Nuclear safety board’s review rejects allegations
Anonymous letter ‘overstates’ value of data unseen before plants licensed
An internal technical review has dismissed allegations in an anonymous letter, purportedly from a group of specialists at the Ottawabased Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, that CNSC commissioners weren’t given key information before licensing Ontario’s Darlington and Bruce nuclear generating stations in 2015.
The unsigned letter, sent in May to CNSC president Michael Binder, said commission members “do not receive sufficient information to make balanced judgments” when making licensing decisions.
It cited five specific examples, largely related to “probabilistic safety assessments” (PSAs), one of several tools used to evaluate risk at a nuclear power plant.
But the technical review by Peter Elder, a strategic adviser in the CNSC’s regulatory operations branch, concluded that “none of the five cases raised in the anonymous letter point to any safety issues.”
Elder found no evidence to support the allegation that CNSC commissioners don’t receive the information they need to make balanced judgments. “Technical findings indicate that the CNSC staff position presented to the Commission during public proceedings was well supported with evidence-based recommendations.”
In most cases, Elder’s review found, the anonymous letter “overstates the importance of PSAs to the overall safety case.
“A PSA is not designed to be used in isolation of other types of safety analyses, nor is it used to set operational safety limits. Therefore, care must always be used when drawing regulatory conclusions from PSA results.”
Shawn-Patrick Stensil, a nuclear analyst at Greenpeace Canada, said he wasn’t surprised by the review’s findings.
“It was done in-house by someone personally selected by the CNSC president,” Stensil said in an email. “This was not an independent review as requested by the whistleblowers.”
Stensil said Elder spent most of his report “trying to minimize the importance of a probabilistic risk assessment.
“This misses the point. There appears to be a toxic organizational culture at the CNSC, where management is discouraging public discussion of nuclear risks. That’s the root of the whistleblowers’ complaint.”
In reviewing the five cases presented in the letter, Elder considered “the complete safety analysis available, which is both deterministic and probabilistic analysis.”
In one case, the letter alleged that Ontario Power Generation (OPG) had not submitted the required quality studies for the planned $12.8-billion refurbishment of its four aging reactors at the Darlington Nuclear Generating Station.
Nor did CNSC staff inform the commission of that before it granted a long-term licence last December, it said.
But Elder found it was “untrue” that OPG had not submitted the required studies, adding: “The necessary requirements for safe operation during refurbishment are in place, and CNSC staff have already started compliance activities to confirm that OPG will meet these requirements.”
In another case, the letter’s authors alleged that CNSC staff had done “little or no review” of a PSA submitted for Darlington by OPG in 2015. As a result, they said, staff “cannot endorse the results and findings of the document.”
However, Elder’s report said that “misstated” the CNSC’s role. “It is not the CNSC’s function to endorse the licensee’s work; rather, the CNSC sets requirements and verifies compliance with those requirements.”
Other concerns raised about the operating licences issued to OPS and Bruce Power, Elder found, were also without foundation.
The anonymous letter had suggested that CNSC staff should conduct compliance reviews in public. But Elder said that wasn’t a practical suggestion, given that staff conduct thousands of reviews every year.
Elder did recommend that the CNSC more clearly document the regulatory role of PSAs and the scope and depth of technical reviews necessary to support licensing. And he said management should “reinforce with staff all the processes available for raising concerns.”
The Globe and Mail reported this week that CNSC scientists have asked their union, the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada, to negotiate a policy that would allow them to express their views about nuclear safety issues without fear of reprisals from management.