PUBLICATION     CBC News and Current Affairs 5th Estate Program
DATE    Tue 10 Nov 1998
STORY LENGTH    2919

VOICE-OVER ANNOUNCER: And now, Francine Pelletier.

FRANCINE PELLETIER: Welcome back. In the cold of northern Saskatchewan
there's a hole in the ground, an enormous hole, waiting to be filled. A
French uranium company - it's enormous too - plans to fill that hole with
radioactive waste, turning it into one of the hottest places this side of
the sun. A lot of people in Saskatchewan think that's a bad idea because
the company called Cogema hasn't done such a wonderful job of handling its
garbage in the past. But, Trust us, says the company, and trust they do -
both the province's NDP government and the federal regulator. Still, the
questions wont' go away. Why will this time be any different?

It may not look like much, but this bleak hole in the ground is actually 30
stories high and four football fields wide, and if a French nuclear company
has its way, this pit at Maclean Lake, in northern Saskatchewan's
hinterland, will soon hold one of the most dangerous substances on earth:
radioactive waste from uranium mining, a substance that remains toxic for
far longer than even waste from nuclear reactors.

Uranium mining is big business in Saskatchewan, and the French state-owned
company called Cogema, one of its prime players. With four new mines in the
works, Cogema is about to sizably increase its stake. That will produce
tons of radioactive waste called tailings. Because of its near infinite
life-span, no one has really figured out how to dispose of this stuff
safely, once and for all.

PETER PREBBLE (NDP MLA, Saskatchewan): This is one of the largest and most
dangerous radioactive and toxic waste dumps in Canada. We're talking about
radioactive waste that will be hazardous for over a 100,000 years.

PELLETIER: At Cogema's headquarters in Saskatoon, the message is altogether
more upbeat: Trust us, we know what we're doing, says president Arnaud de
Bourayne.

ARNAUD DE BOURAYNE (president, Cogema): Our life and our profession is to
live in the natural environment and to explore it and to operate the
underground resources. I can tell you my purpose here is to show that we
are very dependable and very sustainable.

PELLETIER: But the people most affected by Cogema's projects aren't
convinced everything's just fine. This is Wollaston Lake, 1,000 kilometers
north of Saskatoon, home to 1,200 Den. There is always the danger of
uranium waste seeping into the groundwater and contaminating nearby lakes.
If that happens, the Den will be the first to pay, says Chief John Dantouze.

JOHN DANTOUZE (Chief, Wollaston Lake Dene): What matters to them is the
dollar figure, and the dollar sign at the end of the day, and that's their
main objective, is to make money and get out as fast as they can.

PELLETIER: The watery expanses of northern Saskatchewan contain an amazing
thirty per cent of the world's uranium. Little wonder that
nuclear-dependent France made a bee-line for this place once its own
uranium started to run out in the early eighties. Even the princely Franois
Mitterand came courting. It was a marriage made in heaven: France needed
the uranium, Saskatchewan needed the cash. Conservative Premier Grant
Devine was thrilled by the new partnership. But when Roy Romanow led the
NDP to victory in 1991, many expected that honeymoon to end. For almost a
decade, the New Democrats had held firm on their anti-uranium mining policy.

ROY ROMANOW (premier, Saskatchewan): We shall overcome our obstacles and
rebuild!

PELLETIER: No one was more elated at the idea of rebuilding than Peter
Prebble, NDP MLA for nine years and staunch opponent of uranium mining.

PREBBLE: It was a very, very exciting moment because it held so much
promise for the future.

PELLETIER: But no amount of promises can withstand the ra-ta-ta-tat of
economic pressure. The NDP's anti-nuclear stand was quickly laid to rest by
Roy Romanow: uranium mining creates jobs, after all, and no less than $50
million dollars a year in provincial revenue.

Having now embraced uranium mining, the NDP now had to deal what went with
it: a special review panel set up by Ottawa and Regina to monitor uranium
mining. The five-member panel had just begun examining Cogema's new
projects at Maclean Lake, near Wollaston Lake. It was supposed to make sure
everything was properly controlled, and if it wasn't, the panel even had
the power to stop the project cold.

>From the start, one issue loomed large: waste disposal. To the panel's
surprise, Cogema didn't seem to have a clear idea how to deal with one of
the world's largest radioactive dumps. Donald Lee was the chairman of the
panel.

DONALD LEE (chairman of uranium mining review panel): Cogema changed its
mind several times about how it was going to engineer that pit. In fact, it
held up our report up for over a year because they changed their ideas
about how they were going to handle the engineering in the pit.

PELLETIER: After two years of hearings, Cogema still hadn't come up with a
satisfactory plan for tailings disposal, so the panel laid down the law and
recommended a five-year moratorium. Don't let Cogema build, it told the
government, until we know exactly what's going to happen to the waste.

So what did the government do? Listen to its own review panel? Conduct more
research? Take the time to figure it out? Uh uh. Within two months, both
federal and provincial governments had given Cogema the go-ahead to start
mining at Maclean Lake. While the panel members obviously didn't trust
Cogema to manage its own garbage, government authorities, curiously enough,
did.

DANTOUZE: The government just went ahead and ignored our recommendation and
proceeded with full development of Maclean Lake.

PELLETIER: It was a hell of a slap in the face, wasn't it?

DANTOUZE: Absolutely. The credibility of the panel was just down the tubes
at that time.

PELLETIER: Down south in Regina, the government makes no apologies for
ignoring the panel. Environment minister, Lorne Scott.

LORNE SCOTT (Saskatchewan environment minister): We felt that the approval
was in order. We had gone through the various hoops.

PELLETIER: But isn't that being hypocritical, Mr. Scott? You put in place a
review panel and then you turn around and ignore them.

SCOTT: Well, the panel said delay five years, it didn't say what to do in
that five years, so we felt at the time that we would use that five-year
window of opportunity to evaluate, study and put in various systems in
place to ensure that the mine will operate safely.

PELLETIER: What the goverment's really saying is, We trust Cogema and now
you'll just have to trust us. But maybe someone should have checked
Cogema's track record back home, in France, first.

The region of the Limousin, in southwestern France, is truly delightful,
but for one thing: this is the area where uranium was once heavily mined.
Centuries-old villages, such as Bessines, are within walking distance of
now mostly abandoned mines. In its heyday, the Limousin was home to 40
uranium mines, all of them belonging to Cogema. The company is entirely
owned by the French government, which might explain why there are so few
controls on the industry. A simple fence separates a hazardous area from a
public road. Environmental law in France is so lax you could drive a truck
through it. In fact, until the early nineties, Cogema dumped over 20
million ton of tailings into open air pits and abandoned mine shafts,
insisting all the while that this posed any kind of threat.

DE BOURAYNE: Our tailings area have been controlled, remediated,
reclamated, decommissioned about 20 or 30 years in advance compared to the
other countries. And this is something which is maybe the best example of
success we have.

PELLETIER: We asked president de Bourayne if he saw any problem with the
way Cogema had managed its waste dumps in France.

DE BOURAYNE: Deposition of tailings is a very standard technology.
It's...maybe one of the first case where it was used 20 or 30 years ago,
it's been successful; it was the best solution.

PELLETIER: Are you saying it's been successful in France?

DE BOURAYNE: Definitely. Definitely.

PELLETIER: In Bessines, Jeanette Gorbi disagrees. Through the seventies and
eighties she had to endure a parade of 30-ton trucks hauling tailings to
Cogema's dump, right past her window.

JEANETTE GORBI (translator): It was horrible. Imagine a 30-ton truck going
by every three minutes, one on its way up with another following right
behind. The sludge was everywhere.

PELLETIER: But even with radioactive sludge caked onto the front of her
house, Gorbi found it wasn't easy to speak out against Cogema in a company
town.

GORBI: We had to choose: Do we have a cash register where our hearts should
be, or do we stand-up for the environment for the future of our children.

PELLETIER: By 1993, Jeanette Gorbi and a handful of other angry residents
had had enough. Radiation experts were finally called in and, guess what?
Gorbi's house contained high levels of radioactivity. That was just the
beginning. Streams and meadows all around Bessines were then tested for
radioactivity by a team of scientists from an independent laboratory called
CRII-RAD. Bruno Charyon, a nuclear engineer, headed the radiation-testing
team.

BRUNO CHARYON (nuclear engineer): When we came in 1993, we proved that the
level of radioactivity, uranium radium sediments, was so high that they
should have been considered as radioactive waste. The people here are
exposed to an extra risk of cancer because of the radiation, because of the
contamination of the water, because of the transfer of radioactivity from
the sediments to the grass.

PELLETIER: In 1993, CRII-RAD warned that, like most disposal pits, Cogema's
dumps were probably leaking. Cogema disputes CRII-RAD's conclusions,
putting its efforts instead into transforming old pits into flowery water
ponds. In glossy brochures sent to residents, Cogema maintains that it's so
safe here, you can fish, that radioactivity is well within safety limits,
according to monitoring stations next to its sites. But we didn't have to
go very far to find much higher readings. We asked Bruno Charyon to do some
testing for us.

On a public road that cuts through a Cogema mine, we found contamination in
the ditches four times what Cogema was reporting. The amazing lack of
public accountability in France has left the people who live here at the
mercy of big companies like Cogema. But in Canada, we have regulatory
agencies such as the AECB, the Atomic Energy Control Board, to make sure
uranium mining is done safely. Murray Duncan is one of its directors.

PELLETIER: Are you aware of Cogema's track record in France?

MURRAY DUNCAN (director, Atomic Energy Control Board): To a degree, yes.

PELLETIER: What do you know of its track record?

DUNCAN: They're a major company involved - in fact, they're the primary
company involved - in France. Their track record seems to be very good.

PELLETIER: Well, our information is slightly different, that their track
record is not good in France, that the mines in the Limousin, where they've
been principally, has been called a national scandal.

DUNCAN: Well, that's unfortunate, but as far as we're concerned, we look at
how they behave in Canada and....

PELLETIER: Why would they behave in Canada better than they do in France,
their own country?

DUNCAN: Well, I'm not sure, but all we will look at is how they behave
here, and I can't make that judgment as to why they would.

PELLETIER: When we come back, so how does Cogema behave in Canada?

: The end result was this: many of the concrete vaults on site began to leak.

COMMERCIAL BREAK:

VOICE-OVER ANNOUNCER: And now we return to the fifth estate.

PELLETIER: Cogema's French report card is nothing to boast about, but what
kind of grades does it get here in Canada? This is where it all started for
the French nuclear giant: Cluff Lake in northwestern Saskatchewan. When
this mine began in 1981, it could boast of the hottest, richest ore in
Canada. With both federal and provincial governments keeping watch, our
French guest was expected to do things right. After all, there were
environmental hearings on the company's mining plans then too. Twenty years
ago, just as today, what most interested the panel was What was Cogema
going to dispose of the uranium waste? Trust us, said the company. We have
a plan.

The original plan was to store the waste in underground vaults, but that
plan was abandoned. Next idea: pack the waste in concrete drums made to
last hundreds and hundreds of years. A shed was temporarily built to store
the drums. Unfortunately, the shed became dangerously radioactive and that
had to be abandoned. Before Cogema could even come up with plan number
three, the drums that were near indestructible had started leaking.

PREBBLE: The end results was this: many of the concrete vaults on site
began to leak, radioactive tailings began to leak out of the vaults, and
the whole plan had to be abandoned.

PELLETIER: Finally, Cogema came up with this: a tailings pond - a good
solution, says the company. But radium was recently found leaking into a
nearby lake. Cogema says it came from a contaminated pipe, not their pond.
Cogema president de Bourayne insists there's nothing to worry about.

(to Mr. de Bourayne) Your tailings disposal facility that went wrong in the
eighties, it's still not right. It's contaminated, seeping out.

DE BOURAYNE: I think you are drawing conclusions that nobody can draw right
now. It's...we have to show that there is no adverse effect related to this
tailing area, and this is a continuous...we operate a continuous monitoring.

PELLETIER: But will continuous monitoring be enough to guarantee the safety
of this monster? Remember the pit at Maclean Lake? A hundred fifteen metres
deep and 400 metres wide, it can hold the equivalent of 1,400 Olympic
swimming pools of radioactive waste. If Cogema couldn't make things work at
its oldest mine, why would things be any better at Maclean Lake, its latest
endeavor? Now, just to remind you what happened there: In 1993, the review
panel said, More study but no mining. The government said, You can study
all you want, but go ahead and mine. Sooner or later, Cogema would surely
come up with a plan that worked. So for four more years the panel poured
over the evidence. Disturbing testimony came from one of Cogema's own
business partners. The German mining company Uranertz told the panel that
Cogema simply didn't know how its disposal pit would work: "We have serious
concerns that the pit may not be suitable for use..." they wrote.

There was more bad news. The tailings pond that Cogema was using as a model
for MacLean was found to be leaking alarmingly high levels of arsenic, the
poisonous chemical found in uranium mining. It was all too much for Dene
leader John Dantouze, who'd sat on the panel to defend native interests.

DANTOUZE: As of today, I'll be resigning.

PELLETIER: He wasn't alone. Dr. Annalee Yassi, an occupational and
community health specialist, quit too. She says panel members were under
pressure to give Cogema the go-ahead.

PELLETIER: Who was putting the pressure on?

DR. ANNALEE YASSI (occupational and community health specialist) Presumably
the pressure was coming from the companies' putting pressure on the
government to manage the panel. The uranium mining companies certainly
didn't set up in the north because they wanted to just do something that
they thought would benefit the communities in the north. They had their own
agenda, and the government had their own agenda.

PELLETIER: Despite disturbing evidence and the resignation of two key
members, the review panel finally did recommend that Cogema's plans be
approved, but not without first issuing this chilling warning: "A company
that proposes to operate a waste dump, the most dangerous in Canada, should
have greater competence and stability than Cogema has demonstrated".

Not exactly a ringing endorsement, but good enough for environment minister
Lorne Scott, who will almost certainly give Cogema the full go-ahead at
Maclean Lake.

PELLETIER: What do you say to critics who say that the NDP has sold out to
the business agenda?

SCOTT: We have about a third of the uranium resources in the world are
found in Saskatchewan, and if we today and this government do not develop
this resource, certainly a future government will.

PELLETIER: And so much for principles?

SCOTT: Well, like I say, in another...a future government undoubtedly would
get into the mining industry.

PELLETIER: But you can understand that for a lot of people this is a
ticking bomb in Saskatchewan.

SCOTT: Well, undoubtedly 30, 40 years from now, probably we will be
able...someone will see that we shouldn't maybe have done something the way
we did today, but I guess that we're confident we have the technology to
rectify that.

PELLETIER: But that confidence is already being undermined. Last April, a
spill at the Maclean mine site killed fish in a neighbouring lake. Cogema
was slapped with a 12, 000$ fine. The company says it was a minor spill and
the problem is fixed. Trust them.

Just in the last few weeks inspectors found serious problems with a filter
drain for that giant pit. The AECB ordered Cogema to stop building for now.
The company says it can be trusted to fix the problem.

That's the fifth estate for tonight. See you next week. Bon soir. ??

CBC News and Current Affairs
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