Shawn-Patrick Stensil
Children like to play make-believe. So, too, do the Ontario government and its pals in the nuclear industry.
From May 26 to 28, Ontario Power Generation (OPG) staged a three-day mock nuclear accident at Darlington, where they role-played what they'd do in the event of the real thing in the Greater Toronto Area.
But these nuclear games differed from reality in one profound way: Ontario has no real plan for dealing with a Fukushima-like event. Well, in fact, the plan is this: a nuclear accident won't happen, so we don't need to worry about it.
OPG, the Ontario government and the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission have always dismissed the possibility of a major incident here, but with major reactor accidents happening about once a decade somewhere in the world, we need to stop pretending.
What would a real plan look like? It would give Torontonians the tools and knowledge needed to protect their families in the event of an accident, for starters. That's what the Swiss government is doing. It recently passed a directive giving over 4 million people living within 50 kilometres of a nuclear plant potassium iodine pills (KI), which reduce the risk of thyroid cancer, to take immediately after a nuclear event.
Approximately that many people in the GTA live within 50 kms of the Pickering and Darlington nuclear stations. But if you want a KI pill, you'll need to pick it up at one of five pharmacies in Durham Region. Not so convenient if you live in Toronto.
Giving Torontonians the knowledge and means to protect themselves would require having a conversation Canada's nuclear industry has avoided for decades. It would need to admit that major accidents can happen, what the consequences would look like and what we could do (if anything) to protect our families.
No government has ever assessed the impacts of a major reactor accident on Toronto, but ignorance isn't bliss.
According to Freedom of Information documents received last week by Greenpeace, OPG's own internal research shows that people living next to its reactors have effectively ignored decades of public education campaigns on emergency planning because OPG has told them over and over again that a major accident won't happen. Designed to give Torontonians a false sense of security, this week's nuclear games will do little to change that.
A May 14 court ruling overturning OPG's approvals to build new reactors at Darlington, however, may finally force the authorities to start the conversation.
Justice James Russell's reasons for overturning OPG's approvals included the fact that OPG failed to consider the consequences of a Fukushima-scale accident and, specifically, whether our emergency plans are adequate.
The common-sense ruling also requires OPG to carry out further assessment as a result of: gaps in the bounding scenario (that aim to exclude what will not happen from what could happen) regarding hazardous substance emissions and on-site chemical inventories; lack of consideration of spent nuclear fuel; and OPG's deferral of the analysis of a severe common cause failure (caused, for example, by earthquake, corrosion, loss of power or faulty software).
Given that we already have 10 reactors in the GTA, it's amazing that we haven't made plans. Let's hope we will now.
Shawn-Patrick Stensil is an energy campaigner with Greenpeace.