Reposting for our colleague Dr. Gordon Edwards

Friends and colleagues -

CCNR has witnessed many public interest victories in the nuclear field brought about by public pressure, exerted from OUTSIDE the “nuclear bubble” of CNSC, OPG, AECL, NWMO, etc. One such victory was STOPPING the shipment of radioactive steam generators to Sweden for “recycling” into commercial metallic Urdu ts of all kinds. 

The saga of the radioactive “steam generators” took place back in 2010-2011, just before the Fukushima Daiichi triple meltdowns. (Coincidentally, 2010 is the year I retired from Vanier College.) For those who may not know, a steam generator in a pressurized water reactor (PWR) is a BOILER for producing steam - steam that is used to turn the blades of a steam turbine to generate electricity.

Each of the 8 Bruce reactors has 8 steam generators weighing about 100 tonnes apiece. During refurbishment of units 1 and 2 Bruce acquired 16 old radioactive steam generators that had been replaced by 16 new ones. Bruce anticipated 16 more radioactive SGs from the refurbishment of the other two units in Bruce A, for a total of 3200 tonnes of radioactive waste in the form of 32 massive steam generators. 

Originally transferring ownership of the used SGs to OPG and pledging to bury these “boilers" as radioactive waste in the Kincardine repository that was then planned, Bruce soon got wind of a cheaper option. By shipping the old steam generators to Sweden, the outer steel hull could be separated from the inner, highly radioactive “tube bundle” by a Swedish company called Studsvik. The far less contaminated outer hull could then be recycled as scrap metal (90% of total mass), by Studsvik, and the inner "tube bundle“ (10% of the mass) which Studsvik describes as highly radioactive intermediate level waste, would be compressed to a very much smaller volume and returned to Bruce for “disposal”. 

Here’s what the tube bundle looks like - see https://ccnr.org/Tubes_in_SG.pdf

So Bruce retrieved ownership of the 16 SGs and made plans to ship them through the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence River, across the Atlantic Ocean to Sweden. CCNR (mainly I and my colleague Michel Fugère) composed a resolution to let people know what was going on.

See https://ccnr.org/Resolution_e.pdf . This resolution is, among other things, an educational tool, since most people knew absolutely nothing about nuclear plants, and still don't. See the impressive list of those who endorsed the resolution at  https://ccnr.org/Resolution_NGO_sort.pdf.

The resolution was passed by town councils in dozens of Quebec municipalities, and the cause was taken up by the Great Lakes Cities Initative, headquartered in Chicago, leading to cities like Montreal, Quebec City, Toronto, and Chicago expressing opposition to the shipment of 16 radioactive steam generators through the Great Lakes, the source of drinking water for about 40 million people.  Ontario’s First Nations, especially the Mohawks of Khanewake, were strongly opposed as well. CCNR provided background information.  See "15 Facts about Radioactive Steam Generators” at http://ccnr.org/15_facts_c_e.pdf . 

The public outcry forced CNSC to hold three days of public hearings on this issue, and those hearings got a lot of media coverage. Among other things, this forced CNSC to publish the radioactive contents of the steam generators for all to see. Quite a rogue’s gallery of radionuclides.

See https://ccnr.org/SG_radionuclides.pdf

Each of the thousands of marrow tubes inside each steam generator are contaminated by 8 radioactive materials with a half-life of over a million years, 13 with a half-life of over 100,000 years, and 19 with a half-life of over 1000 years. This is not child’s play!  

Here is the CCNR main submission and supplementary submission to the CNSC that pretty well destroyed the Bruce rationale for the shipments. CCNR cited the Steel Manufacturers Association’s opposition to any radioactive contamination of the scrap metal supply. Testimony at the hearings revealed that Studsvik would not reveal the name of the scrap metal company that receives this radioactive scrap metal for fear of destroying their reputation…. 

See https://ccnr.org/CCNR_CNSC_Supplementary.pdf

The Great Cities Initiative laid out money to commission an expert review of the safety case associated with the ship[ments, revealing serious potential saftey problems.

See https://ccnr.org/GLCI_CNSC_Supplementary.pdf 

The upshot was that, despite overwhelming opposition from many quarters, Bruce got all the licence approvals and permissions it needed to carry out the shipments, but in 2011 the company chose not to do so because of the enormous public outcry. They reverted to their original plan to dispose of the SG’s as radioactive waste, which in our view is the absolutely correct course of action. 

You can see the blatant contradictions and the hypocrisy of the public assurances given  by both Bruce and CNSC clearly revealed by statements made in various official documents - see http://ccnr.org/CNSC_BPEA_rev.pdf

By the way, the CNSC did testify before a Parliamentary Committee on this subject, and CNSC staff prepared a rather ridiculous “technical briefing” that was full of misleading and even false information - here is the CCNR critique of that CNSC briefing paper, a critique that was also distributed to the committee members – who, by the way, were not at all impressed by CNSC testimony….

A Brief Critique of the CNSC Technical Briefing On Steam Generators

https://ccnr.org/CNSC_Critique_2.pdf

This SG saga is just one small example of how complicated is the problem of totally dismantling a nuclear power plant and “looking after” – packaging, transporting, storing, monitoring the radioactive debris for countless millennia. At Bruce alone, for example, there will be a total of 128,000 tonnes of radioactive waste in the form of steam generators alone, along with huge volumes of other radioactive garbage - that’s 8 SG per reactor x 8 reactors x all the refurbishment replacements of steam generators = 128 total. 

That doesn’t even include Bruce C or the other 12 CANDUS at Pickering and Darlington..

Speaking of decommissioning reactors, here are links to the CCNR's interventions in relation to the CNL’s proposed “in-situ” decommissioning plan for both the NPD and Whiteshell reactors — two of the federally owned nuclear reactors that are subject to an Environmental Assessment review by the industry-friendly CNSC, Canada’s nuclear regulator.

www.ccnr.org/CCNR_WR1_pack_2018.pdf

www.ccnr.org/CCNR_NPD_pack.pdf

I am also including a link to a 1984 CNS article provided to me by Dr. Frank Greening. It is about dismantllng the core area of the Gentilly-1 reactor, and it makes reference to the advisability of developing underwater remotely-controlled cutting techniques to take apart the most radioactive components of the reactor core: ccnr.org/CNS_G-1_1984.pdf .

In addition, here’s an article of mine that was published in the Toronto Star in 1983, calling attention to Gentilly-1 as the first on the chopping block for dismantling: www.ccnr.org/decommission.html

Cheers, Gordon.

Gordon Edwards, Ph.D., President,

Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility