The Port Hope Area Initiative (PHAI) is a federal environmental clean-up program. Its mandate is the remediation and local, long-term, safe management of approximately $1.7 million cubic metres of historic low-level radioactive waste in the municipalities of Port Hope and Clarington in southern Ontario. The historic waste resulted from the radium and uranium refining operations of the former Crown corporation, Eldorado Nuclear Limited, and its private sector predecessors, which operated until 1988.
The PHAI has two projects: the Port Hope Project and the Port Granby Project.
The Port Hope Project involves the construction of an engineered above ground mound and supporting infrastructure for the safe, long-term management of approximately $1.2 million cubic metres of historic low-level radioactive waste, cleanup of the waste from various major sites and small-scale sites in Port Hope and transportation of the waste to a new long-term waste management facility (LTWMF) currently under construction. After the facility is capped and closed, anticipated to be in 2025, ongoing maintenance and monitoring will continue for many years.
