McNAMARA: Darlington Intervention

[Oscar]

McNAMARA: Darlington Intervention

Presentation by Pat McNamara to CNSC on December 6, 2012

I would like to commend Mr. Binder for treating intervenors with far greater respect and integrity than we’ve been subjected to by the CNSC in the past.

I’d like to pay respect to one other person I came to know as I researched my first presentation to Port Hope Council on nuclear issues almost a decade ago. I knew nothing about the industry or the technology, even though Port Hope has had a longer exposure to a variety of radioactive contaminations than any other place on the planet.

I went online to research a technical point and came across Dr. Rosallie Bertell’s name. Though I had no idea who she was, I sent her an e-mail asking for help. She replied within minutes with a ten line paragraph on the issue along with the following instructions. “You do not have time to learn about this before your meeting. Drop this into your presentation and attribute it to me. They will not ask you any questions as they will not understand what you’re talking about”

This world-renowned Doctor/Sister/Lady took the time out of her busy schedule and promptly responded to a neophyte. Sadly, we lost Sister Bertell this year after a lifetime dedicated to holding the nuclear industry accountable. I’m sure she’s smiling seeing this many interventions.

Though Dr. Bertell could have written the following words, they actually come from a report on the Safety of Ontario’s Nuclear Reactors by the Select Committee on Ontario Hydro Affairs.

"It is not right to say that a catastrophic accident is impossible. The worst possible accident could involve the spread of radioactive poisons over large areas, killing thousands immediately, killing others through increased susceptibility to cancer, risking genetic defects that could affect future generations, and possibly contaminating large land areas for future habitation or cultivation". (Safety of Ontario’s Nuclear Reactors, Select Committee on Ontario Hydro Affairs, 1980)

Ontario has done little to prepare for an accident of this magnitude. Nor is it capable of doing so. Patsy Thompson and the CNSC are considering a ten km. impact area for an accident at a reactor. Have they seen no coverage of Fukushima? The environmental assessment on Cameco in Port Hope considered a ten km. impact area and we were repeatedly assured that any potential impact from Cameco was only a small fraction of the dangers presented by the reactors. The people from Fukushima and the rest of Japan were given the same false assurances the CNSC is giving us.

REFURBISHMENTS

Ontario is considering the refurbishment of the Darlington reactors to allow them to continue to produce electricity that is too cheap to meter. As we’ve seen over the past fifty years, the nuclear industry has never been able to keep this promise. There have been massive cost overruns on every project they’ve undertaken in this country.

AECL originally claimed the CANDU reactors would last for 40 years but the first CANDU reactor was shut down in 1983 at Pickering A after 12 years of service for re-tubing. All four of the Pickering A reactors were re-tubed over the following 10 years. In 1997, all four Pickering A and three of Bruce Powers reactors were shut down for accumulated safety problems and lack of reliability.

In 1999, Ontario Power Generation estimated it would cost $1.1 billion dollars and take three years to get all four Pickering A reactors back in service. The cost to repair Unit 4 was $800 million dollars over budget and two years late. They spent more money fixing one reactor than the original estimate for all four reactors. OPG went ahead and fixed Unit 1 at a cost of $1 billion. Due to the delays and massive cost overruns of the first two reactors, OPG decided to permanently shut down Units 3 & 4.

By 2005, Bruce Power restarted reactors 3 and 4 at a cost of $720 million, which was more than double their initial estimate of $340 million. Bruce Power’s most recent refurbishment was more than $2 billion over budget and they contaminated over 500 employees and contractors with alpha radiation.

This event showed how poorly prepared the CNSC and our government are if there is an accident. AECL had the only laboratory in the country that was certified to test the people who were exposed to alpha radiation and it was only able to process ten people per week. The CNSC had to extend accreditation to two facilities in the United States to help speed up the process.

Pointe Lepreau was more than a billion over budget on their refurbishment and Canadian taxpayers had to cough up $200 million for cost overruns on a South Korean refurbishment by Atomic Energy of Canada Limited.

NUCLEAR RENAISSANCE

Then the nuclear renaissance came along. By 2009, plans were made to build four reactors in Alberta, two in Saskatchewan, two at Bruce Power, one at Nanticoke, two at Darlington and another one in New Brunswick. All of have been aborted except for Darlington and it’s on life-support after AECL quoted a price of $13 billion per reactor. No one could support reactor construction at these prices.

The high costs and uncertainties of refurbishments led the Quebec government to order the closure of Gentilly 2 this month. In the words of the President of Hydro-Québec Thierry Vandal Wednesday “We are tracking similar projects that started in New Brunswick and in South Korea, and what has come out of these other projects are significant cost overruns, and significant cost increases. What we've seen since 2008 is an increase in the cost of refurbishing project at the same time as we've seen a decline over the overall value of electricity and in surrounding markets.”

Dominion Nuclear recently announced that the Kewaunee reactor in Wisconsin will permanently shut down in the spring. Reactors in Florida and San Onofre will be closed before long because they need cost prohibitive repairs. Only 2 out of 54 reactors in Japan are operating and residents are fiercely opposed to any more starting up. The industry-caused Fukushima catastrophe motivated governments in Germany, Belgium, and Switzerland to announce plans to phase out nuclear power. Germany has already closed half a dozen reactors.

This hearing isn’t part of a nuclear renaissance in Canada. It’s a last gasp of a dying industry. There are no longer other projects on the horizon in Canada. The intention to build small reactors for the tarsands had no basis in reality and we exposed it as such in Alberta.

The impact of Darlington is felt well beyond the ten km zone. It is felt all the way to Saskatchewan where millions of tonnes of mine tailings lay where they were abandoned. It’s being felt in impoverished Saskatchewan communities which have been divided over a repository for high-level radioactive waste from your reactors.

There's a great deal of confusion in northern Saskatchewan with the term "Willing Host Community" as it pertains to the Nuclear Waste Management Organization's (NWMO) attempt to find a host community. This matter must be cleared up before the process of educating northern residents proceeds any further. After all, how does NWMO or our groups know who to educate if the affected surrounding communities haven’t been identified?

A signed letter from CNSC president Michael Binder from March 2010 provides some of the answers. Mr. Binder’s letter states “When the CNSC receives a licence application, CNSC staff undertakes a careful analysis to identify all potentially interested and/or affected persons. Depending on the application, those persons could be within a municipality, region or a province, and are not necessarily limited to a “community.”

The CNSC letter makes it very clear that the CNSC determines the parameters of the community that must be consulted for its willingness to host the project. The problem with this definition is that the CNSC does not do so until it receives a licence application. In the case of the high-level waste storage facility, the licence application is still many years away. The CNSC must change this policy now so that we can educate and consult with the appropriate communities.

The conduct of the nuclear industry’s Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) in Saskatchewan has been reprehensible. NWMO officials and their paid henchmen have targeted youth in the north to get their message across. Paid agents from NWMO were illegally taking students out of school to indoctrinate them on the benefits of having high-level nuclear waste near their communities. The youth in Pinehpouse saw through the charade and started opposing NWMO.

Pinehouse had a vibrant Youth Town Council led by 15-year old Regan Misponas. It all started unraveling when Regan and his council voiced their opposition to NWMO’s waste storage site. Town Council and the Executive Director of the Kineepik Metis Council, Vince Natomagan, tried to get Regan to change his mind by offering a number of inducements aimed at youth in the community. Regan wouldn’t change his mind so council responded by shutting Regan out of any further involvement with town council.

NWMO’s Aboriginal Liaison Pat Patton and a NWMO staffer called Regan into a meeting with no one else in the room or in other offices. They interrogated Regan for an hour over his stance on the waste repository. Regan admitted he was afraid after this encounter.

The final straw came after Regan spoke to a public meeting of 200 people in Beauval organized by the Committee for Future Generations. Jim Sinclair, a paid advisor to NWMO, was the next speaker. He told the audience they had to take NWMO’s proposal seriously as it would mean a lot of money to deal with the suicides, drugs and alcohol in the community. Then he pointed at Regan and said “You will be in jail before you even graduate, so you might as well go hang yourself with your Metis sash.” People in the room were stunned at this inappropriate attack on a 17-year old whose only crime was that he was concerned about his community’s future.

This attack by NWMO had the desired results. Regan’s parents forbade him from any further involvement in the issue or with the council in Pinehouse. NWMO saw nothing wrong with Jim Sinclair’s disgusting outburst as he continued to represent NWMO at subsequent meetings.

Though these impacts are happening thousands of kilometers away, they are being caused by the reactors you want to refurbish because of the waste they create. These reactors are responsible for the mine tailings contaminating the north of Saskatchewan as well. Canadians are also exposed to radioactive material from transportation, refining, conversion, rod manufacturing and from the reactors themselves.

The experts quote statistics in picocurries per litre, microsieverts per hour, milli working levels, curries, rads, greys to tell us we’re safe. After ten years of study and research, the sad truth is that a single particle of radioactive material from any of the aforementioned sources can cause a cancer, a death or a mutation. The rest of it is just smoke and mirrors.

Dr. Bertell was right that day as none of the councilors asked any questions; nor did they answer any of mine. That’s been a constant to the present day; the nuclear industry, the CNSC and our elected officials will not answer our questions.

You didn’t keep your promise to answer our questions, Mr. Binder.