In the tradition of many great performers I thought I?d kick off the new season with a topical joke. This was forwarded to me by one of the people I interviewed for tonight?s Agenda show on ?Canada?s Nuclear Future?:
A stranger was seated next to a little girl on the airplane. The stranger turned to her and said, 'Let's talk. I've heard that flights go quicker if you strike up a conversation with your fellow passenger.' The little girl, who had just opened her book, closed it slowly and said to the stranger, 'What would you like to talk about?' 'Oh, I don't know,' said the stranger. 'How about nuclear power?' and he smiles. ? OK, ' she said. 'That could be an interesting topic. But let me ask you a question first. A horse, a cow, and a deer all eat the same stuff - grass - . Yet a deer excretes little pellets, while a cow turns out a flat patty, and a horse produces clumps of dried grass. Why do you suppose that is?' The stranger, visibly surprised by the little girl's intelligence, thinks about it and says, 'Hmmm, I have no idea..' To which the little girl replies, 'Do you really feel qualified to discuss nuclear power when you don't know sh-t?
My great hope is that by the end of tonight?s conversation you will all know enough about the topic to strike up a lively debate on your next flight. And, to further my cause, I transcribed an interesting telephone conversation I had with Peter Elder, Director General, Nuclear Cycle and Facilities Regulation from the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission on the roll of the regulator.
What is the roll of the CNSC?
We regulate the Canadian nuclear industry in terms of? health, safety, environment and national security. We?re not an economic regulator we?re a health and safety regulator.
Does the CNSC regulate all different types of reactors?
Yes, we regulate any nuclear reactor or use of nuclear material in Canada. ?Our rules would apply regardless of the type of reactor. Now most of the reactors in Canada ?to date, have all been CANDU reactors so we have a lot of specific guidance and standards that are specific for CANDU reactors but the basic principals to nuclear safety have been developed internationally over the past 40 years and the basic principals apply to any type of reactor.
Your job is to make sure they function in a safe and secure fashion?
Yes, we don?t influence the choice as to if someone wants to use nuclear or not. If there is a choice to use it we make sure it?s done in a safe manner.
What?s the process for that? Regular visits? What does that mean?
?Before any body can use it in Canada you need a license. So there?s a process for getting a license.? We use a stage licensing, so there is an evaluation of the site, looking at the environmental issues around the site, is the site appropriate? Then you go onto a construction license. Again before you allow construction you?ve got to review the design to make sure the design is robust enough, it?s got the appropriate safety features in it and then operating licenses which will set limits on how you operate the facility. And, what sort of monitoring the licensee has to do. We also have a compliance program where we have inspectors that go out and measure that they are meeting our requirements. And for the power reactors we have on-site inspectors. So there are inspectors that work full-time at each of the sites.
They are there all the time?
They?re there, well they don?t have them there 24 hours a day but that is where they are based. They have offices on the site and they are going into the stations on a daily basis.
Can you tell me from a regulators perspective what happed at Chalk River?
?What we require is that they have continuous monitoring for leaks. .. Every nuclear rector needs to be cooled so we require that they be able to detect if there is a leak in their coolant system?There are procedures, if it leaks, depending on the leak, what you?re supposed to do. So in this case AECL [Atomic Energy of Canada Limited], in May, found a small leak. Following their procedures they shut down the reactor and they told us about it and they went into investigation of where the leak was. Now the initial investigations showed, which took only a couple of days, showed that there was actually a hole, a small hole, in the reactor vessel. From a regulators view you don?t like to see holes in vessels. ?if anything, we get really concerned about things that can get bigger. ?. Since then they?ve done a lot of work on examination, trying to figure out two things: Why was there this hole and were there any other parts of the vessel that were close to being able to leak??. In this phase they are just collecting information and we?ve been monitoring what they?ve been doing, but we?re also asking questions about the potential repair techniques. There are very certain codes and standards that you would do for any vessel repair .? We also have site staff at Chalk River as well so we?re monitoring this on a daily basis.
What can you tell me about the Maple reactor that is on the same site as the one that went down?
....The Maple, there?s a long history to this. They first came to the regulator with plans to construct a new reactor which would be dedicated to medical isotope production. [AECL] applied to build a new reactor and they applied for a construction license and before that there was an environmental assessment done. AECL presented the design, we reviewed the design and the design was approved, late 90?s I guess, and they were permitted to start construction. ?After construction started they ran into a number of problems with the design.
So one of the things we require is that you check the design after it?s been built, which is referred to as commissioning. All this testing is to make sure the reactor behaves like it was predicted to behave in the safety case. And AECL ran into? a problem with a shut off rod. So this is the system that automatically shuts down the reactor. And, some of their shut-off rods were getting stuck. This is not a good thing. Shut-off rods need to work. So they did a lot of investigation of why it was getting stuck and they had to solve that problem before they could go any further. Then they started to do some commissioning tests with reactor fuel and these are done in a very graded fashion at a very low power and confirmed that everything is OK at a low power, 1% of the total power, and then work your way up. In that test they noticed the reactor was not behaving how it was supposed to behave. The safety case was based on under certain conditions?they were predicting the reactor power should be going down and they were measuring it actually going up.
The reactors behavior in real life was different than was predicted. And, since the safety case is based on the predictions you then are in a situation ? you can either update your safety case to have your prediction match your actual or you make a design change to have the actual match the prediction. And they went through a series of tests?the CNSC ? allowed them to do a series of tests to better understand this mismatch between the prediction and the actual. There are a number of variables and they were trying to eliminate the variables and find out where the real difference was.
So the end result was they couldn?t make it work the way it was supposed to and it was going to cost too much money to figure it out so they just?
Their decision was based on economics. You know, it was AECL?s decision ?It was a test program that we had approved and they stopped the project part way through that test program.
How would you describe that relationship between the CNSC and AECL?Is it a healthy relationship?
? It?s similar to a relationship, any relationship, between a licensee and a regulator. Someone described it, that there should be a healthy tension. So what we have been trying to do to maintain that?with AECL ? so there is no misunderstanding in what our requirements are. So for the NRU [Nuclear Reactor Unit] [at Chalk River] we just put one in place to do two things - to make sure there is proper communication but also to make sure that the requirements for the regulator are clearly documented and agreed to. ... The Canadian Standard association has a number of standards for nuclear power plants. There just isn?t the volume or demand to produce those similar to those standards for a research reactor. So what we do is make sure those requirements are clearly documented and agreed to by both sides.
