Unresponsive

The CP reports on the latest developments in the Chalk River reactor shutdown. And it looks like Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. responded to the situation by buying entirely into the Cons' philosophy of valuing message management over substance - even when it comes to nuclear safety:

Canada's nuclear safety watchdog rejected a preliminary report into last year's reactor shutdown that sparked a critical shortage of medical isotopes, say newly released documents.

In the wake of the medical isotope controversy, Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. was supposed to explain why key safety measures were not in place at its research reactor in Chalk River, Ont.

But the federal Crown corporation's January report instead focused on the communications breakdown between AECL and the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, say documents obtained by The Canadian Press under the Access to Information Act.

"CNSC staff had indicated to AECL that the scope statement for the root cause assessment that was submitted on Jan. 7, 2008 was unacceptable," says a review of the report.

"CNSC staff is not sure why AECL changed its scope statement to focus entirely on communications."

The nuclear safety regulator wanted AECL to explain why an earthquake-resistant emergency power supply wasn't connected to the aging National Research Universal reactor's two most crucial heavy water pumps...

The scope of AECL's January report was agreed on in an email exchange last December, according to a briefing note for the then-interim head of the nuclear regulator.

But AECL broadened the report's scope without telling the nuclear safety regulator, the Jan. 24, 2008, briefing note says, and instead focused on communications problems.

"CNSC has done an initial review of this report and found it to be lacking in details and the scope was different than what was expected," it says...

AECL officials told the nuclear safety regulator at a public meeting held two days after the report was delivered that a second, more detailed analysis was forthcoming, Coffin said.

"As we started to do our root cause analysis, we started to identify new areas that we hadn't anticipated that should have been part of the scope. We broadened the investigation to include a phase two," he said...

However, AECL's second report, which recently appeared in media reports, doesn't seem much different than the first one. It also appears to dwell on the communications meltdown between AECL and the nuclear safety regulator.

Given that the core question that needed to be answered was that of why AECL had never complied with the terms of its license, it's hard to see how communications issues could be even faintly relevant. And it's thus hard to fault CNSC for rejecting the first report.

If anything, CNSC may in hindsight have been too generous in allowing AECL to divide its response into two reports rather than following through originally. But then the AECL/Con argument at the time about a need for increased cooperation would have offered some reason both to take a less confrontational stance, and to expect some reciprocation from AECL in actually delivering what it promised.

Instead, thanks to the combination of AECL's delay tactics and the Cons' war against the civil service, the main question surrounding the Chalk River shutdown still hasn't been answered. And the success of the diversion only makes it seem all the more likely that the lack of a backup power supply won't be the last serious substantive issue to be hidden from either the CNSC or the public.