Digging into Nova Scotia's uranium ban — and what may come next

When Premier Tim Houston recently raised the idea of reconsidering the province's ban on uranium exploration, the suggestion may have left some people scratching their heads.

After all, it's practically ancient history. Nova Scotia has had a moratorium on exploration for nearly 45 years, and an outright ban for more than 15 years. Some younger residents may not know a thing about the issue.

So what's all the fuss about? How did we get to this point, and what could come next?

What led to the ban

Although uranium-bearing minerals were identified in Nova Scotia as far back as the early 20th century, there were only sporadic exploration efforts made before 1976.

But when the Geological Survey of Canada released a study that year showing promise for exploration, companies rushed to stake their claims. The amount of land covered by uranium exploration licences more than doubled by the following year to cover more than 800,000 hectares in Nova Scotia.

The frenzy was exacerbated by Europe's interest in new energy sources. Uranium is used in the nuclear energy industry, as well as for nuclear weapons and in medicine.

Marilyn Manzer was living on a farm in Lower Burlington, N.S., when she heard that a French company wanted to mine uranium at the headwaters of the nearby Avon River in Hants County.

"We didn't know anything about uranium at the time. We decided to start investigating it."

Local residents formed a group called Citizen Action to Protect the Environment. Members networked with scientists, doctors and activists, with some spending hours in university libraries poring over scientific periodicals to understand the latest developments. 

Public concern led the province to launch an inquiry into the industry.

Forty-four public meetings were held throughout the province, and the vast majority of speakers voiced opposition to uranium exploration and mining.

Residents and organizations raised concerns about the potential for damaging health effects due to radioactivity, the impact on miners' health, contamination of water and air, the potential for a tailings pond or dam leak, and the effect on agriculture and wildlife, among other issues.

"It was pretty intense," Manzer says. "The people who came to the meetings were very seriously concerned about the health and environmental dangers to Nova Scotia from this practice. And a lot of people came because they wanted to learn about it. And then when they did learn about it, they got active, and started agitating to try and get it stopped."

In 1981, public pressure prompted the provincial government to declare a moratorium on uranium exploration and mining, and in 2009 the NDP government legislated a full ban.

Both were seen as victories by those who had pushed for a halt to activities.

But another camp says it's time for the ban to end.

Industry support

The Mining Association of Nova Scotia says many people have misconceptions about uranium.

"Their understanding of uranium comes from action movies where uranium is painted as a villain for the sake of Hollywood storytelling," says Sean Kirby, the executive director. "The reality is it's an essential material that we all benefit from, and that mining it and working with it is a perfectly safe and environmentally responsible activity."

There have been "huge leaps" in the science and technology of uranium mining in recent decades, Kirby says. 

He says most uranium today is mined in such a way that there are no tailings ponds — areas where waste material is stored, usually in above-ground pits. Some operations now are largely mechanized, and the machinery that extracts the uranium is operated remotely by workers who are not directly exposed to the material.

Erin Adlakha, an associate professor of geology at Saint Mary's University, says uranium mining is the safest mining practice in Canada due to the stringent environmental regulations enforced by the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission. The CNSC publishes reports on the safety of Canadian uranium mines and mills.

"They make sure that all environmental risks are considered, monitored and regulated and they also ensure worker safety and also the remediation of mine sites," says Adlakha, who collaborates with the federal and other provincial governments to research uranium deposits.

Adlakha, too, would like to see the ban lifted. She says leaving uranium in the ground can lead to it leaching into groundwater, including drinking water.

She said the ban also stifles exploration of other critical minerals, since they are often found alongside uranium deposits. Under the ban, if uranium is found in quantities higher than 100 parts per million, exploration must stop, even if the company wasn't actually searching for uranium.

"That 100 ppm cutoff is extremely low," Adlakha says. "It's unreasonable — barely above background levels — and there's no science based in that number. It's just an arbitrary cutoff."

How much uranium is in Nova Scotia?

Just how much uranium Nova Scotians are sitting on is unknown.

"We really had our efforts at uranium exploration nipped in the bud back in 1981," says Kirby. "So we can't say definitively whether Nova Scotia actually has any economically viable deposits."

But based on Adlakha's study of historical exploration and data, as well as Nova Scotia's geology, she believes the prospects are promising.

"Where we have this granite that is of the right type to produce uranium deposits overlain by this sandstone that would have marine waters that are great for dissolving and reprecipitating uranium, it's the perfect geological environment to form large uranium deposits."

She likens Nova Scotia's geological setting to that of the Athabasca Basin in northern Saskatchewan and the Olympic Dam deposit in Australia, which are two of the world's top producers of uranium.

Some known hotspots in Nova Scotia include a swath stretching from the Annapolis Valley through the interior of the province toward Halifax County, as well as the Pugwash area.

The Saskatchewan experience

Nova Scotia is not the only province to ban uranium exploration or mining. British Columbia and Quebec also have bans, as well as other jurisdictions internationally.

But another provincial government in Canada has embraced the industry. Saskatchewan has been home to uranium mines since the 1950s, and the current mines operated by Cameco and Orano produce about 20 per cent of the world's uranium supply, and include the world's highest-grade uranium mines.

The mines generated $1.6 billion in sales in 2023, and contributed more than half a billion dollars to the provincial GDP in 2022.

The industry is not, however, without its critics.

Ann Coxworth is a nuclear chemist by training and has been involved with energy and environmental organizations in Saskatchewan for decades.

She says many years ago, the hazards were not well understood, and "really bad mistakes were made," such as dumping tailings directly into lakes. Those practices led to contamination in watersheds that exists to this day.

Coxworth says newer mines are more careful, and technology has advanced over the years. Some proposed mines in Saskatchewan would see tailings mixed with cement and stored underground in the mine, while others would see only the uranium brought to the surface, leaving everything else below ground.

But she and others still worry about the long-term potential for contaminants to escape containment.

"We keep worrying about what the situation is going to be 500 years from now, and that's something that the regulators simply cannot cope with, because there are just too many unknowns."

Coxworth offers this advice as Nova Scotia faces a potential future in uranium: "I would say be very careful. Don't allow things to be rushed. Be prepared to take the time to do all of the necessary consultation."

What's next?

Manzer says she feels betrayed by the possibility of uranium exploration returning to the province, adding that Houston's statement that he wants to "take the 'no' out of Nova Scotia" by pushing for more natural resource development casts her earlier efforts in a negative light.

"We were working our butts off, really, to be positive and to protect this province," she says. "I'm shocked to see this thing rearing up again."

Even if the government decides to open the province to uranium mining tomorrow, "there's nobody beating down our door," says the Mining Association of Nova Scotia's Sean Kirby.

"What you have to do is lift the ban and hope that lifting the ban helps attract interest in our uranium. Certainly there's interest globally in finding more uranium deposits," he says.

When asked recently if a change to the ban was coming, Environment Minister Tim Halman told reporters to "stay tuned."

The spring sitting of the legislature — and the first sitting of Tim Houston's Progressive Conservative supermajority — began Friday.