Fwd: CORRECTION to my article "Radioactive Fertilizers and the Nuclear Industry"

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Ellen Thomas

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Dec 19, 2025, 12:38:27 PM (3 days ago) Dec 19
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-------- Forwarded Message --------
Subject: CORRECTION to my article "Radioactive Fertilizers and the Nuclear Industry"
Date: Thu, 18 Dec 2025 21:35:36 -0500
From: Gordon Edwards <cc...@web.ca>
To: Gordon Edwards <cc...@web.ca>


Friends and Colleagues -

I got my facts wrong about where the radioactive fertilizer comes from in the context of the Canadian uranium industry. I have sent the following letter to the editors of NuclearNews.net and Radioactive Free Lakeland urging them to publish the correction.  

Please note that the Blind River Uranium Refinery is not involved in the production of radioactive fertilizer, but that other uranium processing facilities in Canada – also owned by Cameco – are so involved. My apologies for the misinformation in the article based on my own misunderstanding.

Gordon.


Correction. 

I am sorry to say that a retraction or at least a correction is in order, as I was misinformed about the source of the radioactive fertilizer from Canada’s uranium industry. 

In my article "Radioactive Fertilizers and the Nuclear Industry” I wrote that 

"...selling raffinate as fertilizer goes on all the time from the world’s largest uranium refinery owned by Cameco, situated at Blind River on the north shore of Georgian Bay.”

This sentence is incorrect. Raffinate from Blind River is not used as fertilizer. I apologize for the error. 

Radioactive fertilizer from the Canadian uranium industry does not come from the Cameco Blind River refinery but from two other sources – the Cameco Key Lake uranium mill in Northern Saskatchewan, and the Cameo uranium dioxide conversion facility at Port Hope Ontario. 

Moreover, the material that is being used in radioactive fertilizer is not raffinate (i.e. refinery waste). It is ammonium sulphate that is recovered from the Key Lake uranium processing circuits and sold as fertilizer, together with a liquid by-product of Cameco’s Port Hope uranium dioxide conversion plant – an ammonium nitrate solution – that is sold to a local agricultural supply company for use in fertilizer production.

 The use of similar waste solutions from nuclear fuel facilities as fertilizer has been a concern in other jurisdictions as well. 

So at the present time, it is not raffinate but ammonium compounds that have been used in uranium processing that ends up in fertilizer. I apologize for not checking the facts much more carefully..

By the way, back i
n the 1980s, it was discovered that 
sewage sludge (biosolids) from Port Hope, which contained high uranium concentrations, had also been used as fertilizer on agricultural lands, but that practice has been discontinued.

Gordon Edwards.
Gordon Edwards, Ph.D., President,
Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility

Here is the original article -










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