Peter Calamai
Toronto Star
June 6, 2000

New law replaces antiquated 1946 legislation

OTTAWA – With the sale of an Ontario nuclear power station looming, the federal rules governing atomic energy have just become a lot more stringent.

A private company buying the Bruce power station from the provincial utility, Ontario Power Generation, must now provide financial guarantees covering the huge decommissioning costs.

Several foreign companies have expressed interest in taking over the aged station on the shores of Lake Huron and a decision is expected this summer.

Ontario Power Generation estimates almost $20 billion will be spent between 2042 and 2071 to close all three of the province’s existing nuclear power stations and store the radioactive wastes.

The federal nuclear watchdog is now demanding that all nuclear power station owners, public or private, guarantee their share of the multi-billion dollar decommissioning bill.

The same guarantee condition applied previously to uranium mines but wasn’t considered necessary for nuclear power stations because they were all owned by provincial public utilities.

Ontario has multi-reactor power stations at Bruce, Pickering and Darlington. Quebec and New Brunswick have one installation apiece.

The financial guarantees are part of a major tightening of the rules governing Canada’s nuclear industry that finally became law last week, three years after Parliament passed new legislation to replace an antiquated 1946 law.

`We’ve finally got a modern piece of legislation’

The three-year interval was spent writing nine volumes of regulations to cover everything from radiation sources in some smoke detectors to nuclear medicine at hospitals.

“We’ve finally got a modern piece of legislation and now we have to ensure that the transition is smooth,” said Murray Duncan, the official overseeing the changeover for the federal regulatory body, now called the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission.

Some of the tougher rules are effective immediately:

Maximum fines for breaking the nuclear regulations jump from a paltry $10,000 to $1 million and the commission adds new power to order the cleanup of radioactive contamination even if the offender is unknown or unco-operative.

The limits for acceptable annual radiation doses received by the general public or workers in nuclear installations drop to one-fifth the former level, formalizing 1991 international standards already being followed unofficially.

Other safety changes will be phased in over the following months, with some measures taking up to two years to be put in place because of the extensive retraining necessary.

One big ticket item is beefed-up anti-terrorist security at all nuclear installations, including uranium mines, refineries and reactors, at an extra yearly cost of $2.5 million. All visitors entering these installations will have to pass through airport-style metal scanners, in addition to the existing radiation monitors.

Also coming under tighter control is the transportation industry, which handles 800,000 packages of radioactive material every year. Every truck carrying these packages will have to be equipped with sensitive radiation monitors and all drivers trained in their use.

While the security and transportation measures have set phase-in periods, the new financial guarantees can go into effect as soon as the federal regulator decides what types of financial guarantees are acceptable.