Bruce Power’s Emergency Management Centre has been buzzing this week, as the world’s largest nuclear plant defends itself against a possible large scale cyber attack during an extensive province wide emergency training exercise. “Coupled with that, there’s also a fire at another building on site, and protesters. So there’s a lot happening. You know, not all at once, but in pretty close succession. So it really is, you know, challenging people on a number of fronts,” said John Peevers, Bruce Power’s Director of Community, Media Relations and Economic Development. The three-day-long emergency training exercise involved hundreds of people from across the country, as Canada’s largest nuclear facility works with officials from Emergency Management Ontario and the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, along with local municipalities, to train for worse case scenarios. “We always learn things. That’s why we do them, right. If we were perfect, we wouldn’t be learning. So there’s always gaps that are addressed, and then we work to fill those gaps,” said Peevers. “Safety is Bruce Power’s number one value,” said Jennifer Edey, Senior Vice-President, Operational Services and Business Development at Bruce Power. “These exercises allow us to work closely with community partners and external stakeholders to make sure everyone knows their role as we continue to keep our people, our site and our communities safe.” Previous disaster scenarios involved a tornado hitting the Bruce Power site, and a plane hitting a reactor building. “Fukushima was an eye opener for the whole industry that we need to be prepared for things that, you know, we might not have anticipated, like an ice storm, something like that. So we continue to come up with scenarios to make sure we’re prepared for just about anything,” said Peevers. The disaster scenario dubbed, “Huron Unity,” started on Tuesday, and wraps up today. These province-wide emergency exercises happen every three years, says Peevers, but Bruce Power has many more disasters to simulate to keep themselves emergency ready. If something goes wrong at the largest nuclear plant in Canada, the impacts could reach well beyond the Bruce Power site. “During the average year we’ll do, you know, 50 to 60 drills on various different scales involving different people on site. To make sure that we’re practicing every year, we have five different sort of crews that are on our emergency response organizations. So, each one of those will have at least one major drill each year to keep those skills sharp,” said Peevers.
