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Bruce Power has integrated all its security, fire and emergency services teams to form the Bruce Power Emergency and Protective Services Division.

Led by division manager Wade Lacroix, the company's former chief of security, the new unit provides one point of contact for all the emergency response capabilities at the Bruce Nuclear site.

Bruce Power president and chief executive officer Duncan Hawthorne was joined by Lacroix and Frank Saunders, vice-president of nuclear oversight and regulatory affairs, in making the announcement Wednesday morning (June 15) surrounded by the mobile operations centre, and emergency vehicles and personnel.

"While our focus continues to be on delivering safe and reliable operations, we've always striven to be an industry leader in safety and emergency preparedness," said Hawthorne. "Over the past 10 years, we've developed an emergency response capability that has been industry leading."

He said the new emergency division is not a reaction to the nuclear disaster at the Fukushima plant in Japan.

"We've always tried to be proactive," said Hawthorne. "The Fukushima event put a lot of stress on that country's emergency response capabilities. It was a natural disaster(a major earthquake followed by a large tsunami), and while we would never have anything similar here, we do have severe weather and should be prepared."

He said the merger enhances Bruce Power's already-impressive response capabilities as these are highly-effective organizations which are well rated by the nuclear regulator, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC). "Combining them will only serve to improve our depth when responding to any situation," he said.

In fact, he noted that the nuclear site has its own doctors, medical teams and emergency response capabilities. "It's the best place to be if you ever have a medical emergency," he said.

With the emergency services now under one single organization, if there were a severe weather event or a major power outage, Bruce Power could respond in a more co-ordinated approach, said Hawthorne.

"This is the first step," he said. "Now we can move forward with other things, such as increased equipment and possibly an off-site support centre."

Lacroix said Bruce Power has about 400 full-time emergency response personnel on five shifts, working 24 hours a day, seven days a week. While one shift is on site, two others are getting ready or just leaving the site, one is in training, and the other one has time off.

This includes security guards, firefighters and emergency planning and response workers.

"With this new organization, they are all under one command," said Lacroix. "In the Fukushima event, there were problems because there were different chains of command. As the division manager, I ensure that everything is co-ordinated and integrated with one contact point."

He stressed that this new unit does not break up any relationships with other emergency services, such as OPP and local fire departments.

In fact, Saunders said  the emergency response teams do 42 drills per year, often including other emergency services in those drills.

"We were already planning to integrate our emergency response teams, but the problems at the Fukushima plant just sped up the process," said Saunders.

Lacroix said Bruce Power has 20-30 emergency vehicles including light-armoured vehicles which are used for fence-line defence drills.

Cost of the emergency response department is $120-million per year, said Hawthorne, including salaries and operations.

Despite the Fukushima event, and the announcement that Germany is getting out of the nuclear industry, Hawthorne said the world perception of nuclear is quite good.

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Wednesday, June 15, 2011