The mystery of Chalk River... heavy water runs deep

Updated: Lord Kithener's Own has the details on the first head to roll over the Chalk River nuclear fiasco. It wasn't Linda Keen.

No. It was AECL Chair Michael Burns, a Harper appointee.

This is only speculation, but I have the distinct impression this is not the result Harper was hoping for. Given his statements made while within the immunity of the House of Commons, Harper clearly wanted to change the make-up of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission. Since however, he could only do so by stepping outside the House, there is a good chance he got an earful he wasn't expecting. Perhaps something more respectful but which could easily be translated to something along the lines of, "Fat chance, Fastso!"

If he had demanded the resignation of Linda Keen, given her obvious tenacity, he would have been faced with more than one problem. First, he would have been firing her for diligently doing her job within her terms of reference. That would get a public airing that Harper would have difficulty maneuvering around.

Second, Linda Keen knows where the nuclear bodies are buried. If Harper fires her, the result will make Hiroshima look like a pebble being tossed in the water.

-------

The smell emanating from the Chalk River nuclear reactor fiasco is getting more pungent by the the day. LKO provides a link to the Toronto Star and a story which verifies much of what was in this post. What he discovered at the end of the Star's article, however, starts to make it look very much like this was a set-up from the get-go. (emphasis mine)

This supply was cut off when AECL shut down Chalk River three weeks ago, after suddenly "discovering" during a four-day maintenance shutdown it had been running the reactor for almost two years without safety upgrades required under the operating licence issued by the nuclear safety commission.

At a hearing last week before the nuclear safety commission, AECL vice-president Brian McGee said the company had voluntarily shut down the reactor because safety was the highest priority, despite disruption to world isotope supply.

Really? So why wasn't that mentioned at the late night sitting of the House of Commons where witnesses were brought before the committee of the whole? Why was Linda Keen subject to badgering by Conservative MPs. Ms. Keen was grilled as to whether she had considered the effect of shutting down NRU Chalk River on the medical radioisotope supply.

Since when is it the province of a nuclear safety regulator to weigh the output product of a nuclear reactor when the only function of that office is to ensure the plant itself is running in compliance with its licence?

There's a little more worth examining.

There's a long history of friction between AECL and the nuclear safety regulators.

Two years ago, nuclear safety commission staff cited AECL for "overconfidence," "complacency" and "deficiencies in management oversight and safety culture" in operating Chalk River.

As well the safety commission's experts have regularly publicized the repeated design and engineering blunders by AECL that are responsible for two replacement isotope-producing reactors being eight years behind schedule and untold millions over budget.

The emergency shutdown systems on these two MAPLE reactors jammed during tests in 2000 yet AECL concealed the problem from the federal safety regulators for three months. Nuclear safety commission staff then infuriated AECL engineers by saying the design of that shutdown system was "inherently weak."

Such incidents are one reason that Fred Boyd, publisher of the newsletter of the Canadian Nuclear Society, says AECL's track record on the replacement isotope facility is "appalling."

Smell a rat yet?

Then there is information which came from Frank in comments. It appears this whole thing was driven, not by supply issues, but by the bottom line.

MDS Inc (MDS.TO: Quote) MDZ.N said on Thursday that the impact of the shutdown of a nuclear reactor that makes medical isotopes would be less than it previously thought after the Canadian government ordered the reactor be restarted immediately.

The company said it expects its Nordion division to be able to ship the isotopes to customers sooner than the early to mid-January date it provided last week.

The division, which supplies about 50 percent of the world's medical isotopes, has been hard hit by the shutdown of the Chalk River nuclear plant, off line since November.

MDS said last week that its medical isotopes and radiopharmaceuticals division would see a reduction in its first-quarter earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) of about $8 million to $9 million. It altered that estimate during a conference call to analysts on Thursday, but gave no new figures.

But Brian Bapty, an analyst at Raymond James Ltd in Vancouver, British Columbia, said the EBITDA hit would be minimal compared with the lasting fallout of the incident should U.S. customers look elsewhere for their supplies down the road.

Bapty said there has been calls in recent years to produce the isotopes south of the border and this ramped up during the Chalk River shutdown.

"The minimal EBITDA hit in 2008 is irrelevant," he said. "Does this inspire a competitive landscape. Does this inspire a new competitor into the mix?"

MDS said the reactor would be up to full production within about a week and it would "turn supply around quickly."

That's a full-blown Panama wharf-rat. MDS-Nordion's big concern is that in a climate of competition with US medical consumers suggesting that medical radioisotopes be produced in the US, the shut-down of Chalk River would provide fuel to that argument. The MDS-Nordion lock on the radioisotope market was in jeopardy.

In the meantime, Canada is now gaining a lot of publicity - as a nuclear outlaw.

The mystery of Chalk River... and a question of timing

Via Big City Lib is this bit of crap out of Harper.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper vowed yesterday that someone will be held to account for the shutdown of the reactor that produces half of the world's medical isotopes as his government searched for culprits to blame in its battle with the country's nuclear regulator.

"I can certainly assure the House that when this is all behind us, the government will carefully examine the role of all actors in this incident and make sure that accountability is appropriately restored," Mr. Harper said in the House of Commons.

Yes, well, Harper can get away with that as long as he's being sheltered by the House of Commons. Step outside the House and make that kind of statement and he'd have his fat ass sued right into the Bow River.

The truth, something which we are unlikely to hear from Harper, may be considerably different than what we've gotten to date. First is a comment by Jim Bobby here.

In 1998, they had a labour dispute at Chalk River which caused the reactor to be shut down. MDS Inc. is the private sector supplier of medical isotopes that distributes AECL's product. During the strike, MDS was able to honour its contracts using alternative, more expensive, sources. They saw the 1998 shutdown coming and they made alternate arrangements. They saw this shutdown coming, too. Why did they not make alternate arrangements this time? Do you suppose a manufactured crisis might be used to discredit a pesky regulatory agency? Could someone want the price of the up-for-sale AECL to go down? Could big for-profit business like the nuclear industry exercise undue influence on a Conservative government? Lives were at stake. That is simply because AECL falsified a report saying it had performed required upgrades when, in fact, it had not done so. To complicate matters and ensure that a crisis developed, AECL failed to inform the affected medical users that they would be cut off. MDS Nordion failed to procure isotopes from an alternative supplier, even though procedures for doing so were laid out after the 1998 labour dispute.

And sure enough, some easy searches verify that information.

Then we get Health Minister Tony Clement making statements that his department had not been informed by AECL that the reactor had been shut down. He found out 2 1/2 weeks after the fact, and says he'll get some answers.

I guess he should. He won't have to go far either. AECL is a Crown corporation reporting to the Minister of Natural Resources. One of the customers of Chalk River is the federal department of health. There are at least two ministers on this file and they don't seem to have established proper reporting procedures within their departments. One could almost say that the operation of the Chalk River reactor is something remote from the workings of government, except for one little thing.

The Chalk River reactor and AECL have been getting a long, hard look from the Harper regime. Natural Resources minister, Gary Lunn has been in negotiations with General Electric in an effort to sell off a large chunk of AECL. The sudden and unexpected shut-down of Chalk River, not to mention the fact that two MAPLE reactors, (owned by medical isotope supplier MDS Nordion), are not yet commissioned, would give GE a moment of pause when considering a purchase.

Until AECL can get the MAPLE reactors running safely (they appear to have a problem with that), the only medical radioisotope supplier is the NRU facility at Chalk River. Once (if?) the MAPLE reactors are commissioned, AECL has every intention of shutting down the NRU Chalk River reactor permanently. When the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission demanded a safety upgrade it probably ran afoul of AECL's plans - and the plans of the Harper government to sell off AECL. The CNSC was calling for a fairly expensive upgrade to a reactor AECL would rather not be operating. The same regulator will not issue licenses for the MAPLE reactors until safety concerns with them are rectified.

How do you reassure a prospective buyer that the regulator will not be a problem? Push the regulator out of the way.

There is every possibility this is a manufactured crisis. If it isn't the Harperites don't have their eye on the ball and have tried to cover their own incompetence at not knowing what's going on in their own departments.

There's more. A lot more. Politics'n'Poetry has done a fabulous job of researching the Chalk River NRU facility and what she found out suggests that this is indeed a manufactured crisis by both the industry and the Harperites. It's long but worth every word.

So, I will leave you here and send you to Politics'n'Poetry.