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October 18, INS

MONTREAL (CUP) — High ly enriched nuclear fuel from reactors on five university campuses in Canada is sent to a military plant.in the United States where it is used » to make bombs for the American weapons pro? gramme.

Research reactors at Dal- housie University in Halifax, Ecole Politechnique in Mon- treal, the University of Toronto, McMaster Univer- sity in Hamilton and the Uni- versity of Alberta arefuciicd with highly enriched uranium (80 per cent uranium 235) or “weapons grade” uranium.

This uranium is bought from the U.S. Department of Energy by the Atomic Energy Commission of Canada Limited (AECL, a crown corporation).

The used uranium, still high in uranium 235, is ship- ped to the Savana River Plant in South Carolina where it is

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ies fuel weapons programme

re-processed into plutonium

and tritium for H-bombsh

according to documents pro- vided by Dr. Gordon Edwards,

president of Canadian Coali- -

tion for Nuclear Responsi- bility..

The plutonium generated at Savana is then shipped to Rocky Flats, Colorado where it is made into triggers for atomic bombs. The tritium is used to enhance the explosive power of the bombs.

The money made from this transaction pays for the next shipment of fuel to Canada.

These deals violate the Nu- clear Co—operation Agree— ment between the United States and Canada, dating back to~l955, which bans the use of nuclear materials sup- plied by Canada for military puposes. ,

Edwards, who has been investigating Canada‘s con- tribution to the production of bombs said, “The financial

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returns must be pretty small. ,Just 'enough to get more fuel.” ' ’

“The fuel is our lollipop from the U.S. military, and their way of buying friends and diffusing antagonism to- ward their weapons pro- gramme,” Edwards said.

The smaller reactors at four of the campuses cost about $200,000 to refuel. Re- fuelling the McMaster reactor ten times the size of the others, runs in the millions, according to Fred Davediuk,

manager for research faci-

_ lities at AECL.

Davediuk said Canada is obligated under a binding contract to return the spent fuel to the United States be- Cause it was theirs to begin with.

However, a report from ‘ the United States General Accounting Office (Dec. 13, 1984) confirms ,that no such *ontraet exists and the title.

to spent fuel remains with the country that bought it.

Chief Public Officer in the AECL, Hugh Spence, claim- ed the same thing in a letter to

Quebec Townships Peace in‘

August 1984. He also said the spent fuel was definitely re— processed for civilian pur— poses.

He later had to retract his statements. Even though he had to admit the fuel was used at a military plant, he said in another letter to the peace group that the United States agreed to take an amount equal to the Cana- dian shipment out of the military re-processing drums and put it into civilian ones.

However, Edwards called Savana River and found they only have one drum and it was for military production only.

“They are either lying or incompetent,” said Edwards about AECL officials.

University reactors are

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re-fuelled every 5-10 years, except for the McMaster reactor which is re-fuelled every couple of years. The shipments to and from the United States take place in secret.

The peaceful research at universities is' applied to industry, agriculture and health. For example, the level of arsenic in our drinking water can be tested by putting strings of human hair in the reactor and bombarding it with neutrons. The arsenic in the hair will become radio- active and it can then be

. measured and studied.

However, according to Edwards, every experiment now being done with nuclear fuel can also be done in non— nuclear accelerators which the University of British Columbia and McGill Uni- versity use. These accelera- tors icharge non—nuclear particles to a very high speed which induces radioactivity.

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