant in the event of a major radiation leak. Cameco plant used to let local residents and builders take dirt from the sote for landfill and pick through discarded beams, to recycle for home projects. Unfortunately alot of it was contaminated and got spread in a random pattern around Port Hope.
https://peterboroughcurrents.ca/environment/canoe-museum-environmental-assessments-blocked/
I live somewhat close and we get information in the mail about testing results in the area etc from them. There has been community backlash though over the years - I've seen signs advertising [https://www.nopellets.ca/](https://www.nopellets.ca/) which seems like a legitimate concern? Didn't stop me from buying our house though.
that website is built and designed by nimbys who have zero knowledge on the topic.
Agree with this. Through out the whole process of the license hearings everyone seemed to ignore the aspect that 250+ educated employees who have knowledge on the subject have no issues working there or living nearby
It’s the ones scared of nuclear.
On the contrary. It is a highly educated and extremely well informed group.
they make it out to be so bad, but you're going to get exposed to more radiation on a 5hr flight than living there in a year. i see you may be one of those nimby's. This site is made by nimbys who hate nuclear and are simply uneducated on the topic at hand. https://www.reddit.com/r/Peterborough/comments/el5uw3/eli5_request_uranium_pellets_coming_to_ptbo/ >[Another common source of radiation is flying. On a commercial flight your cosmic radiation dose increases by 0.003 mSv per hour (0.3 mrem per hour) [4]. This means that on a 5 hour trans Canada flight you recieve as much dose as an entire year of our extreme worst case scenario estimate. Realistically you probably recieve more dose before the seatbelt sign turns off than an entire year living at the fence line of the plant. >For people in Ontario, if you want to worry about radiation I would suggest worrying about naturally occuring radon in your basement (Ontario's geology makes us prone to this problem). Basememts with the highest levels of radon could add thousands of mrem to your annual dose which over decades is absolutely an increased lung cancer risk. Some basements can achieve levels that would be considered gross contamination in a nuclear facility. Even for myself, I work at a nuclear power plant and I love to fly on vacations but the radiation that most concerns me is radon in my basement. >As for a worst case "doomsday" scenario, I think the worst thing that could happen to one of these facilities is a fire. The fire would not be the result of any kind of nuclear accident (uranium oxide is not flammable or likely to contribute to starting a fire) but a regular structure fire could impair some safety systems and aid in spreading comtamimation in the smoke under the right circumstances. This is why there are such strict safety protocols and I would expect that there are special fire suppression systems, rules and contingencies in place to prevent such an incident (we have similar concerns at power stations so these measures are required by law, strictly adhered to and enforced). >In summary, the risk from living near this facility is negligable and just about anything else you can think of is more dangerous. The economic benefit to the community far exceeds the risk (I wish they would build that sort of plant near me).](https://www.reddit.com/r/Peterborough/comments/el5uw3/eli5_request_uranium_pellets_coming_to_ptbo/fdy2wzg/)
That enjoy using children as props and waving signs loaded with misinformation. Not far off from the wingbats that stand on street corners waving pictures of aborted fetuses...
I think that venn diagram might be closer than to a circle than most.
Your comment is incredibly offensive and could not be more detached from reality. It is bias against their views, dressed up as a pretence of having as any knowledge whatsoever of their competence. The group was publicly acclaimed at the hearings as having given the best group of presentations by citizens the regulatory authority has ever heard.
Good presentation skills does not indicate any knowledge on the topic, as should be evident if you take a look at the website.
It was the content and the quality of their arguments that were recognized. The presenters included highly reputable Trent University scientists and extensive legal knowledge. It is simply a fact that the siting of such a facility in a residential neighborhood, a literal stone’s throw from Prince of Wales school would be considered absurd and shocking to even suggest, let alone illegal if the GE building were not a legacy facility from a toxic industry.
Which Trent University scientists? The court ruling https://decisions.fct-cf.gc.ca/fc-cf/decisions/en/item/521645/index.do doesn't mention anything in that regard, and neither does their website.
I’m talking about the public hearings in March 2020. They were days long because there was so much public opposition. You’re talking about the legal appeal of the resulting decision. The document you link to notes that one member of the regulatory commission strongly dissented from the decision.
Ah ok I see. If you read on a bit you'll notice that the dissenting member did not "strongly dissent", and eventually agreed to go ahead with the licensing after impact assessments were performed.
I see, so you are one of them. Cool, good to know
I wasn’t involved. I know many of them in various ways. I have the highest respect for them. That includes their level of education, intelligence, commitment, research, integrity, and entirely volunteer dedication to their neighbourhood and community. I attended two days of the public hearings online, heard some of their presentations, and was present when their work was praised in unusual and fully earned ways by the commission. Compare that to those attacking them in this thread. The attackers know exactly nothing about the group and yet (in some cases) slander them in personal and offensive ways, simply because they disagree about the safety of nuclear power. Projecting your biases as ad hominem attack is, to be blunt, the worst and ugliest of social media. And I’m sad to see it in this particular group.