Greenpeace pans Ontario’s updated nuclear emergency plan

2011 Fukushima disaster pushed many governments to prepare for ‘bigger accidents’

Ontario has updated its plan for dealing with potentially deadly emergencies at nuclear power plants for the first time since the 2011 Fukushima disaster forced the evacuation of 70,000 people in Japan.

The 173-page effort follows criticisms from provincial auditor general Bonnie Lysyk earlier this month that the nuclear response blueprint has not been changed since 2009 to reflect lessons learned elsewhere.

“Ontario has three nuclear power facilities and 18 operating reactors, which makes it the largest nuclear jurisdiction in North America and one of the largest in the world,” she wrote in her annual report.

“Plans need to be regularly updated with current information and to reflect the best approach to respond to emergencies so they can be used as a step-by-step guide during a response,” Lysyk added.

The new plan takes into account radiation emergencies that could stem from reactor accidents, leaks during the transportation of radioactive material, explosions and even a satellite crashing on nuclear plants at Pickering and Darlington east of the heavily populated Greater Toronto Area or at the Bruce reactors near Kincardine on Lake Huron.

“This updated plan will help ensure we are more prepared than ever for emergencies so that our families and our communities are safe,” Community Safety Minister Marie-France Lalonde said in releasing the document on Dec. 21.

The plan was released a week after the government put out a request for experts to conduct a technical study of it, making a mockery of the process, said the anti-nuclear group, Greenpeace.

“It’s ass backward and incompetent,” said Shawn-Patrick Stensil, senior energy analyst for Greenpeace, a vocal critic of the government’s nuclear energy program.

There is little in the updated nuclear response plan to prepare for a major disaster, he added, such as emergency zones that are too small given the potentially large scale of nuclear disasters. “While other countries have strengthened public safety since Fukushima, it’s taken the Ontario government six years to maintain the status quo,” Stensil said.

“Other countries are preparing for bigger accidents.”

The new plan is based mainly on the possibility of a “design-basis accident,” which the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission defines as an accident “that a nuclear facility must be designed and built to withstand without loss to the systems, structures, and components necessary to ensure public health and safety.”

Stensil said design-basis accidents don’t release much radiation, as was the case with a partial meltdown at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania in 1979.

“Other countries decided in light of Fukushima to plan for accidents that reactors weren’t designed to prevent or control,” he added.

While the Ontario plan mentions a “wide range of accidents” should be considered, “the amount of detailed planning should decrease as the probability of the accidents’ occurrence decreases” to maintain an “appropriate balance.”

In contrast, Stensil said Germany’s Commission on Radiological Protec- tion, known by the acronym SSK, goes further.

That agency states “the range of accidents included in emergency response planning should be redefined to more closely reflect an accident’s potential impact rather than its likelihood” and calls for contingency planning for “accidents whose radiological effects mirrors those of Fukushima.”

The tender issued for the technical study of Ontario’s nuclear emergency plan called for an assessment of the size of emergency zones, potential radiation doses, a wider look at weather patterns, possible meteorological effects at reactor sites and a study on drinking water impacts in the event of an accident.

At Fukushima, a massive offshore earthquake measuring 9.0 on the Richter scale triggered a tsunami that swamped the nuclear power plant, melting down three reactors and causing a fire in a fourth reactor.

The heavily damaged facility leaked radiation into the sea and surrounding countryside. The initial radioactive zone was bigger than the ones left by the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, forcing large-scale evacuations.

Decommissioning of the destroyed power plant is expected to take decades.

In her report, Lysyk warned a lack of preparation by emergency management officials “could result in confusion or delays” in any response to a tragedy.

Toronto city council passed a motion in November calling on the province to prepare for more severe accidents and expand delivery of anti-radiation potassium iodide pills beyond the current 10-kilometre zone around nuclear power plants.

The city also requested a study on the potential impacts of a major nuclear accident on the Great Lakes, which are a source of drinking water for millions in Canada and the United States, awareness campaigns for Toronto residents on how to prepare for a nuclear accident at Pickering or Darlington, just east of Oshawa.

“It’s taken the Ontario government six years to maintain the status quo.” SHAWN-PATRICK STENSIL GREENPEACE ANALYST