A three-decade life extension might make economic sense, but is it too risky for residents?

[shawn.patrick stensil]

http://www.thestar.com/business/article/731959--nuclear-fleet-shows-its-age
Nuclear fleet shows its age
A three-decade life extension might make economic sense, but is it too
risky for residents?

November 28, 2009

Tyler Hamilton


Kathy Hogeveen remembers the sugar cubes most.

They were there, along with the free coffee, at the visitor's centre
at Pickering nuclear station. It was the mid-1970s and Hogeveen and
her friends were typical teenyboppers — restless and bored. They used
to ride to the plant on their bikes to watch movies about the wonders
of safe, clean, low-cost nuclear power. There, in what seemed like
their own private theatre, they'd suck on a seemingly endless supply
of cubed sweets.

It wasn't a long trek. The station's reactor containment buildings
were just 1,200 metres away from Hogeveen's yard on Colmar Ave., a
block from her public school. Surrounded by empty fields and without
much to do, popping into the neighbouring nuke facility seemed
perfectly normal.

"I probably watched that movie over 50 times," Hogeveen recalls of her
visits to Canada's first commercial nuclear plant, which between 1971
and 1986 grew from one to eight reactors. "It's amazing how much time
we spent hanging around that place."

Thirty-five years later, the Pickering station is under the
microscope. Its four Pickering B reactors, built in the mid-1980s,
will within a few years come to the end of their safe operating lives.
Ontario Power Generation, the Crown corporation that owns and operates
the plant, is expected to decide before year's end whether it makes
sense to mothball the Candu reactors or spend billions of dollars
extending their life beyond 2050. One stop-gap being considered is a
quick tune-up and short life extension.

The clock is ticking. Pickering B's reactors contribute more than
2,000 megawatts to the province's power mix, enough electricity over a
year to supply 1.6 million homes. If they are to be shut down as early
as 2012, then Ontario must make sure it has another source of power to
take their place. Those who argue against refurbishment cite the high
cost of operating the Pickering station and the poor performance of
two Pickering A reactors that were renewed between 2003 and 2005. They
also point to the cost overruns and delays related to refurbishments
of two Candu reactors at the Bruce generating station, a three-hour
drive northwest of Toronto, and one reactor at the Pointe Lepreau
generating station in New Brunswick.

"The industry has not delivered on its promise of rebuilding old
reactors on time and on budget," said Greenpeace activist Shawn-
Patrick Stensil.

But risks related to safety are what most concern the former head of
Canada's nuclear safety regulator. Linda Keen, president of the
Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission between 2001 and 2007, told the
Star during an exclusive series of interviews that the rate of
population growth around Pickering isn't being taken seriously enough.



"Population growth means the risk has increased," Keen said. "To be
honest, I don't know how you'd vacate the Pickering area alone in the
event of an emergency."

Pickering was much smaller back when Hogeveen was a child. In 1974
fewer than 25,000 called it home. Since then the population has almost
quadrupled to 95,000 and is expected to surpass 132,000 in 2013.
Neighbouring Ajax, with a population similar in size to Pickering, has
seen near identical growth.

As OPG has pointed out at community meetings, Pickering is "an
emerging growth centre and is expected to lead the nation in
residential growth over the next 10 to 20 years."

Both Pickering and Ajax fit almost entirely within what's called the
"primary zone," a circle around Pickering generating station that
extends in every direction for 10 kilometres. It also includes parts
of Scarborough to the west and Whitby to the east.

In the event of a nuclear accident that requires evacuation of the
primary zone, it's estimated more than 240,000 people in as many as
100,000 vehicles would need to be relocated within 24 hours. That's on
top of the plant's 2,800 employees.

By comparison, Ukraine authorities evacuated a 30-km zone after the
Chernobyl reactor explosion in 1986. About 14,000 people living in the
area were told to leave. They never came back.

A faulty Russian reactor design and poor training was found to be the
cause of the Chernobyl disaster. Ontario Power Generation and its
predecessor Ontario Hydro have assured over the two decades since that
such an accident could not happen with a Canadian-designed Candu.

But accidents aren't the only risk. A no-fly zone does not exist
around Pickering station, according to regulatory documents. The
reactor containment buildings were not designed to withstand a large
airplane crash, making the plant more vulnerable to the kind of
terrorism witnessed in 2001.

Keen adds that the risks are statistically higher because of the
design of Pickering station, which at one point was host to eight
reactors. "That's not the norm," she said, noting that most nuclear
plants in Europe and the U.S. only have one or two reactors.

Pickering has six. Just east, Darlington station has four and is
slated to get two more. The Bruce plant has six, growing to eight
after refurbishments. "The concept of multi-unit reactors is, to my
knowledge, quite unique to Canada."

It's for this reason that Keen, in mid-2007, asked her commission to
study population densities and "buffer zones" surrounding nuclear
plants around the world. She wanted to know the international norm,
suspecting that Pickering likely wouldn't be built today based on
current population numbers around the sensitive primary zone.

She was equally concerned about population trends. "The aspect of
future as well as current population is important as a refurb
(refurbished reactor) could be there in 25 or 40 years and a new plant
for 100 years," said Keen, adding that neither OPG nor the Ontario
government seem concerned.

Keen understands the challenges of enforcing nuclear safety. In
November 2007 she was head of the safety commission when it ordered
Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. to shut down its medical isotope-
producing research reactor at Chalk River. The regulator, citing
safety concerns, issued the order because emergency power systems on
the half-century-old National Research Universal reactor had not been
connected and was in violation of Atomic Energy's licence.

The problem, politically, is that the shutdown led to a global isotope
shortage and, to calm international concerns, Parliament overturned
the regulator's decision. Days later Keen was fired, taking the fall
for what the natural resources minister at the time, Gary Lunn, called
a "lack of leadership."

Many industry experts have since come to Keen's defence, arguing she
acted the way a nuclear safety regulator should. Keen, who is a cancer
survivor, knows all about the importance of isotope-assisted diagnosis
and treatment. But "my job was not to worry about the supply of
isotopes," she told the Star. "It was to make sure the facility was
safe."

It's the same reason Keen ordered the study on buffer zones just a few
months before her dismissal. Two years later, that study is still not
done. Aurèle Gervais, a spokesman for the Canadian Nuclear Safety
Commission, said the agency has not proceeded "due to competing
priorities."

He said a study is now anticipated to begin in late 2010 or early 2011
– too late to influence a refurbishment or life-extension decision for
Pickering.

In the meantime, life goes on within the contiguous zone, the area
that would be most affected by an accident at Pickering. Over at Sir
John A. Macdonald Public School, built a year before Ontario Hydro
broke ground on the nuclear plant, the containment buildings and
surrounding transmission lines are as much a part of the scenery as
the local parks, plazas and fire hall.

Sir John's has the distinction of being one of the closest elementary
schools in the world to a nuclear power plant, if not the closest.
About 460 students go there, and 37 graduating classes have passed
through its halls.

Principal Michael Bowman said the station, while less than two
kilometres away, is accepted as part of the community. Students don't
appear bothered by its presence, and parents – many of them employees
of the plant – have not raised concerns.

"I don't really even think about it, to tell you the truth," said
Bowman, 39. "It's been there as long as I've been around." In that
time there have been no major incidents.

Still, students are routinely reminded of the plant and the risks of
being so close. The school holds annual evacuation drills, and every
few years it takes part in a Durham Region drill that puts students on
a bus and takes them to a designated holding location. "It's the real
deal," said Bowman.

At the beginning of every school year parents are asked to sign a
waiver form giving school officials approval to hand out potassium-
iodide pills to their children in the event of a serious radiation
leak. The pills flood the thyroid glands so they won't absorb as much
deadly radioactive iodine.

Every school within the three-kilometre zone has a stockpile of the
pills, along with a list of students allowed to take them. Daycares,
hospitals and seniors' homes have their own supply. But the risk of a
major accident at Pickering station is low, according to a study last
year for OPG as part of an environmental assessment of Pickering B. If
such an accident was to happen, the utility assured the safety
regulator last fall that the primary zone could be evacuated in less
than seven hours, well within the 24-hour window required by law.

Even with a near doubling of the surrounding population expected after
2025, evacuation could be done in less than 10 hours – and that's
taking into account bad winter weather, rush-hour driving conditions,
and psychological factors such as mass panic, according to the study.

OPG makes another key assumption: Road capacity will improve as
population grows, so no need to worry about an additional 70,000 cars
trying to flee the primary zone.

In such an unlikely event, "effective evacuation of the three-
kilometre and 10-kilometre regions around Pickering Nuclear can be
accomplished well before any required release of radioactivity
following an event at the station," OPG spokesman Ted Gruetzner said.

But some industry observers, including Keen, warn that such evacuation
plans fail to anticipate the chaos likely to result. They also tend to
overlook what happens to people after they have been evacuated. How
are they fed? How long are they kept? When and how do they return
home?

"I still believe it's one of the most unplanned things," said Keen.

The number of organizations with overlapping responsibilities can also
complicate the outcome. On the federal level there's the Canadian
Nuclear Safety Commission, Health Canada, Transport Canada and Public
Security Canada. Provincially, there's Emergency Management Ontario
and Ontario Power Generation. On a municipal level, there's Durham
Region, the City of Toronto, municipal fire and police.

As a teenager, Hogeveen and her friends just went about their days,
occasionally riding to the Pickering plant to snatch a few sugar
cubes.

Today, in her late 40s, Hogeveen has five children and lives in
Cambridge. Asked whether she'd ever move back to her old
neighbourhood, she doesn't think twice. "I wouldn't want to live that
close to a nuclear plant."