Thomas Adams

In December 1997, Ontario Hydro mothballed its oldest nuclear station – the four reactors called Pickering A. Now, hoping against hope that these retired nuclear reactors can make a safe and lucrative comeback, Ontario Hydro’s successor corporation, Ontario Power Generation, wants the federal nuclear safety regulator, the Atomic Energy Control Board (AECB), to approve restarting them.

These reactors pose a risk to Canadians coast to coast. Energy Probe is working to keep the reactors closed, but we need your help.

Ontario Hydro, and now Ontario Power, has continually repeated the myth that the decision to suspend operation of the four Pickering reactors had nothing to do with safety. But internal Ontario Hydro documents concede that bad maintenance and operation had led to "unacceptable erosions of the margin of safety afforded the public and employees."

While bad maintenance and operation have risked safety, the obsolete design of these old reactors adds to their risks. For one thing, the 28-year-old reactors have only one emergency shutdown system. Long before the 1986 Chernobyl accident, caused by a failure to shut down, all newer CANDUs were required to have two emergency shutdown systems because any one system might fail when required, and the consequences could be catastrophic. After more than two decades of dithering, the AECB finally decided in 1993 to require a shutdown system improvement. Rather than requiring two independent emergency shutdown systems, AECB chose the quickest, cheapest, least capable improvement, arguing that time was of the essence. The AECB’s 1993 operating licence required Ontario Hydro to upgrade Pickering A’s emergency shutdown system by December 31, 1997. When Ontario Hydro failed to complete that upgrade, that licence condition forced them to close the reactors.

Restarting Pickering A would bring other accident risks. The station is built on what is now known to be a seismically active fault. No acceptable means of managing its radioactive waste is known. The station has been prone to serious accidents and near misses, due to aging, design flaws, and human errors. Operation after major outages and repair work has proven to be particularly risky. One hair-raising event was the loss of control over the rate of the nuclear reaction in parts of the Unit 2 reactor core in 1991, an event with an uncanny similarity to the initiating event in the Chernobyl accident.

Fortunately, safer alternatives to Pickering’s electricity are available. Because of competition in Ontario’s electricity sector, some customers will soon be opting to buy "green" low-impact renewable electricity. And relatively low-cost, low-impact, super-efficient cogeneration could be extremely abundant, particularly if Pickering A remains closed. In fact, Ontario has already started phasing out nuclear power, reducing our dependence from 64% in 1994 to 43% in 1998.

The initial estimate for repairing Pickering A was $800 million. The current estimate is secret, but is rumoured to be $900 million. Past experience has taught us all that official nuclear cost estimates are routinely understated. Because Ontario Power is publicly owned, the money it spends on Pickering A is ultimately a public responsibility.

The AECB is now deciding whether to let Pickering A restart. By law, this federal agency must consider the environmental implications of its decision, and must also decide what rights the public has to be consulted. Unfortunately, Ontario Power has already begun spending millions on the restart, seriously prejudicing any future inquiry.

With your help, we will press the AECB for three due process guarantees:

ongoing spending on restart must be stopped until the review is completed;

the AECB must allow the restart proposal to be reviewed publicly by an independent panel, as the law allows; and

the review must weigh the need for Pickering A against the available alternatives.

During the review, we plan to argue a number of substantive points:

Ontario Power must be required to fund its existing radioactive waste disposal and decommissioning liabilities before it considers restarting old reactors and creating more waste.

No restart should be considered while the Nuclear Liability Act is in force. This law limits the liability of nuclear operators to $75 million in the event of a nuclear accident and protects nuclear industry suppliers from all liability, even if they are negligent.

No restart should be permitted with obsolete design features that would never be permitted in a new nuclear station. These features include Pickering A’s shutdown system, seismic qualification, control room design, containment system, and backup power system.

We will also be investigating routine emissions of radioactive pollutants from Pickering and providing evidence that the rates of some cancers and genetic defects are elevated around Ontario nuclear facilities.

In aid of this work, Energy Probe will be using some of the damning documents uncovered during its 10-year-long court case over the Nuclear Liability Act, such as internal memos proving that the priority of nuclear safety specialists has been cost reduction instead of safety.

We have already begun coordinating with other citizens organizations fighting the restart. We will also be expanding our web site to provide members of the public with more information about the Pickering Environmental Assessment process. We are simultaneously urging Ontario’s Conservative government – which prides itself on being fiscally prudent – not to force taxpayers to invest in this doomed plan.

When the Pickering reactors were shut down two years ago, we all breathed a sigh of relief, knowing the country was safer for it. But restarting them after years in mothballs could be even more dangerous than having let them run continuously. We must prevent this, and with your help we will.

Sincerely,

Thomas Adams
Executive Director