w w w . o a kv ill eb ea ve r.c o m O A KV IL LE B EA V ER W e dn es da y, Se pt em be r 2 2, 2 01 0 4 experts in 80 countries, prepared the report from March to August and visited the pro- posed site and surrounding area as part of the study. TransCanadas Oakville Generating Station (OGS) Project Manager Terri Steeves talked about her companys reasons for want- ing the assessment. The key message that we are trying to get out through this report is that the Oakville Generating Station is a safe neighbour, said Steeves. There has been a lot of public con- cern. So our primary motivation has been to try and address the public concern with respect to safety by responding impartially with a third party expert that is international- ly recognized for their work. GL Noble Dentons principal consultant Mike Johnson, who has spent 30 years work- ing in the field of quantitative risk assess- ment, said the process he undertook in put- ting the report together involved identifying the power plants hazards, looking at the potential those hazards had for being realized and the potential consequences, if they were. In the end, it was calculated that for peo- ple in the industrial areas closest to the proposed facility, the risk of fatality from lightning strikes is about 90 times greater than the risk posed by the OGS. With the safety of pas- sengers on railway tracks adjacent to the proposed power plant site proving to be of great concern for many, the probability of someone being killed on a train due to the operation of the OGS was covered in the report. This report calculated that such an acci- dent would only happen once in 254 million years and this was only if that person was a regular commuter taking the train twice a day, five days a week, 50 weeks a year. When it came to a death being caused at Ford, approximately 150 metres away from the power plant site, by the operation of the OGS the likelihood of such an accident dropped to once in 500 million years. The chances of a commuter being killed on Royal Windsor Drive by a power plant acci- dent were calculated at once in a billion years. Johnson said by the time one gets to the residential areas, around 400 metres from the proposed power plant site, there is no risk of death from the power plant. The controlling factor here is the physical extent the hazard can have. There is only so far the pressure produced, for example, by an explosion can extend before they drop to rel- atively low levels, said Johnson. The calculation tactics we use, the gener- ally accepted methods of accessing harm to people indicate theres no risk to the residen- tial areas. TransCanada spokesperson Chris Breen said this is particularly true because of the way the proposed power plant has been designed. Breen said in the event an explosion does take place, the building is designed in such a way as to channel and vent the pressure out- side. A building that does not allow the explo- sion to escape in this way runs the risk of being blown to pieces when the pressure has nowhere to go. While the report said there was no risk of death in the nearby residential areas from the operation of the OGS, it did say there was some risk of minor property damage (e.g. broken glass), but even here the calcula- tions came to once in four million years. Johnson said based on the reports find- ings, the OGS will meet the most stringent safety requirements of the Major Industrial Accidents Council of Canada (MIACC) by a considerable margin. He also pointed out that because of the low safety risk associated with the power plant, from a MIACC standpoint, a hospital could be built where Ford is now. While an explosion or fire caused by the release of natural gas or hydrogen was the focus of the risk assessment, the report also looked at the possible threat to the commu- nity from spills and leakage of hazardous materials. We considered any hazardous substance on site, but the thing is that with the other hazardous substances they are in such low quantities that their affects are quite limit- ed, said Gary Toes, GL Noble project man- ager. They dont have offsite effects, they are not able get outside the site boundary so their impact is zero. The safety report does not cover air qual- ity, does not cover the risk associated with being inside the site boundary and does not cover the pipeline that will bring the natural gas to the power plant. TransCanada is well aware of the skepti- cism some may have about the report. Breen said TransCanada is offering the Town funding to hire its own independent experts to review the safety report. Oakville Mayor Rob Burton and repre- sentatives from C4CA were contacted by The Oakville Beaver for comment on the study, but wanted more time to read the report. A story outlining the communitys response to this study will follow shortly. More chance of getting killed by lighting: safety report Continued from page 1 The key message that we are trying to get out through this report is that the Oakville Generating Station is a safe neighbour. Terri Steeves, project manager, TransCanadas Oakville Generating Station