Is the nuclear-waste dump project at Chalk River really giving taxpayers value for money?

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Recently, Ottawans learned that SNC-Lavalin, now AtkinsRéalis, is being sued for $100 million over its management of the Trillium Line light-rail construction. But few taxpayers know of SNC-Lavalin’s leading role in another contract that is costing them billions.

In 2015, an SNC-led consortium landed a 10-year, $10-billion federal contract to manage nuclear facilities. The jewel in that crown is Chalk River, home to laboratories and two defunct nuclear reactors on the shores of the Ottawa River, 180 kilometres upstream from the national capital. SNC-Lavalin runs the operation along with two Texas-based companies, Fluor and Jacobs.

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Canadian Nuclear Laboratories (CNL) is the public face of this government-owned, contractor-operated (Go-Co) deal. A Go-Co model was also used to manage nuclear waste liabilities in the United Kingdom, until it was cancelled after a scandal and a parliamentary inquiry.

The Canadian Go-Co is currently costing taxpayers more than $1.4 billion a year — more than the annual budget of the CBC. The cost of these operations to Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. (AECL) has ballooned by almost 300 per cent in the past 10 years, making it now among the feds’ most expensive contracts

What has been accomplished in that decade; what is the value for money for Canadian taxpayers? The Go-Co was supposed to bring private-sector managerial skills into cleaning up the Canadian government’s huge nuclear waste liabilities. But on the government’s estimates, those liabilities have actually grown, from $7.5 billion in 2015 to $9.8 billion in 2024.

And why have the contract’s costs gone up so much? Well, plans at the Chalk River campus include, like the Trillium Line, an ambitious construction project: a 107,000 sq.-ft. “state-of-the-art research complex” slated to be completed in 2028. It’s also described as “a modern, efficient, world-class nuclear lab to serve the needs of the Government of Canada and the Canadian nuclear industry.”

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But those are not the only costs. CNL is managed by 14 executives and 30 management contract staff, with an average salary and expenses of $510,000 a year, for a total of $22.5 million in 2023. Two-thirds of the managers and executives are non-Canadians. CNL’s current president and CEO is Jack Craig, who started as an engineer with the U.S. Navy, had a long career with the U.S. Department of Energy, and had a stint as the Chief Operating Officer of SNC-Lavalin’s U.S. nuclear division from 2021 to 2024, before stepping into the CNL role last April.

CNL has spent seven years defending a contentious plan to create a million-cubic-metre mound of radioactive waste at Chalk River, dubbed the Near Surface Disposal Facility, designed to dispose of contaminated buildings, soil and equipment from 80 years of laboratory and reactor operations, which it says is for low-level radioactive waste. Citizen groups dispute this: It will contain dozens of radionuclides including tritium, uranium, plutonium and the gamma-ray emitters cobalt-60 and cesium-137, as well as toxins like PCBs, mercury, arsenic and lead.

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Small problem: municipalities, including Ottawa, Gatineau and Montreal, as well as many residents, worry about what could wash into the Ottawa River. It’s a major watershed that serves the national capital, empties into the St. Lawrence Seaway, and provides drinking water for millions. The facility was finally approved by the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission in 2024, but is now tied up in three court challenges, all costing taxpayers even more for lawyers to fight against citizens.

The first challenge comes Kebaowek First Nation, one of 10 Algonquin First Nations that have not consented to the radioactive mound. The second court case says the CNSC did not follow its own rules about an allowable radiation dose to future generations from the radionuclides that will be abandoned in the permanent dump. The third case, heard in Federal Court in February, says that the project endangers species at risk.

What else has the Go-Co contract accomplished? CNL was partnering with Ultra Safe Nuclear Corporation to plan a 15 MW micro-reactor at Chalk River, billed as a “clean energy demonstration project.” UNSC’s recent bankruptcy would seem likely to set back these plans.

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In a recent news release, CNL president Craig boasts of a “strong year” at CNL, including among others: research on fusion and hydrogen fuel; the relocation of “two large activity Cesium-137 sources from the Whiteshell Laboratories (WL) site (in Manitoba) to the Chalk River Laboratories campus for long-term storage”; the building of “meaningful relationships” with Indigenous peoples; and the signing of academic partnerships with the Universities of Regina and Saskatchewan.

Are Canadians really getting long-term value for a $1.4 billion-a-year investment?

SNC-Lavalin/AtkinsRéalis and its U.S. partners’ lucrative 10-year contract is up for renewal in 2025. AECL is well advanced in the procurement process. Will scrutinizing this contract be a priority for this or the next federal government, and will Canadian taxpayers’ interests be high on the list? Or will costs continue to balloon, to the benefit of U.S. corporations and American executives?

Eva Schacherl is a member of the Council of Canadians’ Ottawa Chapter. Ole Hendrickson is an ecologist, a former federal research scientist, and chair of the Sierra Club Canada Foundation’s national conservation committee.

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