Oral Presentation by FARE to Review Panel,Darlington Hearings,

FARE (Families Against Radiation Exposure)
Oral Presentation to Joint Review Panel, Darlington Hearings, April 7, 2011
Good afternoon Chair, Joint Panel Review, Ontario Power Generation and the Canadian Nuclear Safety
Commission. Thank you for the opportunity for FARE to speak today.
Port Hope’s Families Against Radiation Exposure (FARE), founded in 2004 is a not-for-profit
organization. It is composed of a volunteer Board of Directors and a membership. Today, we have the
following Board representation present: Sanford Haskill, Chairman, Derrick Kelly, President, Karen
Colvin, Secretary and myself, Holly Blefgen. Currently, we also have two key advisors: Dr. Stan
Blecher MD, Medical Geneticist, Professor Emeritus, Molecular Biology and Genetics, and Director
Emeritus, School of Human Biology, University of Guelph, the other being Dr. Linda Harvey, MD,
University of Toronto, Master of Science(Neurosciences), and a Family Practitioner.
Our presentation will be about FARE, it’s origins and objectives, and will relate activities
that FARE has been involved in order to inform this forum on matters which we believe our
experiences can assist this inquiry.
Briefly FARE’s Objectives are:
1. To monitor radioactive waste and emissions released in the
Municipality of Port Hope and surrounding regions, and to work toward the elimination
of these;
2. To provide information and educational material so as to inform the public as to the
issues regarding the effects on human and environmental health from radioactivity and
emissions.
FARE’s contributions to Port Hope
In the relatively short period that FARE has been in existence it has achieved major milestones in
in it’s efforts to accomplish these and other objectives.
FARE was formed in 2004 to raise questions and provide education to the public about the
proposed down-blending of enriched uranium in the flood plain of the Ganaraska River. Our strategy
was to get a full panel review (highest level of environmental assessment) or to get Council to call for a
so-called “peer review”. (It should be noted that the term “peer review” is used differently by scientists
on the one hand and by some members of the public on the other. Here the term is being used in the nonscientific
sense that the Port Hope Council uses. I will describe the scientific usage shortly.) Council
called for the “peer review” and the rest is history. Our community is safer as a result.
After Cameco abandoned its proposal for enriched uranium, FARE continued to work towards its
goal of minimizing radioactive emissions in the municipality and to monitor the clean-up of low level
radioactive waste. Much of this was done without publicity. Our achievements have included:
• Making the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) aware that Cameco and (the former)
Zircatec lacked the training and equipment to respond to a radiological fire at their facilities. The
CNSC ordered them to correct that, and they have.
• Detecting neutron radiation on drums stored in public areas of the company`s facility. The
company now monitors its workers for neutron radiation (which it didn`t before).
• Demanding greater accountability on emissions. The company now reports its emissions publicly
in language the public can understand.
• Protesting the secrecy of the Low Level Radioactive Waste Management Office(LLRWMO).
Thanks to our intervention, anyone can now request and receive the full radiological history of
any property in the community.Only a few residents have done so (it is not advertised) and more
than one has told us “If I’d been allowed to see that, I wouldn’t have bought this house.”
• Informing the LLRWMO about 36 public locations in Port Hope where soil samples showed
elevated levels of uranium, arsenic and other toxic metals. The testing was done by Cameco and
filed with the CNSC, but the municipality was not informed for four years. The municipality`s
“peer reviewer” has promised that these locations will be cleaned up.
• Receipt of Award Winning Environmental Recognition from the Canadian Geographic Society in
Vancouver, 2006.
Our written submission to the Joint Review Panel focused on a factual overview of hazardous
radioactive waste, emissions, economics and risk assessment that apply to the proposed Darlington
New Nuclear Plant (DNNP). We have felt compelled to address this Joint Panel Review because of
what our community has been exposed to for over seventy years. We have had radioactive waste
randomly dumped, disposed of, mismanaged and transferred throughout our town and the
surrounding natural environment, with the continuous output of radioactive contaminants through
emissions released at CAMECO’s facilities in the heart of Port Hope.
We offer a human perspective to this Joint Panel Review which we hope will be given every
consideration and acted upon wisely. Otherwise, the collective voices of our members, their families
and those of many people in the Municipalities of Clarington, Whitby, Port Hope, Kincardine, Owen
Sound, Durham Region, Bruce County, City of Oshawa, Pickering, Peterborough and elsewhere in
the province of Ontario will remain unheard. Based on our experience, for the everyday
layperson/citizen to understand the complexities of the nuclear fuel cycle, nuclear power generation,
radiation science and waste contamination, much study and knowledge is required. Just recently, an
incumbent Port Hope Municipal Councillor stated he had participated in CNSC’s Forum 101. He
advised he was science illiterate, and he found that by lunch hour he was overwhelmed by the
information and could not manage to digest the full 8 hour session.
We expected an objective of this hearing of the Joint Panel Review was to provide the public with an
opportunity to learn, observe and question intelligently the CNSC, OPG and others. However, we
understand many have felt they cannot come forward to give input and participate in a quasi-judicial
setting. As well, has simply turning the lights on become too easy, an expected convenience we take
totally foregranted without giving thought to the question of the cost of nuclear power? As
commented by Madame Beaudet on numerous occasions, the lack of public involvement creates a
silence that should leave us with a nagging doubt . There remains the question as to what degree are
we disconnected from the real world? And, are we in a state of denial?
Silence can also be an indicator of grave apprehension, fear, possibly terror, in a time when the
country of Japan and its people are besieged by a catastrophic nuclear disaster of a magnitude that is
beyond what anyone of us here in this room can imagine. The fact that we here are contemplating the
refurbishment of a nuclear plant leaves me feeling sick inside especially when I think of the insidious
and horrific nature of radiation contamination, fall-out and waste to be left in perpetuity My
thoughts are with my sister living with her husband in Tokyo, her students, her community, the
children, youth and parents to be, witnessing such an atrocity that is out of control!. It is Day 28,
facing a fate rapidly exceeding the suffering the people of Japan endured following the release of the
atomic bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
When studying Japanese, I learnt a traditional Japanese expression: a man comes home from work
each night and to his wife he says: Ban Gohan, Ofuro, Nemasu. Dinner, Bath, Sleep! However, now
Iodine 131 contaminates the tap water, there is no gas for the government to distribute clean water,
there is no food, no heat to prepare a warm meal. There is hoarding, there are rotating electrical
outages. It is not safe to bathe. Such hazardous contamination that cannot be seen, tasted or smelled,
but affects all human and animal life upon intake via inhalation and ingestion has caused and will
cause thousands of people as well as numerous species to suffer and die from radiation sickness and
its related ailments. It will cause genetic mutation and damage to be passed on to future generations
and forever contaminate their food supply chain and bio-accumulate throughout various ecological
systems.
It has been stated at this hearing that a disaster such as that of Fukushima could not occur here,
because the location of Ontario’s nuclear reactors and various operating facilities are not on a fault
line. But this ignores several important points:
First, earthquakes can happen anywhere – not at all only in known fault lines but very often in places
where they are not expected. Only last summer we experienced an earth tremor of 3.2. in Ontario.
We also have the fault area that created the Fossmill Drainage that flows into the Ottawa Valley, and
we know that in our continent, as in every other, the earth’s crust is constantly moving on plates, and
determining seismic activity cannot be predicted.
Furthermore, the damage to the Fukushima nuclear plant reactors was caused by power failure. This
can happen without earthquakes. For example, it can be a result of other natural catastrophic events
such as a hurricane. Some seniors in this room may remember Hurricane Hazel, that hit southern
Ontario in November 1954 . Nuclear disasters can arise without earthquakes and without power
failure, for example by human error . Are OPG workers monitored for alcohol and drug use at work?
If yes, at what blood alcohol or drug levels are they not permitted to work?
Outside incidents such as the recent train derailment on the Port Hope/Cobourg boundary that spilled
toxic jet fuel and hydrofluoric acid could also impact Darlington. The main and only entrance into
Darlington’s current plant is from Holt Road, with a railway level crossing. If an emergency
evacuation was required how would this occur? And what about Darlington’s proposed back-up
diesel generator system? Will it be tested weekly? Is the storage of the diesel fuel rotated regularly
and renewed?
Finally, in discussing disaster scenarios nuclear stations are tempting targets for terrorist attacks.
But even without any of the above disaster scenarios, the two central issues remain: there is no
safe dose of radiation, and there is no safe way to dispose of nuclear waste.
Hazardous Radioactive Waste
It has been estimated that Darlington’s ageing reactors have produced to date 5,000 tonnes of highly
radioactive used fuel. The proposed decommissioning of the plant will only increase this volume and the
need for greater space provisions for the management and storage of it on site. We understand that with
the Darlington New Build of up to four reactors, the potential new reactors will be hotter and
more radioactive, thus enhancing the toxicity of the new waste and adding significantly to
management, transfer and storage requirements, while there appears to be no guarantee of a final
repository being readily available for the waste. We also understand that based on undertaking # 30,
the number of transfers of waste to the Western Management Facility could be as many as 250 trips per
year. This requires clarification. Thus, we ask ourselves: if the CNSC and OPG do not have answers to
the issue of disposal of the by-products of this energy source, why are we proceeding down this path? It
violates the Precautionary Principle.
Turning to the overall economic equation of this new nuclear power, if we consider the cost of the overall
Fuel Cycle, its processes in power production, short and long term waste storage, management, transfer
and the trained labour force required, we believe the cost projected to the taxpayer of $ 38 billion is
grossly under-estimated and lacks the “credibility”of portraying the real costs we have heard so often
spoken of over the course of these hearings.
We have precedents for misleading underestimation of costs in the nuclear arena. The proposed final
cost for the clean-up of Port Hope will far exceed the negotiated price of $260 million, as will the time to
complete the project also far exceed the official estimates. Numerous delays have already postponed it by
several years.
By way of contextual background:Port Hope acquired its historic low level waste from Eldorado Gold
Mines, established in 1932. This company later became a crown corporation, the Port
Hope Conversion Facility. The Facility’s waste management practices from early operations (1932-66)
resulted in widespread radioactive and non-radioactive contamination throughout the community. A
partial“clean-up” was conducted from 1976-81, removing 100,000 tonnes of contaminated soils to the
Atomic Energy of Canada Limited’s Chalk River Waste Management Facility. That so-called “clean-up”
Process was discontinued because the Chalk River Facility could accept no more. In 1982, the Low Level
Radioactive Waste Management Office was created and operated by AECL to monitor and manage
600,000 tonnes of radioactive wastes and contaminated soils that remain in Port
Hope. A controversial proposal to undertake a further “clean-up’ in Port Hope was recently approved by
the Municipal Council. A pilot or trial remediation at one site was performed in the Fall of 2010.
Living with Radioactive Waste
It is our experience that, notwithstanding what may be said to the contrary, when it comes to the actual,
practical implementation of projects with supposedly government-regulated protocols, these are not
always fully met. For example, we have been waiting eight years for implementation of a Comprehensive
Dust Management Plan from Natural Resources Canada. Expectations of contract delivery and
fulfillment also require constant and vigilant attention by the community, otherwise inexperienced
workers may be taken advantage of, and put at unnecessary risk without adequate training, while the
public is expected to continue business as usual. For example, a young person18 years of age, working
as an excavator at the trial remediation site mentioned above , was not told he was working in a low
level radioactive site, did not receive any prior training, wore no protective clothing or equipment and
after work had his boots washed off and his body checked with a Geiger counter without being told for
what or why.
Living with nuclear waste in our community is a cause of daily concern for us, similar to the situation of
those living in the backyard of a nuclear power plant. The problem never goes away. Much as in the case
of Port Hope’s so-called ‘clean-up’,the declared objective of which is to remove the perception of stigma
of radioactivity in the town, we noted at the hearings that the Council of Durham Region’s only concern
was that the cooling towers should be hidden from view from the highway. Ironically, this provides a
fascinating insight into the local politicians’ perception that if covered up or hidden behind a berm, the
problem will not exist or would not have an impact – psychologically, medically, socially or
economically, on their citizens or tourism to this community. This is known as the ostrich-head-in-sand
response! If the towers are so considered to be unsightly, could we have the assurances that the signage
along Hwy 401 for OPG will also be removed?
With respect to the Darlington situation, has OPG conducted open, frank, public presentations in
laymen’s terms on their new operations, to advise the community that they would be conducting daily,
unscheduled emission releases? And that tritium releases from the new nuclear reactors into the water
and air will be of higher concentration than any previous such releases, just maybe the citizens, out of
concern for their health , would get involved. And , how about the degradation of the environment? We
cannot understand how the Central Lake Ontario Conservation Authority(CLOCA) could give permission
for OPG to infill Lake Ontario’s little remaining natural shoreline of up to 40 hectares. We share this
concern about environmental protection against this proposed infill presented by Lake Ontario
Waterkeeper in their intervention,
This stigma persists, even Madame Beaudet referred to this area as the nuclear belt that surrounds the
Golden Horseshoe. Maybe Canada’s economic centre of 9 million needs to wake up ?
Port Hope’s “trial remediation” this past fall revealed, in the first site examined, a far greater amount of
contamination than anticipated The “clean-up” process will, over a period of many years, put a large
amount of contaminated material back into the air; transport waste through the streets of Port Hope from
one site in the town to another site in the town; deposit it in a wetland area that drains into Lake Ontario;
and construct, of all things, a children’s playground on the new radioactive dump site. All this will
proceed while Cameco continues to produce new radioactivity at the harbour. It is still not clear how this
process can remove the perception of a radioactive stigma.
Mayor Linda Thompson has said “public awareness”is key to the clean-up. She added, on CTV`s
Canada AM recently as well as at this hearing: "They (members of the public) continue to ask questions,
which is great, and its made the community and regulatory authorities more accountable to make sure we
are a safe and healthy community." We agree with her that citizen dialogue is needed, but question how
much the municipality has done to foster that dialogue. To date, despite our own repeated efforts to meet
with the Mayor and Council, FARE and it’s advisors have never been formally invited or permitted to
openly discuss issues related to radioactive waste and emissions. Furthermore, in her distinctly pronuclear
presentation the Mayor added that 87% of a survey conducted by the Port Hope Area Initiative
supported the clean-up. Unfortunately, she omitted to add that the survey comprised a sample size of
350. The municipality’s population is 16, 500. Thus this survey represents the opinion of 2% of the
community.
Chair Graham, you also asked the question of the Mayor if a referendum had been undertaken or
considered. To date such a vote has not been addressed. Instead, the Mayor and Council on behalf of the
Municipality have employed Temple Scott & Associates, a PR firm, and in an Open Letter to the
Residents of Port Hope (Northumberland News, March 25, 2011), the Mayor informs citizens that this
was done “to ensure the facts are heard and that those who would spread misinformation are challenged.”
We have since learned from a Municipal Councillor that Temple Scott’s services will be paid by the
Municipality, and that the Municipality will be re-imbursed by the Port Hope Area Initiative and
Cameco. For the past six years, FARE has been the main organization raising questions about nuclear
safety in Port Hope. Evidently, the factual information we have provided has been labelled
“misinformation”.
Peer Reviewed Studies on Port Hope’s radioactivity problem
In 2008, the Mayor of Port Hope repeatedly stated in public that Council was in possession of
“Peer Review Studies” that proved that there has been no negative health impact from radioactivity in
Port Hope. Since the Mayor had on these occasions used the words Peer Review in the context of the
word Study it was believed that she was in this case claiming to use this phrase in its scientific sense. In
science, a Peer Reviewed Study is one that has been published in an official, recognised scientific journal,
after it has been scrutinised and its acceptance for publication has been recommended to the journal
editor by anonymous referees, the choice of referees being unknown to and not determined by the
author(s) of the study.Science journals are ranked for excellence; those that publish excellent science are
known as “prestigious journals”. Only articles that have been through this arms-length refereeing
process are considered by practising scientist to meet acceptable standards for rigorous scientific
reporting. Reports that have merely been reviewed by the authors’ colleagues or acquaintances, and then
copied and circulated by the authors, are non peer-reviewed studies and are not considered to be
equivalent in scientific validity. This usage of the term peer review is quite different to the everyday,
non-scientific usage that Council and others employ in non-scientific situations.
FARE requested the office of the Mayor to provide copies of the Peer Review(ed) Studies that the
Mayor had mentioned. We were given a computer disc and told that the relevant material was on that
disc. FARE obtained the voluntary assistance of our medical geneticist and asked him to review the
content of the disc.
The medical geneticist reported that the disc contained 11 files. Of the eleven, none were Peer
Reviewed Studies. Five were not studies at all, but merely opinions that had been publicly expressed or
solicited by the Council and which provided no new information on the issue of the safety of Port Hope.
The remaining 6 files were non-refereed, non peer-reviewed reports of the type described above as being
not equivalent in scientific validity to Peer Reviewed Studies. However, all 6 of these reports
nevertheless suggested that there were indeed negative health impacts in Port Hope, contrary to what the
Mayor had indicated. FARE attempted to bring this information to the attention of the Mayor and
Council, and through them to the citizens of Port Hope, but this effort was thwarted. Following this, the
Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) released a so-called “Synthesis Report” which gave Port
Hope a clean bill of health and stated that no further studies were necessary. This conclusion was also
found by our medical geneticist to not be based on peer-reviewed science. FARE submitted a letter of
concern to the CNSC. This letter was posted on our website, at http://www.phfare.
com/index.php?article=159, and was turned over to the municipality. This, too, had no effect.
The issue of a CNSC claim that harmful effects of radiation never occur at doses of less than 100 mSv
was raised again by Dr. Fairlie at this hearing with Dr. Thompson of the CNSC. Just this past month,
March 8, 2011 the Canadian Medical Association Journal published work by Dr. Louise Pilote and coworkers
from McGill University that showed increased cancer risks from doses of 10 mSv or less(from
low-level radiation from cardiac imaging). This confirms older research work. In the 1950’s it was shown
that a single X-ray o a pregnant women could cause leukaemia in the infant. Recent work in Germany on
occurrence of leukaemia in the vicinity of nuclear power plants has shown that leukaemia occurs in
increased frequency in children living in this exposure, where radiation doses are estimated to be much
less than 1 mSv per year (e.g. P. Kaatsch et al., Int. J. Cancer 1220, 721-726 (2008)). . In other words,
the CNSC has been conveying incorrect and misleading information.
Where do Port Hopers get their “scientific” information from?
This episode is indicative of the problem that we believe Port Hope and other communities in the
nuclear belt face. The information that Port Hope and other citizens receive on the health effects of
radiation come mainly from sources as Cameco, the Mayor and Council, OPG, AECL, CNSC, Health
Canada, and the Ontario Ministry of the Environment. These parties are respectively a component of the
nuclear industry; a municipal government of elected officials; and agencies, staffed by civil servants, of
provincial and federal governments. All of these support nuclear power. None of these
institutions is staffed by MDs or practising medical scientists with expertise in
the effects of radiation on humans, and all of these bodies are, because of their
support of the nuclear industry, in a conflict of interest with respect to the issue
of nuclear safety. The citizens of Port Hope, of Durham, of Pickering and of elsewhere in Ontario
are not being informed that independent science (i.e. science independent of nuclear industry funding and
independent of pro-nuclear government agencies) does not agree with the information that citizens have
received about the safety of radioactivity and it’s emissions. The citizens have been and are being misled
by the very government agencies that we should be able to rely on for our information. Contrary to
what citizens have been informed, there are no comprehensive publications in
prestigious peer-reviewed journals that show humans in our area to be safe from
nuclear radioactive contamination. Those few, out-dated and incompletely
rigorous studies that do exist suggest the opposite. And medical scientists state
that there is no safe does of radioactivity, just as we heard from Dr. Caldicott,
Dr. Fairlie, and Physicians for Global Survival. Unfortunately the agencies that are
dispensing misleading information are also in possession of overwhelming financial and media resources,
thus increasing the difficulty of FARE’s role as the “watchdog”that tries to keep all parties honest and
responsible.
Visit of Dr. Helen Caldicott
In November 2010, Dr. Helen Caldicott visited Port Hope, in part sponsored by FARE through
funding received from the CEAA for Vision 2010 with regards to the decommissioning of buildings and
waste at the CAMECO. Prior to her arrival she had said, in a widely publicised interview, that she
thought that the citizens of Port Hope should be moved, at the government’s expense, to another location.
This viewpoint attracted much negative attention and unfortunately obscured the informational message
that Dr. Caldicott was here to deliver on the biological effects of radiation.
Because of reaction from local officials and some citizens to what Dr. Caldicott had said prior
to her arrival in Canada, FARE thought it prudent to move the location of her presentation to
Oshawa, where in spite of the extremely poor weather, over 250 people attended her talk.
However, FARE and it’s members continue to experience threats, harassment, defamation and
cyber bullying. In our opinion this anger should be directed at the source, those who propagate
and support misinformation.
Following the attention given to the nuclear disaster of Fukushima we noticed new
advertisements for OPG in the local papers. These stated nuclear is CLEAN, GREEN and
SAFE. We know that these marketing attributes cannot be met. Is this another deceptive lie?
The entire nuclear fuel cycle creates a much larger carbon footprint than any alternative energy
source. This should have been stated, and needs to be addressed in the Environmental Impact
Statement, EIS.
We want all citizens to know that independent scientists believe there is a problem, and we urge
the public to consider that where there are differing opinions it is better to err on the side of
caution. When it comes to human health, environmental health and especially that of children, it
is better to be safe than sorry.
RECOMMENDATIONS
1. In our opinion the proponent, OPG is unprepared, and this hearing is premature. OPG has
not meet the criteria of the EIS Guidelines. Thus we ask the Joint Panel Review to refuse
Ontario Power Generation’s application.
2. We support the request for a non-partisan Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Future of
Nuclear Power in Canada and ask the Joint Panel Review to endorse this request. We ask for a
moratorium on new licenses for nuclear power plants, be it for new build or refurbishment
projects, or off-site transportation of nuclear wastes and a solution to storage of nuclear wastes
produced by nuclear reactors in Canada.
.3. We request that there be a full panel review, and implementation of funding availability for
peer reviewed scientific epidemiological studies of populations situated in and around nuclear
facilities and refineries, as well as studies of the natural environment.
4. We call for an International Commission of Inquiry into the Future of Nuclear Power in the
World, and full investigation into the Fukushima Daiichi disaster including complete, long-term
epidemiological health and environmental studies of the people of Japan.
Joint Panel Review your decision will be of monumental gravity, there is no meaningful public
trust because an uninformed public cannot offer this, we have no assurances. Fukushima
represents the third strike for the nuclear industry, may we, the earth bear no more.
Thank you.