Evidence of meeting #48 for Natural Resources in the 40th Parliament, 3rd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was waste.
A recording is available from Parliament.
March 8th, 2011 / 4 p.m.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Thank you everyone.
Do you think that there was sufficient public consultation on this specific project?
4 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission
Yes, we believe that anybody who wanted to speak to the subject had the opportunity to do so.
4 p.m.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
Do you understand the public’s concerns about the shipping of nuclear material?
4 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission
I think there's an inherent fear of nuclear or a lack of understanding of what's involved in that, but given the activity of this particular file, I think everybody had a chance to express their opinion about that.
4 p.m.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
In your presentation you compared the generator to a radioactive pacemaker. Is that right?
4 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission
Yes.
4 p.m.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
When did we stop using radioactive pacemakers in Canada?
4 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission
I think they're an old model, and we stopped using this particular model in the late eighties, I believe. But the point here is that the level of plutonium that drove those was far higher and it was running for years and years, compared to what's in the steam generator.
4 p.m.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
So if anyone listening or in this room had the unfortunate need of a pacemaker, you wouldn't recommend them getting a radioactive pacemaker.
The question is this. I want to get to this apples and oranges comparison that you're doing. You said in your papers here today that more than 60,000 shipments of nuclear materials of some kind or another.... Are you seriously comparing a small box of medical isotopes that decay within hours to thousands of tonnes of nuclear waste with a half-life of 24,000 years? Is that the comparison you've offered to the committee today?
4 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission
You're putting words in my mouth. The comparison is that the radioactivity of some of the medical isotopes is by far higher than in the steam generator, and it's not the technetium, it's the moly that has a longer life. And there's cobalt and uranium and yellowcake, and there is gauge. Yes, millions of radioactive materials are being shipped every day across the whole world with a higher radioactivity than a steam generator.
4 p.m.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
I'm not putting any words in your mouth. This is your own briefing deck that you gave to the committee today. Here are the massive radioactive steam generators. You've put that on the same page as the little box of medical isotopes, which decay quite quickly. You made the comparison. You said these were essentially the equivalent; people shouldn't be worried.
4 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission
It's not as massive as you say.
4 p.m.
NDP
4 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission
Absolutely. But it's not all nuclear. It's only four grams pasted into the inner tube. The outside shell is clean.
4 p.m.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
But all four grams are not created equal. We're talking about something that if there were four grams sitting on that desk right here, we'd clear the place. We'd put up a cordon and we'd not come back here for a long time if it were to spill.
My question is this. At the beginning of your presentation you claimed and made the assertion that for decades you've been an independent watchdog, essentially, for the nuclear industry. Is that right?
4 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission
Right.
4 p.m.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
Did the CNSC do an independent test of the radioactivity of these radioactive generators?
4 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission
Yes.
4 p.m.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
You took an independent test. You didn't rely on Bruce Power's numbers for the radioactivity—
4 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission
No. We actually went and sent inspectors to measure it.
4 p.m.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
You went in. How does one do an actual assessment of something like this from the outside? Do you go around with a Geiger counter to see what the radioactivity is like?
4 p.m.
Executive Vice-President and Chief Regulatory Operations Officer, Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission
Mr. Chair, multiple testing was done at multiple levels. It started with sampling of the inner tubes of the generators. It started with evaluation on the model of the distribution of the nuclear substance in the generators themselves. In addition to all the testing, yes, we did go out and do the external measurements. Once we understood the distribution and the composition of the nuclear substance on the inside, we were able to determine the total amount of nuclear substance, the characteristics of the nuclear substance. Hence we say it's tagged to the inside. This technology has been around for many years and is part of the normal process in the operations. Sampling is taken out of these tubes.
4:05 p.m.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
Let me ask this. Have we ever shipped nuclear waste from a decommissioned reactor through the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence before?
4:05 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission
We haven't shipped this particular steam generator, but we are shipping practically on a weekly basis, from OPG to Bruce Power, all kinds of low-level waste. We recycle things from when we dismantled the heavy water plant in Bruce, when we dismantled the white shell material—
4:05 p.m.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
But to my specific question, because the question was specific, have we never done this type of shipment before through the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence?