Ontario Hydro breakup sparks safety fears

Canadian nuclear watchdog worries about effects on `fragile' reactors

Toronto Star - January 29, 1999
By Peter Calamai, Science Reporter

OTTAWA - Canada's nuclear watchdog is worried the breakup of Ontario Hydro could endanger the current ``fragile'' safety of nuclear power plants.

The fears were voiced here yesterday at an Atomic Energy Control Board hearing by agency staff and by board president Dr. Agnes Bishop.

"Senior regulators throughout the Western world have serious and realistic concerns on how market deregulation could affect safety," Bishop told the top brass from Ontario Hydro.

"It would take very little slippage to make a big difference because it's very fragile at the moment in terms of not yet being where they need to be," she said, speaking of Hydro's five-year upgrading plan.

The utility is spending up to $8 billion to recover from management and equipment problems that reduced nuclear operations to what outside experts termed a "minimally acceptable" level. This verdict prompted the closure a year ago of the four oldest reactors at Pickering and three other reactors at Bruce on Lake Huron.

The control board also warned that licence renewal for the four Pickering reactors still operating depends on continued improvements in six of 10 major areas - including staff training, equipment condition and nuclear security.

Despite such warnings, an air of cautious optimism pervaded the board meeting. Agency staff lauded improvements by Ontario Hydro over the past year while still demanding greater accountability and tougher standards.

The watchdog's concerns about Pickering and the other Ontario nuclear power stations boil down to money. It wants guarantees that the new profit-driven Ontario Power Generation will continue the costly upgrading program begun nearly two years ago.

Ontario Hydro boss Ron Osborne assured the regulators the new electricity company would use profits from hydro and fossil-fuel power stations to pay for the nuclear upgrading. As the new president of Ontario Power Generation, Osborne also promised the company would sock away between $300 million and $400 million annually to cover eventual decommissioning costs for nuclear power stations.

But Hydro nuclear boss Carl Andognini said in an interview he opposed making the promised upgrading work a condition of the operating licence at Pickering. This approach could work against improved safety because it limited management choices, he said.

Ontario Hydro is applying to renew for two years the operating licence for Pickering, which expires at the end of March. At the same time the new deregulated electricity company - Ontario Power Generation Inc. - wants to take over the unexpired portion on the existing licences on all Ontario nuclear facilities.

Officially, however, licences to operate nuclear facilities are not transferable, so the electricity company must go through formal hearings, even through the actual operators aren't changing.

Hydro brass also told the Atomic Energy Control Board the utility will:

• Install a siren warning system covering at least three kilometres in every direction from Pickering as soon as Ontario's Emergency Measures Organization agrees on a plan.

• Gradually replace cables insulated with suspect PVC inside critical areas of the older Pickering reactors. A timetable for an $800 million scheme to restart these units is supposed to be set by Hydro directors in June.

• Drill up to 100 wells on the Pickering site to monitor underground water flows to deal with tritium leaks from the plant.

The only intervenor at yesterday's hearing, Irene Kock of Durham Nuclear Awareness, told the control board that relations between the community and Ontario Hydro had improved over the past year.

A final decision on the Pickering licence renewal is scheduled for the board's March 25 meeting.

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