Impact of Fukushima on Canada's Nuclear Regulation - HTML5 Transcript/Captions

When a major accident like Fukushima happens, regulators have an obligation to examine what happened and to apply whatever lessons that can be learned to prevent it from happening again. Here, at the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, we've been working hard on this. Immediately after the accident, we put a task force together to analyze the events that took place at Fukushima. A big part of their work included a rigorous re-examination of all our regulatory requirements. Even though they concluded that our rules are modern and comprehensive, they identified some key improvements that touch on a wide range of areas. For example, we updated our rules for the design and safety assessment of nuclear power plants, to make sure facilities can withstand any events. We also changed rules around accident management, to require facilities to have in place the people, procedures and tools that they need to respond to anything that can happen at their facilities. But we didn't stop with the obvious changes. Just to give you one example, learning from the communications challenges in Japan, we established requirements for licensees to have public information programs. These programs ensure people have access to the information they want about facilities in their communities. On top of improvements to our own requirements, the CNSC is also active internationally, working with regulators from around the world and supporting the work of the International Atomic Energy Agency. Together, we've been able to better analyze what happened at Fukushima and identify what can be done to further enhance the safety of our nuclear facilities. As this work continues, we at the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, will bring these lessons home, to ensure we continue to have a world-class regulatory regime. Aside from Fukushima, the CNSC is focused everyday on ensuring Canada has clear, and comprehensive regulatory requirements covering all the facilities and activities that we regulate. To see everything we have in place, or just to keep abreast of our work, visit our website.