Decommission work halted at old nuclear facility in Whiteshell Deficiencies found in emergency preparedness; inadequate oversight and training, poor decision-making blamed in review By: Tyler Searle Posted: 4:07 PM CDT Friday, Aug. 4, 2023

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This article was published 04/08/2023 (1115 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Work had to be halted to decommission a former nuclear research facility after an internal review concluded emergency protocols at the Whiteshell site were deficient for years.

Operations at the former Whiteshell Laboratories in Pinawa, 110 kilometres northeast of Winnipeg, were paused shortly after April 24.

A newly hired fire-safety planner observed “some conditions that he was not completely familiar with or comfortable with,” said Joe McBrearty, president of Canadian Nuclear Laboratories, an international firm contracted by the federal government to manage the site.

“I personally see this as an organizational failure on the part of our leadership… We allowed this to happen,” he said.

The review discovered the facility failed to maintain fire extinguishers, emergency lighting and fixed suppression systems — including several inoperable fire hydrants that could limit the supply of water in an emergency. Further, the facility failed to provide adequate training, protective equipment and personnel to staff its firefighting complement.

McBrearty addressed the findings during a June 28 hearing with the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, a federal regulatory body tasked with overseeing nuclear operations.

Inadequate oversight from management, poor decision-making, inadequate training protocols and an ineffective organizational structure contributed to the severity of the issues — which date back to at least 2020, the commission was told.

McBrearty said he has serious concerns about management at the Whiteshell site.

“What we failed to do appropriately is make sure we had the right people and the right structures in place.”

“What we failed to do appropriately is make sure we had the right people and the right structures in place.”–Joe McBrearty

Kerry Rod, Whiteshell’s general manager, agreed to a video interview with the Free Press Thursday.

“We identified the issue, we owned the issue and in the last three months… we’ve done a tremendous amount of work,” he said.

“Everybody has grabbed the bull by the horns and delivered.”

Roughly 48 firefighters were on staff at the time of the review, but many required additional levels of training. As of July 6, 19 firefighters had been added, and the organization has set a target goal of 27 new firefighters, Rod said.

On Thursday, the bolstered firefighting force, equipment and emergency-response plan passed a third-party assessment, he said.

A further 120 maintenance workers, engineers, planners and supervisors have been hired to work at the site in recent years, Rod said.

When asked why the site had been so under-resourced, the general manager attributed it to an oversight.

“It’s not until you go into years of decommissioning that you really get a feel for, what is the norm for what it takes to do the job,” he said.

“We’ve recognized for us to be able to execute, its going to take more people to run this project, to stay compliant and also to perform the decommissioning.”

The decommission process involves entombing the former reactor in concrete and transporting low-level nuclear waste to Chalk River Laboratories, another CNL-managed nuclear research site located in Ottawa. It began in 2001 and was originally slated to be completed in 2027.

Before decommission work can resume, it must complete an eight-phase restart plan and receive approval from the nuclear safety commission. The plan includes a complete review of all operations.

Additional deficiencies related to record-keeping are being addressed. There is no risk to the environment or public, Rod said

The nuclear safety commission conducts annual reviews of the site, but failed to identify the issues.

“The (commission) should also be looking in the mirror… This is a huge failure on our way of managing this whole part of the business,” commission president Rumina Velshi said during the June hearing.

“What kind of oversight is it that would allow something to deteriorate to this extent and us not be aware — how good is our oversight?”

Velshi went on to question whether Canadian Nuclear Laboratories was competent to manage the Whiteshell site.

The organization has been directed to submit safety assessments of five other nuclear sites it manages in Canada, to ensure they don’t have similar deficiencies.

“If they can’t even ensure their fire equipment is in order, what about the high-level radioactive waste procedures?”–Dave Taylor

Dave Taylor, a spokesperson for nuclear watch group Concerned Citizens of Manitoba, called the incident a “major red flag.”

“If they can’t even ensure their fire equipment is in order, what about the high-level radioactive waste procedures, and who is providing scrutiny on this?” he said, chastising the federal government for failing to adequately monitor the site.

Taylor questioned the overall decommissioning plan.

“Their whole idea of how to get rid of this old reactor… it just seems to be ill-conceived,” he said. “It’s a quick and dirty way for them to clean up the site.”

The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission was not available for comment Friday, a spokesperson said.

tyler.searle@winnipegfreepress.mb.ca

Tyler Searle
Reporter

Tyler Searle is a multimedia producer who writes for the Free Press’s city desk. A graduate of Red River College Polytechnic’s creative communications program, he wrote for the Stonewall Teulon Tribune, Selkirk Record and Express Weekly News before joining the paper in 2022. Read more about Tyler.

Every piece of reporting Tyler produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.