Tom Spears
The Ottawa Citizen
February 6, 1998

Utility missed deadline for filing plans to improve plants, regulator says

Ontario Hydro’s failure to show detailed plans on how it will improve slipping nuclear safety was "entirely unacceptable," Canada’s nuclear regulator says.

And the Atomic Energy Control Board is calling Hydro’s chairman to come to Ottawa and explain the utility’s actions in person.

A searing letter from AECB president Agnes Bishop to Hydro chairman Bill Farlinger says Hydro missed an important deadline to explain how it will improve the Bruce B nuclear station on Lake Huron.

Dr. Bishop’s staff says this was the latest in a series of deadlines and promises that Hydro has missed.

Mr. Farlinger has promised to appear before the AECB in Ottawa on Feb. 19. It is believed to be the first time an Ontario Hydro chairman has been called to Ottawa to account for the utility’s actions.

The information, due Dec. 31, had not arrived when Dr. Bishop wrote her letter to Mr. Farlinger early last week.

While delays have to happen sometimes, her letter says, "in this instance we do not believe this to have been the case.

"We expect AECB requests for information to be treated with the utmost seriousness by Ontario Hydro staff as well as by its board of directors.

"In our view, the response in this case failed to demonstrate this," she wrote.

She said the board wants to hear from Mr. Farlinger in person to explain the delay "and to receive assurances that this will not reoccur."

Dr. Bishop was unavailable yesterday. But board spokesman Bob Potvin said she and her four fellow board members have been growing dissatisfied with Hydro for years.

"This incident is just one more in a line of missed promises or commitments, or programs that have not achieved the results we wanted to achieve," said Mr. Potvin.

"We have several years now of us having requested and required improvements in certain areas, and Ontario Hydro having made commitments, but the results still are not there to the satisfaction of our board."

He said the board has asked to hear Mr. Farlinger in person because it wants proof of "a full corporate commitment at the corporate head level," and "not just the managers in the nuclear division."

Mr. Farlinger wrote back to the AECB last week to say there was a "misunderstanding" over the dates, and Hydro’s board of directors didn’t know of the Dec. 31 deadline.

Hydro spokesman Terry Young said Hydro also needed extra time to look at the report from the Ontario Select Committee on Ontario Hydro Nuclear Affairs. That committee reported in late November.

Hydro missed another deadline on Dec. 31 as well.

It had promised to install new safety equipment by that date at its four reactors at the Pickering A station, east of Toronto.

The improvements to the shutdown systems were supposed to make it easier to stop the reactors in case of an accident.

But it didn’t make the improvements in time, and consequently had to shut down the whole station on that day.

It has never reopened, and will not reopen unless a major overhaul is made sometime after 2000.

"This whole problem of reneging on commitments certainly suggests the AECB should be able to impose substantial fines on the nuclear operator (Hydro). But they can’t under the Atomic Energy Control Act," said Tom Adams of Energy Probe, an energy analyst firm and Hydro critic.