Y2K- Ontario Nuclear Plant Communities Prepare For Disaster

By RACHEL FUREY The Canadian Press

8-21-99

TORONTO - Ontario is calling on communities with nuclear power plants to prepare for a Chernobyl-style disaster. But if the province doesn't cough up the cash to pay for its new emergency plan, some municipalities warn they'll be left unprepared.

The potential risk to Ontario residents living near five nuclear power plants has been called catastrophic, and has at least one health official putting in sleepless nights. "I think there's a moral responsibility to do this," said Dr. Murray McQuigge, medical officer of health for the Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound public heath unit, which is responsible for implementing the emergency response plan. "I certainly am not going to sleep well at night unless this kind of capability is in place."

The 1999 Nuclear Emergency Plan calls for a strategy for immediate evacuation, medical treatment and counselling for victims of any disaster. Ontario already has a plan to deal with nuclear emergencies. But the province wants a more rigorous approach to potential crisis because the old plan didn't account for an immediate, uncontainable leak. "It's long overdue," Kristen Ostling, the national co-ordinator of Campaign for Nuclear Phase Out, said of the new strategy. She said the chance of a nuclear disaster like Chernobyl, where people are still feeling the devastating health effects of a 1986 nuclear reactor explosion, is slim but real. "It would be very serious if there was an accident. The government knows that, they've known for years."

A provincial report on the safety of Ontario's nuclear reactors released several years ago warned that a catastrophic nuclear accident in the province isn't out of the question. It warned that thousands of people could be killed instantly, with many more susceptible to cancer and genetic defects affecting future generations. Yet while the Ontario government wants municipalities to be ready for anything, officials said Friday it is not prepared to foot the bill. "We don't think it will cost anything extra," said Elaine Simpson, a spokeswoman for the Ministry of the Solicitor General. That angers McQuigge, who estimates the cost of the project at at least $15,000 for his area alone. "It'll take 10 public health nurses to do this," he said. "How they think I'm going to take 10 people out for a week to train them without additional costs is beyond me."

While the province used to fund 75 per cent of the health unit's cost, it now pays only half, with the rest downloaded to municipalities. Irene Kock, of the Nuclear Awareness Project, says the most obvious solution is to make Ontario Power Generation, the company responsible for the nuclear power, pay. "It should simply be one of the costs of nuclear generated energy," she said. A spokesman for Ontario Power Generation, formerly Ontario Hydro, says the company already gives municipalities money to pay for disaster plans. John Earl says it's up to the communities to decide how to spend it. Meanwhile Ostling said the situation underscores the need to completely eliminate nuclear power. "Canada's experiment with nuclear power has been a costly mistake both for the economy and for the environment," she said. "The buck is constantly being passed about who's going to pay for it and it should just be eliminated."

http://www.canoe.ca/TopStories/nuclear_aug20.html

-- a (a@a.a), August 22, 1999

Answers

http://www.canoe.ca/NationalTicker/CANOE-wire.Nuclear-Crisis-Plan.html

-- Linkmeister (link@librarian.edu), August 22, 1999.