Norman Rubin
Energy Probe
I want to tell you about some very alarming documents — internal memos that the nuclear industry, its regulator and its government sponsors were sure you’d never get to see. They show a hidden side of the industry that will sadden and frighten anyone who cares about public health, safety and the environment.

These startling documents were surrendered by the industry through the court system in our 10-year-long legal battle to strike down the Nuclear Liability Act — the federal law that protects the people who cause a nuclear accident, while leaving accident victims without any legal right to full compensation. Now that we’ve concluded our case, and conceded that the Canadian courts won’t declare this act unconstitutional until a nuclear catastrophe occurs, we are free to share some of these secret documents with you. Here are the facts they prove:

FACT: When reactor operators discover that their reactors aren’t as safe as they’re supposed to be, they do everything in their power to avoid actually making them safer! In private memos, they admit that improving reactor safety is their "last resort" and not their first priority, as they so frequently claim in public.

One long internal memo lists the steps that Ontario Hydro’s safety analysts use to avoid actually making the reactors any safer: "Our first approach to resolving these issues is, generally, to refine the analysis by reducing conservatism [i.e., reducing safety margins] and by developing and applying more detailed, sophisticated analysis methods. Design and operational procedure changes are, generally, considered as the means of last resort to resolving unacceptable results."

This memo — by a safety analyst — includes tables showing literally dozens of instances where new information revealed safety problems, but clever analysis was applied instead of safety upgrades. "Resolution of many of these problematic issues could have resulted in design changes, tighter operational limits or modified trip setpoints [all of which would have improved safety]. In reality, the majority of these problems were resolved through additional, more extensive analysis."

According to the same memo, Ontario Hydro’s elaborate safety analysis has convinced staff of the AECB [Canada’s nuclear regulator] that it is "acceptably safe" for a reactor’s nuclear fuel to boil completely dry in some loss-of-coolant accidents. (It is impossible to have a "meltdown" if the fuel is kept wet.) By doing so, Hydro has "thus far, avoided the necessity for design changes and deratings." Of course, those design changes and deratings would have made the reactors safer. Unfortunately, allowing the nuclear fuel to boil dry will not.

FACT: The industry frequently tells the public and the regulator that they always err on the safe side when doing reactor safety analysis — in the technical lingo, they claim that their analysis is extremely "conservative," and that they leave large "margins" to account for uncertainties and errors. The secret documents show it isn’t so.

According to one secret document, "analysts and those close to nuclear safety know margins are very tight: that’s why a lot more analysis has to be done." Another says "There appears to be a prevalent attitude amongst some people not directly involved in safety analysis that the analysts generally apply great ‘globs’ of conservative assumptions in their analysis, but are reluctant to sharpen pencils when necessary. Generally this is not the case."

FACT: In 1993, Ontario Hydro asked its nuclear safety analysts how a serious safety problem ("fuel string relocation" during a pipe-break accident) could have been overlooked for decades, "even though the effect is a basic characteristic of the design." The answer was more than Hydro bargained for.

The root cause, according to the analysts, was cost cutting and management pressure — both of which continue today. "You don’t get rewarded for finding problems," one said. "Right now, a questioning attitude is penalized," another wrote. "All sorts of potential safety problems are being shelved . . . As people change jobs and schedule pressures remain, . . . most of these will be forgotten." One comment referred to a "time bomb somewhere waiting to explode." Moreover, the analysts discovered that the basic design flaw was identified in the 1960s but the knowledge "appears to have been lost within Ontario Hydro."

FACT: When Energy Probe presented the staff of the Atomic Energy Control Board with evidence of excess childhood leukemia around Canada’s nuclear reactors, AECB staff reacted promptly and urgently — but in defense of their own past decisions, not in defense of the children. Their plan backfired.

In September 1991, I discovered that an excess of childhood leukemia around the Pickering and Bruce stations, originally revealed in an AECB-sponsored study, was large enough to be considered "statistically significant." AECB had earlier announced publicly that the excess "could be due to chance." Before releasing my analysis to the press, I faxed a copy to John Waddington, Director of Analysis and Assessment at the AECB.

What the secret documents show is that the AECB went into action as if Canada had suffered a nuclear emergency: (1) A meeting of six senior AECB staff was called "early in the morning to inform them of Norman Rubin’s report and his intent to publish his comments on the leukaemia studies in newspapers." (2) The review group met again the following morning. While a quick internal review had convinced AECB staff that I had "used improper statistical techniques" and "misinterpreted" the leukemia data, "it is decided that two outside experts be consulted to add more credibility to the conclusions of our internal review." (3) The following day, the group met through electronic mail, and agreed to wait for "the reviews from the university professors." The head of AECB’s public relations department thought "a write-up about this matter in the next issue of the Reporter [AECB’s newsletter] might be appropriate."

But while the Globe and Mail soon covered the story ("Researchers at war over child deaths," September 9, 1991), the AECB Reporter never did, because both university professors criticized the AECB’s report, one of them concluding that my statistical analysis and conclusion were correct, and that AECB’s conclusion resulted from using an inappropriate statistical test. Nonetheless, AECB’s Waddington still sent me a letter stating "that there is no need to change our conclusions with regard to . . . childhood leukaemia."

FACT: Nuclear plant operators have access to their regulators that the public, and groups like Energy Probe, only dream of having.

We now have hard evidence, from many documents, of private staff-to-staff meetings between AECB staff and nuclear utility staff, and of AECB staff sending drafts of forthcoming public policy documents to nuclear utility staff for review, long before a later version was circulated to us for "public" review. In some cases, AECB staff even sent the utility staff drafts of their reports to the AECB’s own board of directors!

It seems that one reason our written submissions on the AECB’s public "Consultative Documents" don’t result in any changes in policy is that the real consultation has taken place months or years earlier — between the AECB staff and nuclear utility staff — and it is already reflected in the first document we get to see. Since the trial ended, we’ve already encountered one case of this procedure, and have formally objected to AECB, which has promised us that we will be included in their future discussions on that issue.

I hope you agree with me that these secret documents provide clear evidence that reactor operators must be held financially liable for the full consequences of their actions, that the public must constantly question and prod the operators and their regulators, and that this technology must be phased out as soon as possible, in favor of more efficient, more sustainable and safer alternatives.

To help achieve these goals, we will be making extensive use of such secret documents and others in the coming months: First, I’ll present them to a federal Parliamentary Committee that is considering giving the AECB sole jurisdiction over the environmental impact of Canada’s nuclear plants, instead of Environment Canada. The documents show that AECB does not deserve that responsibility. Next, we will send them to the Ontario Solicitor General’s Office, which is finally considering updating Ontario’s Nuclear Emergency Plan in response to post-Chernobyl recommendations from ten years ago. And finally, we’ll regularly distribute selections of these disturbing documents to highlight the never-ending supply of these reprehensible dangers to Canadian society. We’ll be sending wake-up calls to politicians, and the press once a week, every week, like clockwork, via e-mail. If you have access to e-mail and you’d like to receive them, too, please let me know on the enclosed response coupon.

Sincerely yours,

Norman Rubin
Director of Nuclear Research