Category Archives: Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC)

NUCLEAR FREE STANDARDS

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The licenses for Canadian nuclear reactors reference Canadian Standards Association(CSA) standards. Up until recently you had to purchase these CSA standards if you were interested in the details of a license. They are quite expensive, costing around $200 to $300 per standard, and there are dozens of them. I personally spent close to $1000 of my own money on three of five seismic standards which I needed for the seismic research I have done in relation to Point Lepreau’s license. I lodged my concerns in this regard recently in a review of the Fukushima omnibus regulations where I explained that it is cost prohibitive for the general public to engage in a meaningful way if they cannot afford to obtain these requirements for licensed nuclear reactors.

Critic Slams CNSC Regulations for lack of guidance

Cost prohibitive licensing documents is a common complaint from other interveners as well. Today the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission announced that the CSA licensing documents would now be available to the public for FREE.: 

News Releases

CSA nuclear standards now available online

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 22, 2013

The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) is pleased to announce that the CSA Group is now offering complimentary access of their nuclear standards. This new access platform allows interested stakeholders to view these standards online through any device that can access the internet. Please note that the access platform is limited to read only.

Copy of full news release can be found here. http://www.nuclearsafety.gc.ca/eng/mediacentre/releases/news_release.cfm?news_release_id=477

Although I still have many very serious and unresolved issues with the CNSC, this shows that they do listen occasionally, and this is a good baby step at transparency.

Background on CSA standards:

CSA is NOT a governmental organization. This is from their website:

About CSA Group

CSA Group is an independent, not-for-profit member-based association dedicated to advancing safety, sustainability and social good. We are an internationally-accredited standards development and testing & certification organization. We also provide consumer product evaluation and education & training services. Our broad range of knowledge and expertise includes: industrial equipment, plumbing & construction, electro-medical & healthcare, appliances & gas, alternative energy, lighting and sustainability. The CSA mark appears on billions of products around the world.

CSA standards are developed and decided upon by a committee of stakeholders. Most of these stakeholders are from the industry being regulated. Decisions on these standards are made by CONSENSUS, meaning that EVERYONE has to agree. I am not sure if I am comfortable with regulations being made that the industry has to agree to 100%.

By

Chris Rouse

Critic Slams CNSC Regulations for lack of guidance

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This is a link to my recent comments on the Fukushima Omnibus regulations.

Chris Rouse Second Round Fukushima Omnibus Regulation comments Rev 1

After I sent it to the consultation department of the CNSC I also forwarded it as well as additional comments to the CNSC commissioners in the email below.

 

Good Morning Mr. Leblanc
 
I would like the commissioners to be sent a copy of my comments for the second round of consultations of the Fukushima omnibus project, and a copy of this email as well. Essentially I point out that there is no guidance for REGDOC-2.4.2 Probabilistic Safety Assessment (PSA) for Nuclear Power Plants. This is the only regdoc that does not have any guidance either included in the regdoc or in a separate regdoc. This is unacceptable especially for a regdoc that has been around since 2008. This poses a huge amount of regulatory uncertainty for the licencee’s. As well the current version of the document is very vague and unclear, and as it stands will continue to put the commissioners in precarious positions at public meetings and hearings. The CNSC staff has not taken the commissioners advice on showing the crosswalks to other regulatory documents in this current version. It is my recommendation that proper guidance be added to the regulatory document and then one more round of consultations before the commissioners are asked to approve it.
 
Thanks
 
Chris Rouse

Event Report Missing?

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After the complaint to the CNSC and NB Power about NB Power being late in  posting it’s event reports, I was given a copy of the event reports from NB Power. After I had reviewed the event reports I discovered that their was one missing and not posted on the NB Power Website. This is the email that was sent to NB Power and the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission regarding the missing report.

Hi Kathleen
 
Thank you for a copy of the event reports yesterday. I have reviewed them and have a concern with the event report ERD-00583-1302-028-A-00 “Report Not Submitted by due date”. This was to report another event report of a Problem Identified by Research Finding(PIRF), S-99 section 6.3.2.3, that was not submitted on time. According to this event report the PIRF report was submitted four days late. I do not see any reference to any event reports for a PIRF. Can you please figure out what PIRF ERD-00583-1302-028-A-00 is referring to and update the event list posted on NB Powers website, and as well as send me a copy of the PIRF report.
 
I have also noticed that several of the event report used form # PL-0864 Rev 1 2013-05-24 for events that happened before the revision date of the form. Can you explain this?
 
Regards
 
Chris Rouse
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