Heckler shouted ‘Kill the kids’ at BWXT picketers

Citizens Against Radioactive Neighbourhoods (CARN) continues to hold biweekly pickets to draw attention to the health hazards BWXT could inflict upon 600 children at Prince of Wales Elementary School.

On Oct. 24, a car drove slowly past the picketers on Monaghan Road. From the passenger seat a young man yelled, “Kill the kids.” Then the car sped away.

If BWXT’s pending application to manufacture pellets for nuclear fuel bundles is approved, all 600 children, along with everyone living or working within a two-kilometre zone around the school, will be subjected to increased levels of carcinogenic uranium dioxide emissions.

In late January 2020, we received shockingly bad news. The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) released test results showing beryllium emissions from BWXT operations have been steadily increasing since 2014. The highest levels of beryllium contamination are in the Prince of Wales schoolyard. As well, beryllium levels are increasing as far away as Victoria Park and Del Crary Park. Knowing beryllium is an extremely toxic carcinogen, the CNSC ordered more soil tests and those results are due on Oct. 30.

The thoughtless young heckler who yelled “kill the kids” likely doesn’t pose any real threat to Prince of Wales students. Sadly, BWXT nuclear operations can be a serious hazard to schoolchildren. In May 2019, residents of Piketon, Ohio, launched a class-action lawsuit against BWXT after radioactive contamination was found inside and outside their local middle school. Cancer rates within 30 miles of the Piketon factory are 700 per cent higher than the national average.

John MacQuarrie (president of BWXT NEC Canada, a Canadian subsidiary of BWX Technologies Inc.) was asked, at the March CNSC hearings, about this lawsuit. He brushed it off, saying it was a different company. MacQuarrie gets his marching orders directly from BWXT Technologies Inc. and they are already named in a lawsuit where children have died. Will MacQuarrie stand up to his bosses and spend the necessary money to protect Peterborough schoolchildren from multiple carcinogenic emissions coming from the BWXT Monaghan Road factory?

Kathryn Campbell, Bolivar Street