[NukeNet] Brennain Lloyd's articles at Great Lakes Town Hall

[Kay Cumbow]

Sending again, in different format.-Kay

This Week's Speaker...

http://www.greatlakestownhall.org/

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Brennain Lloyd is a community organizer with Northwatch, the regional 
coalition of environmental groups in northeastern Ontario formed in 1988 to 
address regional issues related to energy, forests, waste management and 
water quality. Brennain works primarily as an advocate and organizer around 
energy, land use and natural resource concerns, and has served in a number 
of key advisory positions on mineral and forest policy. A strong 
communicator, Brennain is a frequent guest lecturer on a range of issues 
related to the public role in environmental decision-making.

Brennain is currently project coordinator with Northwatch, and is one of a 
three-person-team with Northwatch's Forest Project, a multi-year initiative 
to support public participation in forest management planning.

Brennain has worked as case manager or coordinator for Northwatch 
interventions in environmental assessments of timber management planning 
and Ontario Hydro demand/supply plans, in Ontario energy board rate reviews 
and federal environmental assessments for mining and energy projects, and 
has coordinated numerous public education projects for Northwatch, such as 
the EnviroVan, a mobile environmental resource centre which has completed 
four successful tours of northeastern Ontario. She is primary writer and 
editor of the quarterly publication Northwatch News; and maintains 
Northwatch's resource centre and database.

Brennain lives in North Bay, Ontario, with her partner and two children.

http://www.greatlakestownhall.org/

Huron calling
Brennain Lloyd (North Bay, Ontario)

The northern reaches of Lake Huron and its watershed hold too many wondrous 
sites and experiences to capture in a few pages.

The largest old growth red pine forest in North America is tucked away in 
the northeast corner of the watershed, on the eastern edge of the Sudbury 
basin. The North Channel of Lake Huron encompasses Manitoulin Island, the 
largest freshwater island in the world, and is a boater’s paradise, often 
referred to as the “Caribbean of the North” for its brilliant blue waters 
and beautiful beaches. The coastal landscape of Georgian Bay and the North 
Shore is dramatic and varied: the white quartzite hills and sapphire lakes 
of Killarney, the ancient mountains of La Cloche, secret sand filled coves, 
and river-delta marshlands brimming with bird life.

Lands and waters that inspire awe, and defy the camera’s feeble attempts to 
capture their beauty and majesty. But these lands and waters are troubled: 
mining and forestry activities leave their mark throughout the northern 
reaches, and the boot print of the nuclear industry – too permanent in its 
imprint to be referred to as a “footprint” – is stamped along the north 
shore and the eastern coast.

Lake Huron – the second largest of the five Great Lakes - was the first of 
these sweet inland seas to be seen by Europeans. Georgian Bay and the North 
Channel became the fur traders and explorer’ highway to the west through 
the 1600 and 1700s, and in the mid-1850s European interests in mining and 
timbering motivated the negotiation of treaties between the Queen and the 
Aboriginal peoples who lived along the north shore of Lake Huron and the 
east coast of Lake Superior. The resource extraction industries have barely 
stopped to catch their breath ever since.

More recently – over just the last half century – the nuclear industry has 
moved in, with the opening of uranium mines in Elliot Lake in the 1950s. 
The 1960s brought the first commercial nuclear reactor in Ontario into 
production, perched on the eastern shore of Lake Huron, just north of the 
town of Kincardine. The 70’s brought more mines, and more reactors. A 
uranium refinery set up shop on the North Shore, just west of the town of 
Blind River, in the early 1980s. Around the same time, Atomic Energy of 
Canada Limited set their sites on the town of Massey – half an hour east of 
Blind River – as a possible location for an underground dump for all of 
Canada’s high-level nuclear fuel waste. Local opposition dissuaded them of 
this notion, but not before AECL had done some exploratory drilling, 
placing the North Shore on the map as a potential nuclear waste dump site. 
The early 90’s saw communities along the north shore divided over 
propositions to bring big money into town, along with millions of tonnes of 
low-level radioactive wastes from southern Ontario (again, defeated).

This new century brings new troubles – massive expansions at the Bruce 
Nuclear Generating station near Kincardine, and at the uranium refinery in 
Blind River, and a mineral boom that is threatening to finance new uranium 
mines –and is certainly fueling record levels of uranium exploration – 
along the north shore.

Throughout this week we’ll be winding our way through some of the key 
issues and concerns. I hope you will come along for the ride.

The Nuclear Bootprint
Brennain Lloyd (North Bay, Ontario)

The nuclear bootprint first made its mark on Bruce County, on the eastern 
shore of Lake Huron, a half a century ago, and has been intensifying over 
the last five decades.

The Bruce Nuclear Generating station is the largest nuclear facility in 
North America in terms of output and the second largest nuclear facility in 
the world. The site includes eight nuclear power nuclear reactors (six of 
them currently operating), several nuclear waste management areas, two 
decommissioned heavy water plants, and the Douglas Point Reactor, which was 
shut down in 1984.

Federal government approval for Douglas Point Reactor came in June 1959, 
and 2,300 acres of Lake Huron shoreline were acquired for the project, and 
site clearing began within the year. The proto-type CANDU reactor achieved 
criticality in November 1966 and full commercial operation was declared on 
September 26, 1968. The reactor operated for sixteen years, until the 
federal government decided to shut it down permanently in 1984, rather than 
take on the enormous pressure-tube refurbishment project that was then 
required.

The next generation of CANDU reactors were constructed on the site in the 
late 1970s (Bruce A units 1 through 4) and mid-1980’s (Bruce B units 5 
through 8). The first reactor was built by Atomic Energy of Canada Limited 
– a federal crown corporation fully subsidized by Canadian taxpayers – and 
then acquired and operated by Ontario Hydro, the provincial publicly owned 
utility. The next eight reactors were built by Ontario Hydro, which was 
reorganized and renamed Ontario Power Generation in the mid-1990s, but the 
reactors are now all operated by Bruce Power, a private consortium of 
companies.

Bruce Power signed a lease with OPG in 2001 with an initial term of 18 
years and an option to renew the lease for up to a further 25 years. Self 
describing as “Canada's first private nuclear generator”, Bruce Power is a 
private partnership among Cameco Corporation, TransCanada Corporation, BPC 
Generation Infrastructure Trust, the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement 
System, the Power Workers’ Union and the Society of Energy Professionals. 
The deal is that Bruce Power gets to run the reactors and make the profit; 
Ontario Power Generation, on behalf of the people of Ontario, gets to own 
the site, own the waste, and own the lion’s share of the liability. When 
the reactors are permanently shut down, we’ll get to own them too.

While the station is generally described as having eight reactors (plus the 
shut down but not yet decommissioned Douglas Point reactor), for the most 
part only six are operating, and from time to time there are less.

The main series of shutdowns began in 1993, when the Bruce B units were all 
downrated from 850 MW of generation to 780. In 1995, Unit 2 at Bruce A was 
taken out of service, followed by Unit 1 the following year and Units 3 and 
4 the year after that. Units 3 and 4 were restarted in 2002 and 2003 by 
Bruce Power, and Bruce Power has plans to restart Units 1 and 2 next year. 
But by 2014 all four units at Bruce B and Unit 4 at Bruce A are expected to 
need refurbishment, reducing generating capacity by approximately 4,000 MW.

Bruce Power is proposing to build up to 4 new reactors at the Bruce 
Generating station, ostensibly to replace the generating capacity they will 
lose when up to 5 of the reactors are pulled out of service for 
refurbishment in approximately 7 years time (never mind that approval and 
construction of the new reactors are expected to take at least a decade).

The Bruce proposal is to build two twin-unit modules. Two reactors would be 
built near Bruce A and two units built near Bruce B, all on the Bruce site. 
After decades of public concerns about the reactors being so close to Lake 
Huron, Bruce Power is going one better with this proposal – they are 
planning to build one of the twin-unit modules in what is presently 
Campbell Bay, in what they blithely describe as a “land reclamation 
project”. No longer near the lake, these reactors will be in the lake. Or 
what used to be lake.

The project is being reviewed under a joint environmental assessment and 
licensing process by two federal government agencies, in a hybrid process 
that gives the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission control over the review 
process, the appointment of panel members, and the information flow to the 
review panel. Review panels are supposed to be independent, but in this 
case two of the three panel members will be selected from the Canadian 
Nuclear Safety Commission’s current 8 members, and the third panel member 
is to be made a “temporary” member of the Commission. The CNSC regulates 
and licenses the nuclear industry in Canada. While supposed to be 
arms-length from the nuclear industry, CNSC’s new president Michael Binder 
has clarified in recent presentations that the CNSC is, in fact, part of 
the industry.

Bruce Power is proposing that the environmental assessment will be 
“technology neutral”, meaning they’d like to get an approval to build a 
reactor without specifying which reactor design they will be constructing. 
They are also speculating that some of the larger reactor components may be 
shipped by barge because of their size, and so, if required, additional 
construction activities may include the construction of a docking facility 
at the Bruce Nuclear Generating Station. No details yet provided.

The first phase of the environmental assessment is just wrapping up, and 
guidelines for the preparation of the Environmental Impact Statement are to 
be released mid-July, and the hearing panel announced shortly after. Bruce 
Power has indicated that they will be submitting the Environmental Impact 
Statement in the fall of 2008.

More details are available on our web site at 
<http://www.northwatch.org,/>http://www.northwatch.org, and we’ll be 
posting updates there as the next phase of the environmental assessment 
gets underway.
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