CNSC’s absurd 10-minute rule
The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission allows members of the public to make oral presentations at licensing hearings, but only allows 10 minutes per person or group. There are no restrictions on the licensee or the CNSC staff who are permitted to drone on ad libitum.
It is patently ridiculous that intervenors who spend hundreds of hours researching and preparing submissions, essentially doing the CNSC’s work for it, are restricted to a 10-minute oral presentation. Even those intervenors who receive funding from the CNSC to partially compensate them for time and expenses involved in presenting, are restricted to 10 minutes.
In today’s hearing, for example, the First Six Years received intervenor funding and hired Dr. Ian Fairlie and Dr. Ole Hendrickson to prepare reports on The Hazards of Tritium Releases and SRB Pembroke and Tritium Behaviour in the Environment near Pembroke. You can read these reports in full here on the TAP website (links below). The First Six Years will be restricted to a 10 minute time slot for the oral presentation, time to cover only a small fraction of the substantive new information from the two reports.