Energy Probe

Ontario is delaying by three months a decision on which company will build a new nuclear plant at Darlington to give bidders -- including Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. -- more time.

A radioactive part was missing for almost two months at the Bruce nuclear plant before a worker walking through an area called "the vault" discovered the problem after his radiation detector went off.

In a May 20, 1974 interview, the late CBC reporter Barbara Frum asked India’s UN Ambassador Samar Sen whether India violated its agreements with Canada in developing and detonating an atomic bomb. Ambassador Sen’s response was that India had not developed an atom bomb. “What did it develop, then?” Frum asked. Sen responded: “India just exploded an atomic device, nothing to do with a bomb. It is just one of the processes which is necessary for using atomic energy. How did you get the idea for an atom bomb?”

MR.RUBIN: Madam Chair, my comments deal with issues concerning nuclear power, and we offer them to urge this Board to do two things: To stipulate and construe the nuclear issues as broadly as possible; and, in particular, to seek mechanisms to ensure that Ontario ratepayers and taxpayers are protected from the peculiar risks presented by nuclear power.

A hole in a radiation containment system at Pickering generating station has not been fixed more than a month after detection, sparking concern Ontario Power Generation is dragging its feet on safety and keeping important information hidden from the public.

Workers head to the number 5 reactor at the Pickering station in June. A leak was found in a duct there last month.

Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission
Attn: Michael Rinker, Environmental Assessment Specialist
P.O. Box 1046, Station B
Ottawa, ON K1P 5S9
Phone: 1-800-668-5284
Fax: (613) 995-5086
E-mail: ceaainfo@cnsc-ccsn.gc.ca

Re: Comment on the Proposed Scoping Document (Environmental Assessment Guidelines) for Ontario Power Generation's Proposal for a Deep Geologic Repository for disposal of low and intermediate level radioactive wastes in Kincardine.

Dear Mr. Rinker,

Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission
Attn: Michael Rinker, Environmental Assessment Specialist
P.O. Box 1046, Station B
Ottawa, ON K1P 5S9
Phone: 1-800-668-5284
Fax: (613) 995-5086
E-mail: ceaainfo@cnsc-ccsn.gc.ca

Re: Comment on the Proposed Scoping Document (Environmental Assessment Guidelines) for Ontario Power Generation's Proposal for a Deep Geologic Repository for disposal of low and intermediate level radioactive wastes in Kincardine.

Dear Mr. Rinker,

Re: "If we want to help the Third World, let's promote nuclear power" (Published by the Free Lance-Star, Fredericksburg, Va, on Sept. 13, 2006 – original article appears below)

Nuclear power will light Africa’s darkness, says your author Paul Driessen, but his advice would make a bad situation worse.

Our Prime Minister has been telling potential Candu nuclear reactor customers in Asia that "We have never had any problems in the countries we have been operating in." Our Prime Minister is embarrassingly and shamefully wrong.

EXCERPT

House Hansard: Session 38:2, April 26, 2006

Oral Questions

Oral Questions

China Admits to Nuclear Waste on Tibetan Plateau

Tibetan Government-in-exile denounced China's dumping of nuclear waste in Tibet way back in 1980s. In 1987 His Holiness the Dalai Lama released the Five Point Peace Plan for Tibet, the fourth point in this plan called for:

Restoration and protection of Tibet's natural environment and the abandonment of China's use of Tibet for the production of nuclear weapons and dumping of nuclear waste.

Toronto: Government-owned Ontario Power Generation paid more than $3 million to municipalities on the shores of Lake Huron this spring as part of a deal clearing the way for construction of North America's first deep rock nuclear waste storage facility.

Beijing: Canada's potential uranium exports to China are being questioned by environmental and disarmament groups after a Chinese general suggested that Beijing might use nuclear weapons in a war with the United States.

Chinese government officials and investors have been visiting Canadian uranium companies in recent months to scout for uranium.

With 30 nuclear reactors planned in China over the next 15 years, Beijing needs uranium to fuel its $40-billion nuclear-power expansion, and it is considering Canada as a key source.

Letter to the Editor

The letter "Getting figures wrong: U.N. monitoring committee sees no rise in number of birth defects or leukemia, only in thyroid cancer" published June 6th, was authored by a nuclear industry employee, Andrew Daley. Unfortunately, Mr. Daley failed to identify his affiliation when attempting to argue that the Chernobyl accident only caused 1,800 extra cancers thus far.

The Globe and Mail
Letter to the Editor

The Globe's editorial "How to deal safely with nuclear waste" May 26, is overly hasty in declaring nuclear power's problems solved.

Letter to the Editor

The Globe's editorial "How to deal safely with nuclear waste" May 26, is overly hasty in declaring nuclear power's problems solved.

Although the spark that set off that calamity didn't occur in Ontario, we were the hardest hit because our power system had been weakened by neglect. It has only gotten worse in the last two years. The stage is set for another massive blackout, this time made in Ontario. Parts of our power transmission and distribution networks are so dilapidated, a strong wind could knock out some of our electricity lifelines.

The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission recently applauded the environmental performance of a radioactive waste incinerator at Ontario Power Generation Inc.'s Bruce nuclear park.

Since 1977 Bruce has been one of OPG's volume reduction options for Ontario "low- and intermediate-level" radioactive waste. The Bruce nuclear park features the four-unit Bruce A and Bruce B nuclear generating stations as well as OPG's Western Waste Management Facility (WWMF). Radwaste is transported from across the 20-reactor Ontario nuclear power program to the park.

Dear Friend:

The federal government, and three provincial governments, are about to sink billions more dollars into another attempt to salvage the nuclear industry, the country's least economic energy industry – and its most dangerous.

Last month, New Brunswick discovered that its nuclear reactor at Point Lepreau had cracks in its main steam pipe. Cracks in the same piece of equipment at a reactor in Japan just months before had led to an accident that boiled alive four workers and severely scalded seven others.

Imagine the panic if someone spread radioactive material around downtown Toronto.

It would be an ideal tactic for terrorists aiming to paralyze the city.

And it's a remote but real possibility, radiation safety experts say.

The threat exists because the materials are used in thousands of workplaces throughout Ontario, many of them surprising.

In Canada, we are now storing more than 20-million kilos of nuclear waste in pools and concrete storage facilities around our nuclear reactors. If no new reactors are built, when the current reactors are decomissioned, there will be twice that amount. The waste will be lethally radioactive for hundreds of years, and toxic for tens of thousands of years. At the moment, we have no long-term policy for dealing with it.

There's no hint in the cool summer winds blowing off Lake Huron onto the sandy beaches of the lower Bruce Peninsula that nuclear managers have developed plans to turn the shoreline into a vast radioactive waste sacrifice zone.

We have learned that the federal government has quietly begun giving its friends in the nuclear industry new access to the public purse, in order to fund plans for massive nuclear power growth.

Ms. Wells,

I enjoyed your analysis of some of Ontario's problems with its aging nuclear reactor fleet (Toronto Star, Nuclear Fallout, September 27, 2003).

Blaming the spread of the nasty SARS respiratory virus, the Canadian province of Ontario recently postponed its long and quietly planned simulated nuclear emergency exercise at the 4,328 MW Pickering nuclear plant of Ontario Power Generation Inc. on Lake Ontario east of Toronto. Pickering is located about six miles east of the nearest boundary with Toronto. According to Ontario officials, a "full-scale provincial nuclear emergency exercise" was officially planned for Pickering on Tuesday, April 29.

The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission should maintain an Internet site with up-to-date information on the status of Canada's nuclear power reactors, Energy Probe has suggested.

In a letter to Linda Keen, who heads the nuclear safety commission, Energy Probe executive director Tom Adams points to sites run by U.S. regulators that report operating status and significant events at U.S. reactors.

The letter was sent yesterday as Ontario Power Generation's Pickering B nuclear station was out of service for a third day.

When the Pickering nuclear generating station switched off the power on Wednesday because of a mechanical problem, the only public word was a cryptic announcement on an obscure page of a Web site.

The notice posted by the Independent Electricity Market Operator, or IMO, on its Web site did not identify the Pickering nuclear station; it merely said in excess of 900 megawatts of generating power was likely to be forced from service.

President Linda J. Keen
Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission
280 Slater Street
P.O. Box 1046
Ottawa, Ontario K1P 5S9
Fax: (613) 992-2915 (3 pages)

Dear President Keen,

We would like to comment on three related regulatory matters of great importance - one past, one present, and one future. We believe that each of these matters involves the recognition of an "obvious truth" concerning nuclear-safety regulation.

Nuclear power is absolutely safe, the nuclear industry is fond of saying. Only scaremongers, the ignorant and fools think otherwise, it maintains.

Canadian governments have fallen for the nuclear industry's assurances but, thankfully, Canada's private sector lenders haven't. Knowing that the risk of nuclear contamination is real, and that they could be on the financial hook in the event of radioactive contamination, banks and other private financiers have refused to back nuclear facilities.

The financial crisis at British Energy, the U.K. nuclear generator, has raised concerns over the long-term safety of the Bruce Power nuclear facilities in Ontario and over a possible supply crunch in the province's energy market, according to Toronto analysts.

British Energy owns just more than 82 per cent of Bruce Power, which operates four nuclear generators under licence in Ontario, and is working to bring two mothballed nuclear generators back on stream. Canadian uranium miner Cameco owns 15 per cent of Bruce.

September 6, 2002

Linda J. Keen
President and CEO
Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission

Faxed to: (613) 995-5086

Dear Ms. Keen:

Energy Probe is concerned that the deteriorating financial condition of British Energy could have negative safety implications for the operation of the Bruce Nuclear Power Development.

September 6, 2002

Linda J. Keen
President and CEO
Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission

Faxed to: (613) 995-5086

Dear Ms. Keen:

Energy Probe is concerned that the deteriorating financial condition of British Energy could have negative safety implications for the operation of the Bruce Nuclear Power Development.

Ontario Power Generation is negotiating a deal to privatize safety analysis at its nuclear reactors.

"We are in negotiations with a company called NNC related to potential business opportunities," Ontario Power spokesman John Earl said yesterday. "It basically is in regard to a group in OPG that does safety analysis work."

NNC Ltd. is Britain's leading nuclear consultant and it is affiliated with British Energy.

The move to contract out safety analysis has raised concerns among some nuclear consultants.

Dear Concerned Citizen:

Experts in nuclear weapons recognize that by far the most difficult step in building a bomb like the one that destroyed Hiroshima is acquiring sufficient weapons-grade material.

Yet a private Canadian multinational, MDS Nordion, has stockpiled almost two nuclear bombs’ worth of the material near Ottawa. And this company is trying to import enough from the U.S. to more than double its stockpile.

Sharon Baillie-Malo
Uranium and Radioactive Waste Division
Natural Resources Canada
580 Booth Street
Ottawa, Canada K1A 0E4

submitted by fax: 613.947.4205

Re: FEAI #: 30619
Title: Draft Scope of the Environmental Assessment for the Port Hope Long-Term Low-Level Radioactive Waste Management Project

Dear Madam,

April 11, 2002

Hon. David Anderson, P.C., M.P.
Minister of Environment
National Office
Ottawa ON, K1A 0H3

Submitted by email: david.anderson@ec.gc.ca

Dear Mr. Anderson,

Re: FEAI #: 30619
Title: Draft Scope of the Environmental Assessment for the Port Granby Long-Term Low-Level Radioactive Waste Management Project

Dear Madam,

This submission is made with respect to the above-noted request for public comments on the Draft Scope of the Environmental Assessment for the Port Granby Long-Term Low-Level Radioactive Waste Management Project on behalf of Lake Ontario Keeper and Energy Probe.

Atomic Energy of Canada Limited has a "black spot" on its safety record after four workers were exposed to radiation from plutonium dust in 1999.

The Crown corporation pleaded guilty to six charges under the Canada Labour Code this week and was fined $24,000.

Norm Rubin, a professional in the field of nuclear energy, has been invited by Port Hope's Nuclear Environmental Watchdogs to talk to the community Wednesday night about his values and principles and how they relate to Low-Level Radioactive Waste (LLRW).

While Mr. Rubin, who has been with Energy Probe for 24 years as a director of nuclear research and a senior policy analyst, shares the Watchdogs' feelings of opposition about Port Hope's LLRW cleanup.

Letter to the Editor
Globe and Mail

Re: Back in Power, Feb. 2, 2002

If nuclear power's expansion awaits only a repository for its waste, an assumption repeatedly expressed in this article, then we would expect to find that waste problems caused nuclear power's failure to provide economically priced electricity while paying back its original investment.

This document summarises significant developments for the period of

October 2 to October 30, 2001.

Section 2 was added to the Significant Development Report after its publication

of October 30, 2001.

Signed / Signé le

2001-11-09

M. A. Leblanc

Secretary of the Commission

Significant Development Report No. 2001-8

1 Power Reactors

1.2 CANDU Feeder Piping Impairment Issues

Next week the feds vote to give the nuclear industry control over chucking its own waste. Bad idea. They're aiming to bury the junk in the Canadian Shield. Eco types say we'll pay the price for centuries to come.

What's being proposed for burial:
More than 18,000 tonnes of spent fuel from 22 nuclear reactors (an amount that would fill several Olympic-size swimming pools)

Why burial is the preferred option of the nuclear industry:
It's cheaper. It wouldn't require around-the-clock security.

Recently discovered flaws in the CANDU reactor at Point Lepreau in New Brunswick (Canada) have raised concerns about safety, inspection and management issues associated with the Canadian CANDU reactor design, in Canada and internationally.

Energy Probe's comments to the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission on the Pickering A - Return to Service, Environmental Assessment SCREENING REPORT - CNSC Meeting, December 14, 2000

Norman Rubin is Energy Probe's Director of Nuclear Research and Senior Policy Analyst

In a 1978 joint statement, the governments of Canada and Ontario directed Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL) to develop the concept of deep geological disposal of nuclear fuel wastes. A subsequent joint statement in 1981 established that disposal site selection would not begin until after a full federal public hearing and approval of the concept by both governments.

OTTAWA - A new national surveillance program will look for higher rates of cancer among people who live near nuclear power stations, uranium mines, atomic research facilities and fuel-processing plants.

The program, which the Atomic Energy Control Board says is the first continuing surveillance scheme of nuclear installations in the world, is in response to widespread public fears.

Dear Sirs:

Following are Energy Probe's comments on AECB's draft "Scope of Assessment" for the Pickering NGS-A return to service Environmental Assessment. As always, we would appreciate receiving reasons for AECB's decisions to accept or reject these recommendations. And we await the opportunity to be involved in the substantive issues of this Assessment. We divide our comments into two general categories: Process Concerns and Substantive Concerns.

A. Process Concerns:

Introduction and summary:

Energy Probe is the oldest project of Energy Probe Research Foundation, one of Canada's largest environmental organizations, with over 20,000 supporters. Energy Probe has long been involved in nuclear matters and in the affairs of the Atomic Energy Control Board, including numerous written submissions and several appearances before the Board.

Neville Nankivell's "Nuclear waste becoming hot issue" (November 26) brings much-needed attention to the important issue of nuclear waste, and the crucial decision now facing the federal government. Most vividly and sympathetically, he presents the "disgruntlement" of Canada's nuclear industry over recent setbacks.

And who wouldn't be disgruntled?

Will tremors like the one last week make us rue the day we built nuclear reactors atop an earthquake zone?

Think of a toy snowdome. In the middle is a nuclear plant. Pick it up. Shake it a bit. Drop it. Meltdown.

For years, that's what some nuclear activists and scientists have been saying could happen if Ontario Hydro doesn't take measures to ensure that its Pickering and Darlington nuclear power plants are ready for a strong earthquake.

MONTREAL - The country that jump-started India's nuclear weapons program is aggressively seeking to sell atomic reactors to China, Turkey and other nations with poor reputations for protecting either human rights or the environment.

Moreover, the nuclear reactors that Canada is peddling abroad are the same models, in basic design, as atomic generators shut down in Ontario in recent months after being deemed too dangerous to operate.

Canada sold reactors first to India, then to Pakistan. Paul MacKay reports that Turkey is likely to be next. India did it. Pakistan did it. Turkey will likely be next.

The potential sale this month of Canadian Candu reactors to Turkey would arm that country with the same technology that India and Pakistan used to build nuclear bombs.

Atomic agency reacts to Hamilton concerns

Canada's atomic energy regulator will determine if a high incidence of thyroid disease among nurses at the former Hamilton Civic Hospitals can be attributed to a radioactive drug they dispensed in the 1970s and '80s.

A recent Spectator investigation found at least seven of an estimated 14 nurses on the intravenous team at Hamilton General Hospital, who injected patients with fibrinogen 125 between 1975 and 1985, have experienced serious thyroid problems.

Ottawa – March 13, 1998 – The federal panel studying the long-term management of nuclear fuel waste and the safety and acceptability of Atomic Energy of Canada's concept to bury nuclear waste deep within the rock of the Canadian Shield has recommended a step-by-step approach to managing nuclear wastes. Accordingly, the eight-member panel is recommending that the search for a specific site not proceed at the present time. The panel’s report was made public today by Minister of Natural Resources, Ralph Goodale and Minister of the Environment, Christine Stewart.

In a 1978 joint statement, the governments of Canada and Ontario directed Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL) to develop the concept of deep geological disposal of nuclear fuel wastes. A subsequent joint statement in 1981 established that disposal site selection would not begin until after a full federal public hearing and approval of the concept by both governments.

On the blustery shore of Lake Ontario, in Canada's most heavily populated region, four aging nuclear reactors bedeviled by leaks, failures and operators who sometimes drank beer or smoked marijuana on the job are being shut down because they cannot be safely run by one of the largest utility companies in North America.

At the same time, workers are busy excavating a huge site in China, about 60 miles south of Shanghai, where two Canadian reactors similar to the troubled ones in Canada are being built under Canadian supervision.

Mr Conway: But certainly it is your view that this current and longstanding difficulty, malaise and worse at Ontario Hydro has not been helped by the fact it has been a monopoly, correct, in your view?

Mr Rubin: Yes.

Energy Probe
Mr Tom Adams
Mr Norm Rubin

Mr Maurice Strong

Ontario Clean Air Alliance
Mr Jack Gibbons

SELECT COMMITTEE ON ONTARIO HYDRO NUCLEAR AFFAIRS

The report, written by a six-member SWAT team of U.S. nuclear experts handpicked by Andognini, himself a nuclear engineer, is a corporate colonic that damns the utility’s nuclear operation as a problem-plagued, mismanaged horror. As a remedy, seven of Ontario Hydro’s 19 CANDU reactors, the jewel in the crown of the ever-hopeful Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. (AECL), will be shut down while Hydro resources will be concentrated on re-engineering the remaining troubled 12.

Ontario’s CANDUs are growing old - and the four venerable A units at
Pickering and three more at the Bruce generating station on the shores
of Lake Huron, all of which Ontario Hydro has decided to mothball, may
never resume operation.

Dean Triebel
U.S. Department of Energy
Fax:505-665-4872
Tel: 505-665-6353
e-mail: dtriebel@doe.lanl.gov.

To the U.S. Department of Energy:

As in most of his writing, and on his Web page, Jeremy Whitlock's letter (June 4) is a mixed bag: a handful of quasi-religious nuclear-industry "perspective" and a pinch of downright falsehood.

Whitlock is leaping to the defense of his employer, Atomõc Energy of Canada Limited, which has been discovered -- again -- to have allowed radioactive liquid waste -- tens of millions of litres of it -- to reach the Ottawa River because of leaky plumbing ("Another leak at Chalk River," June 4).

Letter to Bill Clinton signed by 171 international organizations and individuals

January 14, 1997

The Honorable William Jefferson Clinton President of the United States of America 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Washington, DC 20500 U.S.A.

Dear President Clinton:

Canadian-designed Nuclear Reactor Design Flaw Discovered as Prime Minister Peddles Nuclear Technology in Southeast Asia

Prematurely thinning pipes could force nuclear plant into costly repairs or early shutdown

Engineers at a nuclear plant in eastern Canada have discovered a serious flaw in the Canadian-designed reactor that could cost millions of dollars to repair or force government-owned New Brunswick Power, to cut short the life of the plant.

Last week, Chrétien was in China again to conclude the biggest single Canada-China deal ever: a $4-billion contract for the construction of two of Canada's CANDU 6 nuclear reactors to supply electricity to an industrial region south of Shanghai. Federal officials hailed the sale as a major step in building Canada's presence in China. But at home, the sale provoked an explosion of protests.

In my last presentation, I addressed the issue of the "burden of proof" for the safety of this concept, and I have since added a few more sentences on the record, based largely on the important contribution of Rod Northey last Monday evening.

DR. RUBIN: My name is Norman Rubin, I am representing Energy Probe. I will not be going through my written submissions, which are still the written submissions made in earlier phases which covered both technical and generic issues.

My first question is, on what basis do we now believe it might be sensible to stop the regulatory modelling assessment at ten to the fourth, or 10,000 years as AECB designed some nine years ago in the R-104 Regulatory document, and as we have been reminded so often by, among others, AECL.

U.S. Department of Energy Office of Fissile Materials Disposition P.O. Box 23786 Washington D.C. 20026-3786 U.S.A. BY FAX: 202-586-2710 (Original following by mail)

Re: Storage and Disposition of Weapons-Usable Fissile Materials Draft Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS).

To whom it may concern,

COMMENTARY No. 67

a CANADIAN SECURITY INTELLIGENCE SERVICE publication

THE SECURITY IMPLICATIONS FOR CHINA OF ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION

March 1996

Unclassified

Editors Note:

Part 4 of Energy Probe's Submission on The Adequacy of Atomic Energy of Canada Limited's Environmental Impact Statement on the Concept for Disposal of Canada's Nuclear Fuel Waste. Submitted to the Federal Environmental Assessment Review Panel.

Part 3 of Energy Probe's Submission on The Adequacy of Atomic Energy of Canada Limited's Environmental Impact Statement on the Concept for Disposal of Canada's Nuclear Fuel Waste. Submitted to the Federal Environmental Assessment Review Panel.

Part 2 of Energy Probe's Submission on The Adequacy of Atomic Energy of Canada Limited's Environmental Impact Statement on the Concept for Disposal of Canada's Nuclear Fuel Waste. Submitted to the Federal Environmental Assessment Review Panel. 

Introduction

Part 1 of Energy Probe's Submission on The Adequacy of Atomic Energy of Canada Limited's Environmental Impact Statement on the Concept for Disposal of Canada's Nuclear Fuel Waste. Submitted to the Federal Environmental Assessment Review Panel.

For 10 years, studies from, Great Britain and the United States have reported that children and young adults living near nuclear facilities have higher rates of leukemia - a nine fold increase in one case - than expected. Now, research into the incidence of childhood leukemia in Ontario has provided disquieting evidence that a similar tragedy could be unfolding closer to home.

Originally presented at a Symposium on the Risks and Benefits of Energy Alternatives held at the University of Waterloo. May 20-23, 1986.

Every nuclear reactor is a disaster waiting to happen -- and CANDU reactors are no exception. Canadian utilities are no longer building CANDU reactors because of their high cost and poor performance. CANDUs have a number of serious technical, and safety problems, as well as the unique environmental problem of tritium emissions.

Acts of gross negligence by suppliers of nuclear goods and services – the kind of mistakes that might cause nuclear reactors to explode – will no longer be protected from liability under a proposed law that passed first reading in the House of Commons last month.