Canada’s nuclear safety plans don’t stand up to scrutiny

Are Canada’s nuclear power plants ready in case of disaster?, The Star.com
Meltdown at Fukushima forced nuclear facilities across the country to review their fail-safe measures, but the modifications being put in place might still be inadequate. By: Kevin Bissett The Canadian Press, Jul 18 2015

FREDERICTON—More than four years after an earthquake and tsunami triggered a meltdown of three nuclear reactors in Japan, lessons learned are still being put into place at nuclear power plants in Canada.

But one critic is questioning whether the industry and the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission have gone far enough in preparing for potential disasters, particularly in light of climate change.

Shawn-Patrick Stensil, a nuclear industry observer with Greenpeace, said that, while the technical changes mandated by the commission are good, there also needs to be a new mindset in the nuclear industry after what happened at the Fukushima Dai-ichi facility.

Using a recent licence-renewal hearing for the Bruce nuclear plants in Ontario as an example, he said discussions on tornado strengths were inadequate and more severe weather must be considered as a result of climate change.

“Fukushima should be a warning that we should be looking at these new, more extreme weather events in the risk assessments of all plants globally, and we haven’t done that yet,” Stensil added.

Ramzi Jammal, executive vice-president of the commission, said it launched a review of Canadian nuclear power plants shortly after the March 2011 accident at Fukushima. Two years later, it produced a report and identified changes that must be completed by the end of this year.

“We need to expect the unexpected,” he said.

Before Fukushima, Jammal said the emphasis in the nuclear industry was on design and prevention, but now it’s on prevention and mitigation. “Now we’re saying accidents are going to occur. We are going to design and put into place emergency measures to deal with off-site consequences,” he said.

The effort is to make nuclear power plants completely self-sufficient in situations that would stress a facility beyond most reasonable and probable scenarios, Jammal said.

He said that means making each facility able to provide its own backup power, cooling water and other key safety measures to protect a reactor in the event of earthquakes, tornadoes, blackouts and even terrorism. They need to be self-sufficient for three days to a week, depending on how remote the facility is located.

At New Brunswick’s Point Lepreau nuclear power plant, it has meant a number of measures including increasing the number of diesel generators to four from two, adding a new building for emergency equipment, installing a large diesel storage tank, and adding pumps and hoses to ensure a supply of water to maintain cooling of radioactive fuel…………

Stensil said the industry in Canada must not dismiss possible events because they have a low probability of happening.

There has also been little examination by the nuclear safety commission of an accident involving multiple reactors, said Stensil, who is based in Toronto.

“We have 10 reactors in the GTA (Greater Toronto Area). They’ve never provided data on whether emergency planning can cope with that scale of accident,” he said……..http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2015/07/18/are-canadas-nuclear-power-plants-ready-in-case-of-disaster.html

July 19, 2015 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Canada, safety

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