Putting safety into question

Needless to say, the latest revelations about safety concerns with effectively all of AECL's CANDU nuclear reactors figure to be glossed over just as thoroughly as the recent concerns with the MAPLE and Chalk River isotope reactors. But in addition to providing evidence that nuclear technology is anything but free from trouble and uncertainty, the latest news would seem to cut to the core of any attempt to claim Saskatchewan's geography serves to favour nuclear power over healthier alternatives:

Canadian nuclear safety regulators say they have underestimated the seriousness of a design feature at the country's electricity-producing reactors that would cause them to experience dangerous power pulses during a major accident.
...
The discovery prompted the regulator, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, to warn that it may have to order nuclear power plants to run at less-than-full power indefinitely to compensate for what it deems less-safe conditions at the stations, according to the document.

The commission and the three utilities that operate reactors – Ontario Power Generation, NB Power, and Hydro-Québec – will likely have to spend “considerable resources” dealing with safety issues related to the problem and still may not be able to resolve it fully, it said.
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Although positive reactivity is not well known outside the nuclear industry, problems connected with it prompted Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. to scrap its two Maple reactors in May, 2008, after spending more than $500-million on them, leading to a crisis in the supply of medical isotopes.

According to the document, commission staff have always known that Candu nuclear power plants have positive reactivity, but they conceded that they miscalculated the magnitude of the condition. For instance, they said they underestimated a number used to measure it by 50 per cent.
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Mr. Rzentkowski said the commission would consider ordering the stations to run at less than full power if safety margins shrink to unacceptable levels, with the Pickering and Darlington reactors in Ontario the first to be considered for such output cuts.

Greenpeace asked for records about positive reactivity compiled at the commission from Sept. 1 last year to March 31. But Mr. Rzentkowski said he thought the undated document, which was marked as a draft, was likely written in 2007 and was used in discussions with nuclear utility representatives.

The positive reactivity problem is highly technical, and has arisen because of the unique design of Canada's reactors. According to the document, the main factors “that introduce this hazard” are the Candu's use of natural uranium as fuel and the internal structure of the reactors, in which the heavy water used to cool them is separated from the water that moderates the pace of atomic chain reactions to safe levels.

So what does the revelation mean? Remember that the closest the Sask Party has ever come to offering a justification for pushing ahead with a nuclear reactor a vague claim that since uranium is mined in Saskatchewan, it should be used in Saskatchewan.

But even the nuclear industry's own UDP recognized that refining isn't a viable choice for the province. As a result, the only way Saskatchewan would actually have any comparative advantage over other jurisdictions in generating nuclear power would be if natural uranium can be used.

Which means in effect that if the Wall government were to push ahead with nuclear power generation, it would have one of two choices. On the one hand, it could select a non-CANDU model - which would eliminate any pretense of competitive advantage and thoroughly undermine Wall's apparent plan to buy into AECL. Or instead, the province could voluntarily choose a design which poses well-known and escalating risks which are now close to coming to fruition in the form of massive costs and potential shutdowns.

But what about the much-vaunted regulation which the CNSC in particular has spent so much time trumpeting? Well, it apparently wasn't enough to push the CNSC itself to make the known issues public two years ago. And that was before the Cons strongarmed Parliament into overruling the CNSC itself on safety issues at Chalk River.

So there's no reason for confidence that the CNSC itself is telling the public the whole story about the risks surrounding the industry under its regulation. And it's tough to take much comfort from an organization whose mandate seems to have shifted from actually regulating anything to a PR exercise in proclaiming what a wonderful job it's doing.

Finally, it's worth noting that the similarity between the issues which caused the MAPLE isotope reactors to be abandoned and the ones also present in CANDU reactors may push Wall's federal allies to the opposite side of the table. At the moment, there's a regular food fight going on between the Cons and the Libs as to whether or not the MAPLE project should have been abandoned - but Harper and company can hardly make a credible claim to have done the right thing by scrapping MAPLE while promoting the construction of new reactors which face the exact same problems.

In sum, then, today's revelations provide some compelling evidence both that the nuclear industry is less safe than it claims and that known issues are being kept from the public. And that reality certainly can't help the Sask Party's case to rush forward rather than taking a thorough look at the obvious risks from Saskatchewan's perspective.

A case study

Remember that it's because Canada has relied on nuclear reactors for a supply of medical isotopes that the Cons were able to ram through legislation to overrule the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission's concerns about the 50-year-old Chalk River reactor back in 2007. And now that the Chalk River reactor has been shut down due to leaks of radioactive water and visible corrosion, there's a movement afoot to fire up two MAPLE reactors to provide a backup supply even though "the reactors did not function as predicted and Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd., the Crown corporation that owns them, could not figure out why".

So the full extent of any current backup plan for aging or malfunctioning nuclear reactors is apparently either to go without whatever they produce, or to run the faulty reactors anyway in hope that nothing goes wrong. Just something to think about next time somebody tries to claim that any combination of regulation or experience in the industry means there's absolutely no reason at all for concern about relying on a nuclear reactor or two as Saskatchewan's main source of power.

Burning question

How long will it take before the Cons start lamenting that they couldn't possibly have been aware of any issues with the Chalk River nuclear reactor before today?

Update: Meanwhile, it shouldn't come as much surprise how many times Chalk River is mentioned in CanWest's story on nuclear safety.

On slanted reporting

Before going into detail about the the UDP's nuclear wish list, let's start with a few high-level observations.

To begin with, let's note the extended time frames involved in the UDP's assumptions and recommendations - and particularly how the report encourages snap decisions which would have serious ramifications extending tens or hundreds of years into the future.

When it comes to nuclear power generation, the report can't avoid acknowledging that the plant construction is prohibitively expensive up front compared to any other alternative. Which means that any attempt to justify nuclear power based on cost relies on a 50+ year time frame for plant operation.

But the UDP report which actually sees Saskatchewan's uranium reserves running out within that time frame. And when that possibility is combined with the suggestion that nuclear development will continue to expand elsewhere, there's little reason to think that operating costs will actually stay at currently-assumed levels - calling into question the conclusion that lower costs over time could justify the massive construction costs associated with a nuclear reactor.

Meanwhile, the time factor involved in the report's recommendation to encourage Saskatchewan communities to become nuclear waste depositories is even more striking. It surely isn't by accident that the report notes that a community wouldn't want to risk any existing resources by placing the site near them, and that any future development near the waste facility would likely be ruled out over a time period of centuries.

But even from the starting point that a waste disposal site would severely restrict any future development for the community involved, the report is wholly bullish on the idea. Which results in its recommendation that the province should push the efforts of any municipality which holds its nose long enough to ask to be the home site - with no apparent concern for the possibility that the decision might be a dangerous one in the longer term.

A second major theme worth pointing out about the report is its consistent focus on theory rather than practice - perhaps best epitomized by its statement on the role of the CNSC:

In Canada, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) is responsible for ensuring the public, the environment, and workers are protected from any potential effects of nuclear energy and that all international industry guidelines are followed.

The CNSC operates as an independent agency of the Federal Government that reports to Parliament (via the Minister of Natural Resources). The agency has no role in promoting nuclear power and is split into a decision-making Commission Tribunal and a
staff organization including technical experts in nuclear safety and controls.

One of the main responsibilities of the Commission Tribunal is to run the nuclear licensing process. Before being granted a license or renewal, licensees are required to prove to the CNSC that their facility or activity is acceptably safe. The CNSC approach to safety assumes that nothing is 100 percent risk free, but that risk can be minimized through multiple layers of verifiable protection. When a facility is licensed, the staff organization supports the compliance activities (among other things) and ensures that domestic nuclear operators provide quarterly reports highlighting radio-active discharges.

Needless to say, anybody who's followed the actual operations of the CNSC over the past few years should have some serious questions about that description. To wit: what of Linda Keen? Political meddling in nuclear regulation? Discharges going unreported until well after the fact?

In the UDP report, the reality of how the CNSC has actually operated is conveniently whitewashed from the picture in favour of a depiction of the CNSC as a fully independent guarantor of nuclear safety. And the problem with a presentation of the CNSC is idealized terms rather than realistic ones isn't only limited to the current Con government. In general, any recommendation that the province should rely on federal actors to ensure nuclear safety is bound to carry some serious risk based on the federal government of the day - and the fact that we now have about the most problematic possible combination between the two levels of government only helps to highlight the point.

It doesn't take much imagination to extrapolate from there as to how the UDP's depictions of other parties involved may similarly be based on wishful thinking rather than reality. And it's hard to imagine a starting point less compatible with a realistic assessment of the risks and opportunity costs involved in focusing on nuclear development.

That leads nicely into the last point which I'll make for now: while the report presents plenty of theoretical job and GDP figures associated with its proposals, it utterly ignores the question of how money and resources can otherwise be applied. Which may be entirely consistent with the UDP's mandate to cheerlead for the nuclear industry, but renders the report utterly useless as an assessment of nuclear development as compared to any other priority.

Crash course

Pogge points out another example of how both the Cons and Libs have eliminated the capacity of federal regulatory, this time when it comes to air travel safety. But it's worth noting that the aviation example has already progressed a step further toward complete non-regulation:

(A)n internal memo from November 2006 casts some doubt on the vigilance with which the department will monitor the industry. In his paper, The Role of the Judiciary in Aviation Safety, Moshansky sums up that memo: "Transport Canada instructed its aviation inspectors not to initiate any further enforcement investigations into regulatory contraventions and to close all open cases against SMS certificate holders."

In other words, even while the Cons' spokespuppets try to claim that having federal regulators monitor paperwork rather than carrying out actual inspections will allow for better enforcement, they've simultaneously ordered their staff not to do anything even if the paperwork does show a problem.

Now, this is hardly the first example of the Cons instructing federal regulators not to do their job. After all, it took the Cons only a couple of months in office before they shut down any attempt to require provincial compliance with the Canada Health Act. And of course, it was the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission's stubborn insistence on actually addressing nuclear safety that led to Linda Keen being fired.

But today's revelations about the civil aviation industry look to be perhaps the most dangerous example yet of the federal government completely abrogating its regulatory role. And from the fact that at least part of the change was an internal Con policy decision which was never made public, now would appear to be the time for plenty more questions as to whether the Cons have similarly ordered the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and other regulators to stop doing their jobs.

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.

Set up

It may only be a minor piece of the wider issues surrounding the Cons' efforts to gut the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission. But the Globe and Mail's report on what Gary Lunn knew when about the Chalk River fiasco looks to have trapped Lunn in a claim which is itching to be soundly refuted - raising the question of whether the apparent evidence will surface:

Minister of Natural Resources Gary Lunn was sent information about the impasse between Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. and Canada's nuclear regulator at least two days before the afternoon he says he learned about the problem, a source alleges.

Mr. Lunn has testified before a parliamentary committee that his staff first alerted him on Dec. 3 to the fact that the nuclear reactor that produces more than half of the world's medical isotopes had been shut down indefinitely due to an ongoing, month-old dispute between the Crown-owned AECL and its regulator, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission.

However, a highly placed source close to Atomic Energy told The Globe and Mail that an e-mail was sent to Mr. Lunn before the Dec. 1 weekend underscoring the need for him to turn his attention to the mounting problem.

"I sent an e-mail on Nov. 29 or 30 ... which said this is serious, we need to get on this," the source said.

Mr. Lunn took a break from skiing in British Columbia on Dec. 1 to respond to the e-mail, the source said, adding that Mr. Lunn confirmed he "knew it was a situation he needed to work on."...

In an interview with The Globe this week, Mr. Lunn denied communicating with the source.

"I don't know. I didn't see an e-mail," Mr. Lunn said, adding, "But it's not uncommon in this age ... my computer, I won't turn it on for three or more days, so you know ..." he said, trailing off. "I'm telling you, I don't recall any conversation. In fact, you know ... there was no contact ... those are the facts," Mr. Lunn said.

"Whether he's thinking of something else or a conversation we had another time, I don't know."

Now, Lunn's response itself seems bizarre enough to raise some questions. Considering that he's already faced public grilling over what he knew and when, there's no apparent reason why he would have to tell stories about what's "not uncommon" rather than having some idea what he did and didn't do at the time.

But it should be an extremely simple matter for the source's story to be resolved based on Lunn's denial of any knowledge or involvement at the time. If Lunn did indeed send an e-mail on December 1, then a copy of that e-mail would seem to put the whole matter to rest - leaving only the question of how the Cons would try to change the subject from yet another attempt to mislead the public.

Outside the law

John Ivison unloads on Gary Lunn, and in the process fills in one more detail about Lunn's efforts to intimidate the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission:

Mr. Lunn, who appears to have been disengaged about all things nuclear to this point, suddenly leapt into action. In a call to Ms. Keen on Dec. 8, during which she characterized his manner as "abrupt and demanding," he pushed for the CNSC to allow the reactor to resume operation. Ms. Keen said that to do so, the law required a licence amendment, something that could only be granted after the Commission reviewed all the facts and legal requirements.

Apparently unaware that ministers should not interfere in the operation of arm's-length, quasi-judicial tribunals, Mr. Lunn continued to attempt to bully Ms. Keen with an "aggressive" questioning style and subsequently even withdrew the Department of Justice's services from the regulator on the AECL file.

Ivison doesn't make clear when exactly Lunn decreed that CNSC would no longer have access to the Department of Justice. But it appears obvious that CNSC would need immediate legal advice to deal with a number of the issues related to Chalk River, including to follow up on the license amendment process, as well as to determine the effect of both Lunn's own ministerial directive and as the legislation that eventually passed to override the CNSC.

Not surprisingly, though, Lunn doesn't seem to have been the least bit interested in allowing CNSC to obtain needed information. Instead, he apparently decided that any legal advice to CNSC would be too likely to actually analyze the law rather than echoing the Cons' public position. And that in turn could only intrude on the Cons' bad-cop, bad-cop strategy of bullying Keen both in public and in private.

Of course, the withdrawal of legal advice looks to have been one of the least of Lunn's efforts to override CNSC's independence. But it offers one more example of the Cons' belief that they are the law - and one more reason to remove the Cons from any position where they're able to act on that assumption.