CANADA'S NUCLEAR REACTORS: HOW MUCH SAFETY IS ENOUGH?
Interim Report
The Standing Senate Committee on Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources
Chair: The Honourable Nicholas W. Taylor
Deputy Chair: The Honourable Mira Spivak
June 2001
STANDING SENATE COMMITTEE ON ENERGY, THE ENVIRONMENT AND NATURAL RESOURCES
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY AND RECOMMANDATIONS
Technical Aspects:
Safety Culture:
Federal Legislation and Oversight:
Public Input to Decision-Making:
TECHNICAL ASPECTS OF THE PICKERING A RESTART
Safety Features of CANDU Reactors
Particular Features of the Pickering A reactors
Proposed Return to Service
Upgrade of Fast Shutdown System
Seismic Hazard
The Significance of Fires at Pickering A
Risk Assessment: Evaluating the Accident Risk Posed by Pickering A
Public Health Issues
Safety Culture
FEDERAL LEGISLATION: THE NUCLEAR LIABILITY ACT
PICKERING A AND THE FEDERAL ENVIRONMENTAL ASSESSMENT PROCESS
Background
What kind of assessment is appropriate?
Conduct of the assessment
Witnesses
Fact-finding mission to Washington, D.C. and Atlanta, Georgia (October 9 – October 14, 2000)
STANDING SENATE COMMITTEE ON ENERGY, THE ENVIRONMENT AND NATURAL RESOURCES
The Honourable Nicholas W. Taylor, Chair
The Honourable Mira Spivak, Deputy Chair
And the Honourable Senators:
Willie Adams
Tommy Banks
John Buchanan, P.C.
*Sharon Carstairs (or Fernand Robichaud, P.C.)
Ione Christensen
Ethel Cochrane
John Trevor Eyton
Isobel Finnerty
James F. Kelleher, P.C.
Colin Kenny
* John Lynch-Staunton (or Noël A. Kinsella)
Nick G. Sibbeston
* Ex Officio Members
Other Senators who participated in the work of the Committee:
Thelma Chalifoux, The Very Rev. Lois Wilson , *Sharon Carstairs (or Fernand Robichaud, P.C.) and *John Lynch-Staunton (or Noël A. Kinsella)
* Ex Officio Members
Extract of the Journals of the Senate of Thursday, March 1st, 2001:
The Honourable Senator Taylor moved, seconded by the Honourable Senator Cordy:
That the Standing Senate Committee on Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources be authorized to examine such issues as may arise from time to time relating to energy, the environment and natural resources, including the continuation and completion of the study on Nuclear Reactor Safety;
That the papers and evidence received and taken on the subject of Nuclear Reactor Safety during the Second Session of the Thirty-sixth Parliament be referred to the Committee; and
That the Committee report to the Senate no later than December 15, 2002.
The question being put on the motion, it was adopted.
Paul C. Bélisle
Clerk of the Senate
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY AND RECOMMANDATIONS
Although nuclear reactors have been in operation in Canada since the 1970s without a major accident or incident on the scale of Three Mile Island or Chernobyl, the issue of their safety is never far from the public eye. When Ontario Power Generation announced that it planned to restart the four units at Pickering A that have been shutdown since 1997, in part for safety reasons, the issue once again surfaced. The Parliament of Canada has a role to play in ensuring that these concerns are addressed and the Standing Senate Committee on Energy, Environment and Natural Resources was given the mandate of studying the safety of nuclear power generation.
At the outset, the Committee decided to focus on four particular aspects of nuclear safety, namely: technological aspects; the safety culture at nuclear power stations; federal legislation and oversight; and finally, the public role in decision-making regarding safety issues. To fulfil the mandate, Committee members toured the Pickering Nuclear Generating Station, spoke with concerned citizens in the area, heard witnesses in Ottawa, commissioned an independent expert review of the accident risk posed by Pickering A and met with U.S. regulatory officials in Washington and officials of the World Association of Nuclear Operators in Atlanta, Georgia. The Committee intends to further examine the international regulation of nuclear reactor safety at a later date, by consulting with experts from such organizations as the International Atomic Energy Agency and the Nuclear Energy Agency.
The study led the Committee to make a number of recommendations in each of the four subject areas noted above. The recommendations are as follows:
Recommendation 1:
The Committee recommends that the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission "CNSC" maintain an arm’s-length relationship with utilities when dealing with compliance to orders on critical matters of safety.
Recommendation 2:
The Committee recommends that substantive discussions such as those related to the safety system upgrades be documented to the extent possible, that those documents be made publicly available and that the public be consulted before final decisions are made.
Recommendation 3:
The Committee recommends that the CNSC require thorough testing and monitoring of the shutdown system upgrade at Pickering A following its installation and make public all reports of its performance in tests and under operating conditions.
Recommendation 4:
The Committee recommends that prior to the restart of any reactor, CNSC order Ontario Power Generation "OPG" to recalculate the seismic hazard by conducting a thorough seismic risk assessment including full consideration of the risk related to the pressure relief ducts, and that they make any additional safety improvements that may be identified.
Recommendation 5:
The Committee recommends that the CNSC require OPG to conduct a full, third-level probabilistic risk assessment of Pickering A.
Recommendation 6:
The Committee recommends that the necessary steps be taken by the CNSC or other responsible authority to speed up the process of adopting updated International Commission for Radiological Protection "ICRP" standards in Canada.
Recommendation 7:
The Committee recommends that in the interests of public safety, the Government of Ontario and the Federal Government consider amendments to human rights legislation that would permit drug and alcohol testing of workers in areas critical to public safety. In the meantime, the Committee recommends that representatives of union and management at OPG give priority to establishing a program for alcohol and drug testing that does not contravene existing law.
Federal Legislation and Oversight:
Recommendation 8:
The Committee recommends that the government take immediate action to amend the Nuclear Liability Act, and increase and maintain the mandatory operator held insurance coverage from the current 75 million dollars at an amount in line with the Paris and Vienna Conventions " over 600 million dollars".
Public Input to Decision-Making:
Recommendation 9:
The Committee recommends that the Comprehensive Study List Regulations of the CEAA be amended to include the restart of a nuclear power reactor following a prolonged shut down of the reactor or significant modification to the reactor and/or the station.
Recommendation 10:
The Committee recommends that the CNSC ensure public confidence in the federal environmental assessment process by:
- retaining for itself the public consultation process, not delegating it to a project proponent;
- setting more realistic and fair deadlines on public comment periods taking into account the volume of material to be assessed and the technical expertise required to analyze it;
- determining the scope of assessments independently of the project proponent;
- improving its maintenance of the public registry required under CEAA; and
- developing guidelines to make intervenor funding available to interested parties.
As governments around the world grapple with the challenge of reducing energy-related emissions of greenhouse gases, nuclear power is being looked at with renewed interest. The Committee believes that implementation of its recommendations will assist in ensuring that nuclear power is generated in a manner that protects the health and safety of employees, the public and the environment. We have requested that the appropriate Ministers give prompt attention to our findings and we will revisit the subject in the future to ascertain what action has been taken to address the issues we have raised.
Nuclear power generation has been a fact of life in Canada since the early 1970s when the commercial CANDU reactors at Pickering, Ontario and Gentilly, Quebec, began to produce electricity. Today, some 15 per cent of Canada’s supply of electricity is produced by nuclear energy. Ontario residents are particularly dependent on it. Fifty per cent of that province’s electrical supply is now powered by 12 nuclear reactors. In New Brunswick, the Point Lepreau Nuclear Power Station furnishes 30 per cent of the province’s demand for electricity. In Quebec, the Gentilly-2 station satisfies about three per cent of Quebec’s demand.
Utilities that planned and built nuclear power stations three decades ago expected that they would operate safely for 40 years or more. However in 1997, Ontario Hydro, the forerunner to Ontario Power Generation (OPG) , shut down its seven oldest reactors at an estimated cost of $5 billion to $8 billion. Simply put, the oldest plants had not been well maintained. They were performing at a minimally acceptable level – a rating that likely would have resulted in comparable stations in the United States being placed on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s watch list. According to Ontario Hydro’s chief executive officer of the day, management had lost its focus on safety and efficiency, and allowed a deterioration of standards.
Moreover, the Atomic Energy Control Board (AECB), the predecessor to the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) , had ordered Ontario Hydro to make a key safety improvement at Pickering Nuclear Generating Station A by the end of 1997. Unable to meet the deadline for an improved fast shutdown system for the reactors, Ontario Hydro took Pickering A out of service on December 31, 1997. The nuclear fuel was not removed.
Critics of the nuclear industry viewed the shutdowns as the beginning of the end of nuclear power generation in Canada. The shutdowns also reawakened public concern about the safety of nuclear reactors -- concern fuelled since the 1970s by major accidents at nuclear power stations at Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania and at Chernobyl in the Ukraine. The Government of Ontario made an immediate effort to address public unease by establishing the Select Committee on Ontario Hydro Nuclear Affairs. The report of the Select Committee concluded that the nuclear reactors were being operated safely, but made 39 recommendations for improvements -- five of which were directed at the federal regulator or the Government of Canada.
In 1998, the House of Commons Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs issued a report, Canada and the Nuclear Challenge: Reducing the Political Value of Nuclear Weapons in the Twenty-First Century. While the report focused on nuclear weapons, it also touched briefly on the civilian use of nuclear power and the export of Canadian nuclear technology. Members of that Committee recognized that they had no mandate to deal with those issues. They recommended that another, more appropriate parliamentary body conduct a separate study. In February 2000, the Standing Senate Committee on Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources took up the task.
At the outset, the Senate Committee decided to focus solely on the safety of CANDU nuclear power reactors, of which there are 25 in Canada. In particular, the Committee decided to concentrate on four principal areas: the technological aspects of safety; the culture of safety at nuclear power stations; federal legislation and oversight; and the concept of social safety which deals with how ordinary Canadians regard nuclear power and their input into decision-making about it.
The committee is cognizant that nuclear power generation raises a host of other issues. Among them are federal government subsidies to the industry; the benefits of nuclear power in the fields of medicine and advanced research; the unresolved issue of nuclear waste disposal; the industry’s potential to contribute to reducing emissions of greenhouse gases; and the larger question of alternative sources of power.
Today, Ontario Power Generation is planning to restart its four reactors at Pickering A. The utility has also signed an 18-year agreement with British Energy PLC, of Scotland, for the lease and operation of reactors at Bruce Nuclear Generating Station on Lake Huron. Four of that station’s eight reactors are currently shut down. Bruce Power, a wholly owned subsidiary of British Energy, has applied to the CNSC for operating licences for reactors at the site. It has also begun a $30 million detailed engineering study that anticipates the restart of two of the four reactors now in shutdown. Acknowledging that millions of Canadians still rely on nuclear power, the pressing concern is not the energy choices made decades ago, but the decisions that are being made today about the aging plants. The Committee chose Pickering A, the oldest nuclear power station, as the logical test case for its investigation.
Officials of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission told the committee at the outset that its role is to regulate nuclear power in a manner that does not pose "an unreasonable harm to health, safety, the environment and national security." The federal regulator is on record as not being fully satisfied with the present standard of operation and maintenance at Canadian power reactors. A CNSC official told the Committee:
"I will say that the Atomic Energy Control Board is on record as being not fully satisfied with the present standard of operation and maintenance at Canadian power reactors. While we remain satisfied that the provisions for public safety, security, and environment are sufficient to allow operations in the short-term, we are determined that the Canadian safety philosophy of "defence-in-depth" not be eroded."
He further elaborated on this issue, commenting that: "We are not satisfied that the quality of operation and maintenance is adequate for the longer term -- which would be five to 10 years."
How much safety is enough? It is the question one Committee member posed on the first day of hearings in Ottawa. It remained a key question throughout the Committee’s work -- as members toured the Pickering Nuclear Generating Station, spoke with concerned citizens in the area, heard witnesses in Ottawa, commissioned an independent, expert review of the accident risk posed by Pickering A, and met with U.S. regulatory officials in Washington and officials of the World Association of Nuclear Operators in Atlanta, Georgia.
Committee members came as laypeople to the subject matter. They arrived at their conclusions, however, with the assistance of research staff, an independent expert consultant, informed witnesses, written submissions and the voluntary assistance of both nuclear industry critics and industry officials. Our recommendations are made in the hope that federal authorities and provincial utilities charged with ensuring nuclear reactor safety will consider those areas where sober second thought dictates there can, and should be, considerable improvement.
The Committee planned to table its report before Parliament in ample time for the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission to consider its observations when making decisions about the environmental assessment of Pickering A. However, like other committees of Parliament, the Committee found its work cut short by the dissolution of Parliament in October 2000, and the call of a general election. Unable to report until Parliament was recalled, the Committee nevertheless hopes that Ontario Power Generation, the CNSC and appropriate Ministers will benefit from its findings when making decisions about the restart of Pickering A and other nuclear stations, in particular the Bruce Nuclear Generating Station, where a return-to-service has been proposed. Finally, some of the Committee’s findings are applicable to safety concerns at all operating reactors.
Pickering A Shutdown and Rehabilitation: A Brief History
The Three Mile Island accident in the United States served as a wake-up call for the nuclear industry in that country. In 1979, in response to the accident and the decline in safety and operating performance that led to it, U.S. nuclear plant operators formed the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations (INPO), a self-help group for the industry. In the following decades, with the help of INPO, the performance and safety of U.S. plants improved dramatically. In Canada, however, performance and safety were steadily declining.
In 1994, Pickering A was the site of Canada’s worst accident at a commercial nuclear station. On December 10, 1994, a pipe break at Pickering reactor 2 resulted in a major loss of coolant accident and a spill of 185 tonnes of heavy water. The Emergency Core Cooling System was used to prevent a meltdown. About 200 workers were involved in the cleanup. The reactor was restarted 14 months later.
Throughout its operation, Ontario Hydro reported other significant events at the Pickering station to the AECB. Among them were the following:
- On August 1, 1983, Pickering reactor 2 had a loss of coolant accident after a pressure tube suffered a metre-long rupture. The station was shut down and the four reactors at Pickering A were eventually retubed at a cost of about $1 billion.
- On November 22, 1988, an operator error damaged 36 fuel bundles. The cooling system was contaminated by radioactive iodine that was vented into the environment over several weeks following the accident.
- On September 25, 1990, Pickering reactor 2 experienced large power shifts in the reactor core. Staff spent two days trying to stabilize it before shutting it down. The AECB later criticized the utility for not shutting down immediately.
- On August 2, 1992, Pickering reactor 1 had a heavy water leak from a heat exchanger that resulted in a release of 2,300 trillion becquerels of radioactive tritium into Lake Ontario.
- On April 15, 1996, Pickering reactor 4 had a heavy water leak from a heat exchanger that resulted in a release of 50 trillion becquerels of tritium into Lake Ontario.
By 1997, the AECB was so concerned about the declining performance of Pickering Generating Stations A and B that it shortened the normal two-year term of the operating licence to six months. Four years earlier, the federal regulatory board had ordered that a second fast shutdown system be added to the Pickering A reactors by the end of December 1997. By November 1996 it was apparent that the deadline would not be met, and that dramatic action was needed to stop and to reverse the downward trend in performance and safety.
The president of Ontario Hydro called in experts from the U.S. to provide what he later described as a "brutally honest" assessment of their nuclear operations and to develop an improvement plan. The Committee heard testimony from Mr. Carl Andognini who headed the review team that prepared the Integrated Independent Performance Assessment (IIPA) and later served as Special Nuclear Advisor to the President of OPG. Mr. Andognini attributed the decline to the retirement of experienced staff, weak leadership, and decentralization of nuclear operations. More importantly, Mr. Andognini noted that "the organization (Ontario Hydro) never really shifted from a fantastic engineering and construction organization, to an operational and maintenance organization."
The IIPA report had concluded that:
"Long standing management, process and equipment problems in Ontario Hydro Nuclear plants are well known but have not been aggressively resolved. As a result, the overall performance of OHN is well below the level of performance typically achieved by the best nuclear utilities. Immediate attention is needed to improve performance so that the value of OHN’s assets does not depreciate beyond recovery."
The IIPA rated the Pickering station minimally acceptable – a ranking substantially below industry standards – in its operations, maintenance, training, engineering, radiation protection, chemistry and organizational effectiveness. The minimally acceptable rating signalled that immediate management attention was required. Only in the area of emergency preparedness was the Pickering station given the somewhat higher designation of below standard.
In a detailed look at the station’s electrical distribution system, the IIPA team reported that in some cases, the ability of the system to fulfil the functions for which it was designed was not assured. In other cases, the system’s ability to function had been reduced to unacceptable levels. The chief cause was a failure to account for the cumulative effect of design and operating changes. Ineffective maintenance was also cited. In response, Ontario Hydro shut down the four Pickering A units and the three Bruce A units so that it could focus resources on the remaining reactors and bring them back to fully acceptable operation.
The Committee heard that the performance of OPG nuclear plants that were not shut down has improved as a result of a wide-ranging Performance Improvement Program in place during the last three years. Using standards developed by the World Association of Nuclear Operators (WANO), the overall OPG performance indicator has gone from about 57 per cent in 1997 when the North American average was 81 per cent, to 81 per cent at the end of 1999 when the world average had reached 88 per cent. This improvement, along with economic considerations, encouraged OPG to seek permission from the CNSC to restart the Pickering A units, subject to specific improvements, including a safety system upgrade. The proposal provided the Committee with an excellent case study for its review of nuclear safety.
The above noted use of WANO standards raised the issue of the potential role of international bodies in overseeing the safety of nuclear reactors worldwide. The Committee intends to follow up on this aspect of nuclear reactor safety in Paris and Vienna with representatives of the International Atomic Energy Agency and the Nuclear Energy Agency at a later date.
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