An excerpt from the license renewal hearing with the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission Sept 30 2012 in Ottawa. http://www.nuclearsafety.gc.ca/eng/commission/pdf/2010-09-30-Transcript-GE-Hitachi-Hearing.pdf
A member of the commission asks GE about whether the community around the Toronto plant know what is going on inside:
MEMBER GRAHAM: Also -- and I don’t want to jump around because I
had a series of questions and I want to follow the slides first, but I
do want to come back to changes within the financial guarantee in the
PDP if and when you start doing the enrichment; but I’ll come back to
that later because I just want to finish with the slides first -- your
slide deck. The public information is one of the areas cited by the
Commission, and my question is to GE-Hitachi. What type of public
information program do you have in place at this time?
MR. MASON: For the record, Peter Mason. Well, we do have a website
that we post information. We also keep people within half-a-kilometre
around the facilities informed of what we are doing.
Our understanding from our dialogue with the Commission staff was
that there were three shortcomings that we had in terms of our public
information process.
First of all was our procedures, and we’ve updated those procedures.
The second one was our website was lacking, and I thought that we had
brought that up to the requirements, but we’ll check on that one.
And then the third one, which we didn’t realize was required, was a
media analysis and we’ve recently had our media -- or public relations
department in at our head office in Toronto do a media analysis of all
of the related articles to our business and, in particular, Toronto and
Peterborough. So we have sent that to the Commission.
So hopefully we have addressed the shortcomings that were identified by the staff.
MEMBER GRAHAM: You do send out newsletters to the one-half kilometre radius people in the area, keeping them informed?
MR. MASON: When we make changes or if things are happening, yes.
MEMBER GRAHAM: How often? Would that be several times a year or only once every two or three years?
MR. MASON: I would say -- yeah, it’s really associated with
changes, so it’s probably only once every two or three years. It’s only
when we have something to say really.
MEMBER GRAHAM: I guess just the awareness that there is radioactive
material being processed across the street from that row of houses we
see and so on, are the people aware of that? I mean, are there -- does
the signing show that?
In Toronto, it’s a very large complex, right? Or your facility is
doing more than just that. And Peterborough is doing more than just
that, than processing pellets or processing -- making the bundles and so
on.
So you are doing other things at that site, but are the people aware
that there is radioactive material on-site, say, across the street from
where they live?
MR. MASON: For the record, Peter Mason.
If we look at the Toronto site, yes, at one time it was a very large GE site.
MEMBER GRAHAM: Yes.
MR. MASON: Today, we are the only remaining ---
MEMBER GRAHAM: Oh, you are the only one?
MR. MASON: --- GE business on that site.
In fact, much of the GE campus that was there has been sold off to
developers and, in particular, on the west side of Lansdowne Road that
has been developed.
On Brandon Avenue, we -- I think we have a long history of dialogue
with the residents there. We’ve probably spent half-a-million dollars in
beautifying the area, which has been very well received by the
residents there.
In Peterborough you're quite correct in that the large industrial
campus which is GE's and as I mentioned earlier has been there since
1892, has two businesses, the nuclear business and the motor's business.
The motor's business takes up the largest portion of the site and has
the largest number of employees.
As part of our application for low enriched uranium fuel, we had
several public hearings. We had meetings with the school, parents and
teachers, and the local leadership. So people are well aware. We've been
there for 50 years. They're well aware of the sort of thing that we do
there.
MEMBER GRAHAM: Will you, in this licensing period -- do you
anticipate moving your Toronto operation because it's small down just to
that very valuable land for other development moving it and
consolidating it all in Peterborough?
MR. MASON: For the record, Peter Mason.
No, we have no plans to move the Toronto facility. It's very
efficient, very well run and one could not justify the cost of
consolidation to move that to Peterborough.
