Regulating Idle Uranium Mines In Canada

On May 31, 2000 the

Nuclear Safety and Control Act (NSCA)

came into force in Canada. As a result of changes introduced in this new legislation new attention was brought to the assessment and regulation of these legacy properties. Most were abandoned and their safety and long-term management is the responsibility of various levels of government. Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) staff initiated the Contaminated Lands Evaluation and Assessment Network (CLEAN) program to determine what regulatory activities were required at these and other sites in Canada. The idle mine portion of the CLEAN program began as an outreach program to inform various stakeholders of their responsibilities under the

NSCA

and to catalog the available information for each of these mines. This resulted in two separate initiatives, one to licence high-risk sites and one to exempt radiologically low-risk sites from CNSC licensing.