Blog by: Theresa McClenaghan, Executive Director
Last week the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) wrapped up a five-day hearing on a proposed license to allow Ontario Power Generation (OPG) to construct new nuclear at Darlington.
The proposed new facility is a boiling water reactor, which the CNSC has not previously licensed for commercial power production in Canada. Furthermore, the proposed design is billed as a “small, modular reactor” based on the manufacturer proposing to radically scale down a previous version of the related reactor design – a design which has been licensed in the U.S. but never built.
If approved here in Canada, the reactor would be built at the Darlington nuclear plant facility. It would be located near four existing CANDU nuclear reactors that are already operating at that location, as well as the storage of highly radioactive used fuel from previous decades of operations.
The Commission has not yet made a decision – and the members on the panel hearing the matter have not yet decided if the record is complete or if the commissioners have further questions.
A key issue at the hearing is that the design of the proposed new reactor is not yet complete. In fact, the design is far from complete. Submission from a number of parties reinforced these concerns:
– Dr. Gordon Edwards, Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Responsibility,
– Dr. Ole Hendrickson, Sierra Club of Canada,
– Dr. Sunil Nijhawan, a nuclear engineering expert, and
– Sara Libman and Dr. M.V. Ramana representing CELA, Durham Nuclear Awareness, and Slovenian Home Association.
There were numerous points during the hearing when both the proponent, OPG, and the manufacturer, as well as staff from the Commission, acknowledged that design elements were not complete, and answers had not yet been satisfactorily provided.
Despite this evident problem, the commission staff were urging the commissioners to approve the license, and to delegate to commission staff the right to decide whether OPG had addressed all these outstanding questions about the reactors design. The staff’s argument was that it would address all these safety and performance concerns by way of “regulatory hold points” to be included in the license.
CELA and many other Interveners strenuously objected that this is highly inappropriate and is an improper delegation of the Commission’s own decision-making responsibility under the Nuclear Safety and Control Act.
Dr. Nijhawan stated, “there are no safety systems to speak of.” Dr. Edwards showed the previous design compared to the proposed design for Darlington, and highlighted several significant missing pieces. The missing elements are necessary to contribute to safety systems, redundancy in shut down mechanisms, containment of the products of any radioactive accident, and overall “defence in depth” which he and others stated is now missing in this design.
In CELA’s opinion, the shoddy incompleteness of the design in fundamental respects, and the incompleteness of the safety assessments was shocking and unprecedented in modern Canadian or western countries’ nuclear reactor licensing.
Even one of the Commissioners at the outset of the hearing asked “what is the hurry?”. Remember that the original license to prepare a site was issued a decade ago, and the current proposed design for the site was not even one of the options on the table at that time. Nevertheless, the Commission decided last fall that a new environmental assessment was not needed.
One would have expected the decision makers and advisors for OPG and the commission staff would want to ensure that all of the T’s were crossed and I’s were dotted before coming to the Commission for a license. Not only was that not the case, but, to extend the analogy, in many cases the T’s and I’s were missing entirely! These are not minor verification issues; but fundamental questions.
CELA hopes the commissioners will insist on a complete design and answers to all of the outstanding questions as to design and safety before issuing their ruling. We also hope that they resist the puzzling and inappropriate pressure that seems to arise from the “hurry” for a license being pressed upon them by the proponent OPG and their own staff, and that they insist on retaining the final decision-making responsibility. It remains to be seen how they handle this fundamental question about the division of responsibilities – this will be a crucial test of the credibility of the Commission that has undergone significant turnover in its leadership and composition recently.
Image courtesy of @SkyF from Getty Images via canva.com
Blog: The Case of the Missing Safety Systems – Darlington License to Construct Hearing
Blog by: Theresa McClenaghan, Executive Director
Last week the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) wrapped up a five-day hearing on a proposed license to allow Ontario Power Generation (OPG) to construct new nuclear at Darlington.
The proposed new facility is a boiling water reactor, which the CNSC has not previously licensed for commercial power production in Canada. Furthermore, the proposed design is billed as a “small, modular reactor” based on the manufacturer proposing to radically scale down a previous version of the related reactor design – a design which has been licensed in the U.S. but never built.
If approved here in Canada, the reactor would be built at the Darlington nuclear plant facility. It would be located near four existing CANDU nuclear reactors that are already operating at that location, as well as the storage of highly radioactive used fuel from previous decades of operations.
The Commission has not yet made a decision – and the members on the panel hearing the matter have not yet decided if the record is complete or if the commissioners have further questions.
A key issue at the hearing is that the design of the proposed new reactor is not yet complete. In fact, the design is far from complete. Submission from a number of parties reinforced these concerns:
– Dr. Gordon Edwards, Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Responsibility,
– Dr. Ole Hendrickson, Sierra Club of Canada,
– Dr. Sunil Nijhawan, a nuclear engineering expert, and
– Sara Libman and Dr. M.V. Ramana representing CELA, Durham Nuclear Awareness, and Slovenian Home Association.
There were numerous points during the hearing when both the proponent, OPG, and the manufacturer, as well as staff from the Commission, acknowledged that design elements were not complete, and answers had not yet been satisfactorily provided.
Despite this evident problem, the commission staff were urging the commissioners to approve the license, and to delegate to commission staff the right to decide whether OPG had addressed all these outstanding questions about the reactors design. The staff’s argument was that it would address all these safety and performance concerns by way of “regulatory hold points” to be included in the license.
CELA and many other Interveners strenuously objected that this is highly inappropriate and is an improper delegation of the Commission’s own decision-making responsibility under the Nuclear Safety and Control Act.
Dr. Nijhawan stated, “there are no safety systems to speak of.” Dr. Edwards showed the previous design compared to the proposed design for Darlington, and highlighted several significant missing pieces. The missing elements are necessary to contribute to safety systems, redundancy in shut down mechanisms, containment of the products of any radioactive accident, and overall “defence in depth” which he and others stated is now missing in this design.
In CELA’s opinion, the shoddy incompleteness of the design in fundamental respects, and the incompleteness of the safety assessments was shocking and unprecedented in modern Canadian or western countries’ nuclear reactor licensing.
Even one of the Commissioners at the outset of the hearing asked “what is the hurry?”. Remember that the original license to prepare a site was issued a decade ago, and the current proposed design for the site was not even one of the options on the table at that time. Nevertheless, the Commission decided last fall that a new environmental assessment was not needed.
One would have expected the decision makers and advisors for OPG and the commission staff would want to ensure that all of the T’s were crossed and I’s were dotted before coming to the Commission for a license. Not only was that not the case, but, to extend the analogy, in many cases the T’s and I’s were missing entirely! These are not minor verification issues; but fundamental questions.
CELA hopes the commissioners will insist on a complete design and answers to all of the outstanding questions as to design and safety before issuing their ruling. We also hope that they resist the puzzling and inappropriate pressure that seems to arise from the “hurry” for a license being pressed upon them by the proponent OPG and their own staff, and that they insist on retaining the final decision-making responsibility. It remains to be seen how they handle this fundamental question about the division of responsibilities – this will be a crucial test of the credibility of the Commission that has undergone significant turnover in its leadership and composition recently.
Image courtesy of @SkyF from Getty Images via canva.com
Share: