Public Comment on Nuclear Regulator Welcome, but Misinformation is Not: Letter Writer
Re: "Canada fails to meet key principle of nuclear safety: Ottawa activist," (The Hill Times, June 16, 2025), readers should know that the referenced 2019 review by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) found Canada to have a robust and comprehensive regulatory framework.
The IAEA views this country's nuclear regulator — the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CSNC) — as a global leader, overseeing one of the oldest and most complex national nuclear programs. Canada has, in fact, helped to define many of the safety principles upheld by the IAEA today.
The principle of "justification" (i.e., benefit should outweigh risk) did not check the box in the IAEA review because it is already integral to the licensing of any nuclear project in Canada: the CNSC rightly noted this in its response to the 2019 review.
There is an incorrect claim that no safe level of radiation exists: this is a common misunderstanding of the precautionary approach to radiation protection. Radiation is not dangerous at the levels we routinely encounter in our environment.
The least of these routine radiation exposures is due to nuclear reactors and waste management activities, for which the benefit is enormous: Canada's most industrial and populous province having an almost 100-per-cent clean electrical grid is one shining example.
It is important to hold our nuclear regulator to account, as it is through legislative and public review, and public comment is welcome, but this, too, must be scrutinized because misinformation can be more toxic.
Jeremy Whitlock, PhD
Stratford, Ont.
(The letter writer is a nuclear consultant and former senior technical adviser at the IAEA Department of Safeguards.)
Original letter to The Hill Times (2025 June 16) from L. Jones:
Canada Fails to Meet Key Principle of Nuclear Safety: Ottawa Activist
A March 2025 report by the International Atomic Energy Agency flagged a serious problem in Canada's nuclear governance regime. Canada has not incorporated the fundamental safety principle of justification into its legal framework, despite being urged to do so by an international peer review team in 2019.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) principle of justification in nuclear safety requires that any practice involving human exposures to ionizing radiation be justified during the licensing process for a facility. It must be demonstrated that the overall benefits of the project to individuals and society outweigh the potential health detriments of the radiation exposures it will cause.
Justification is necessary because there is no safe level of exposure to ionizing radiation from nuclear reactors and radioactive waste. Ionizing radiation causes cancers of all kinds, many other chronic diseases and damage to the human gene pool. Human-made nuclear waste will remain hazardous and radioactive for millions of years.
Canada's failure to justify nuclear projects is a serious deficiency that urgently needs to be addressed given the federal government's professed interest in funding and expanding nuclear electricity generation in this country We need to ask: can we justify creating more and more radioactive waste that future generations will have to deal with even though they will receive zero benefit from the activities that created it?
Other serious deficiencies were flagged by the IAEA experts in 2019. For example, Canada allows pregnant nuclear workers to be exposed to a radiation dose four times larger than is tolerated by IAEA standards. This issue remains unaddressed five years later.
These problems are just the tip of the iceberg. An environmental petition to the Auditor General in 2019 described many problems with Canada's nuclear governance regime suggesting it compares unfavourably with more robust regimes in other OECD countries.
Lynn Jones
Ottawa, Ont.
(The letter writer is a member of the Concerned Citizens of Renfrew County and Area.)
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