An Ontario company’s plan to transport radioactive steam generators to Sweden via the Great Lakes has raised widespread concern from environmentalist groups and local communities on both sides of the border.
A decision is still pending from the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) on whether to approve nuclear utility Bruce Power’s plan to ship 16 steam generators through the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence Seaway to a Swedish company for recycling.
The original plan was to make the shipment sometime this fall. A spokesperson with Bruce Power says the safety commission has not said when the decision will be made.
Earlier this month, seven U.S. senators sent a letter to the CNSC and Canadian environment minister Jim Prentice expressing their concern about the proposal and seeking assurance that Canada will conduct a thorough review of the plan.
The letter said the senators have urged the U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Material Safety Administration to reject the proposal if it doesn’t protect the Great Lakes or comply with U.S. and international standards, and said they “urge Canada to do the same.”
Bruce Power spokesperson John Peevers says the plan to ship the steam generators for recycling is intended to reduce the company’s environmental footprint.
The original plan in the company’s environmental assessment was to put the steam generators in long-term storage, but that later changed as the company decided to ship them to the Swedish company, Studsvik, for recycling.
“We became aware of Studsvik and the fact that they have a proven track record of doing this safely with other nuclear companies in Europe,” Peevers says.
“We have the opportunity to safely recycle 90 percent of the steel in generators, and prevent it from going into long-term storage.”
Staff at CNSC, which held two days of public hearings on the issue late last month, have expressed that there are no significant safety issues associated with the shipment.
The application is unique for CNSC because the proposed shipment doesn’t fall into the already-approved packaging.
“By their nature, steam generators are not radioactive. They have become contaminated during their service life. The contamination level is low and confined to the inner parts of the generators. Each and every generator is welded shut and sealed,” reads a statement on CNSC’s website.
The commission has said it will not issue a licence until it is convinced that the shipment poses no risk to people’s health, safety or security, or the environment.
Derek Stack, executive director of Great Lakes United, says his organization is concerned mostly with the precedent that would be set if the shipment goes ahead.
“Primarily our worry is that they are setting a precedent that will allow them to ship radioactive materials around the Great Lakes without prior notice to the communities that are impacted, that are along the shores of the Great Lakes,” says Stack.
Dr. Hazel Lynn, the medical officer of health for Grey Bruce Health Unit, said the risk of radiation hazard from the shipment is very low, the Owen Sound Sun Times reports.
“This type of radiation is the same as diagnostic X-rays and does not ‘spread’,” Lynn said.
CNSC has also said that radioactive materials such as medical isotopes and radioactive sources are shipped across Canada and around the world regularly without risk to the public or the environment.
Gordon Edwards, president of Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility, says however that the comparison to other radioactive shipments such as medical isotopes is not fair as medical isotopes have very short half-lives, which come nowhere near the thousands of years half-lives of some other radioactive materials found in nuclear reactors.
He says it is very likely that these radioactive materials would be inside the old steam generators, but their presence cannot be detected by measurements made from outside.
“In the case of an accident, the more traffic you have the more likely you are to have an accident. There could be release into the environment of radioactive materials which are going to be dangerous for a very long time,” he says.
Edwards adds that since the generators are old, they are not in the same condition as they were originally and have become corroded, making it more likely for the radioactive material to be dispersed into water in case of an accident.
He is also concerned about the practice of recycling the metal in the generators, saying the scrap metal is radioactive.
“We are deliberately contaminating our own metal supply and this is a very bad thing because once that contamination is in the metal supply, it’s impossible to get it out.”
Studsvik is a licensed entity by the Swedish regulatory authority, which CNSC says is a competent authority. The Swedish regulator is also reviewing this application independently. The CNSC did not return calls seeking comment by press time.
