Regulating an inherently dangerous business

Nuclear power is in a class by itself as a technology. Fred Knelman once referred to nuclear as “a future technology whose time has passed.” That fits. It is an unforgiving technology. A nuclear reactor carries with it an extremely tiny risk of an extremely catastrophic accident. Some people look at nuclear and say, “The risks of a serious accident are very small.” Others look and say “No society could afford that accident.” (Mr. Harper is obviously a member of the first “what, me worry?” group.) The most serious accident would be a full meltdown. If the reactor core becomes uncovered, loses coolant, the heat of the chain reaction would lead to the radioactive core breaching containment by melting through any concrete floor and down into the earth. “The China Syndrome” was a term used for a full-meltdown as (theoretically) the reactor would keep going until it reached China. This is not literally true. It would slow when it hit a water table leading to a major radioactive explosion of steam to the surrounding area. The experts say it could kill hundreds of thousands of people. Such an accident has never happened. We have had several close calls. The two worst cases being Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania and Chernobyl in the Ukraine. The reactor designs were quite different, but the U.S. light water/enriched uranium model is not that different, in terms of a melt down, from the Canadian heavy water/unenriched uranium model called CANDU. So, to handle an inherently dangerous technology, the industry bases its safety approach on multiple redundant systems. It is not enough to have one set of anything n safety terms. You need back-ups to the back-ups. And you MUST have an independent, credible regulator. The Canadian regulator, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, formerly known as the Atomic Energy Control Board, has, if anything, been seen as having too cozy a relationship with the industry. The Harper government’s handling of the closing of the NRU reactor at Chalk River and the resulting crisis in access to medical radio-isotopes raises many questions. The situation should not have been a surprise. The closing for routine maintenance should have had a back-up contingency plan. After all, anytime you are doing maintenance on equipment that is more than fifty years old, you might want to be prepared for the possibility other problems will arise. In the case of an extremely old nuclear reactor, this should have been even more obvious. The reactor closed on November 18 and no such plan was in place. Then the regulator discovered that the reactor was operating in violation of its license. The operator, a publicly owned Crown corporation, AECL, had ignored a condition of its license to bring the aging reactor up to the international standards for safety with back up electrical supply in the case of an earthquake. The regulator instructed AECL to immediately live up to the conditions of its license. This delayed re-opening the reactor. Finding that a reactor operator was ignoring its license should have sounded alarm bells. Instead, the Harper government decided to attack the regulator. The decision of the Prime Minister to allege political motivations to the regulator was shocking. Describing them as “Liberal appointees” was deeply disturbing. Using the Commission’s chair as a regular whipping boy in Question Period, alleging a lack of concern for cancer patients, was beyond the pale. And now, it has gotten worse. Natural Resources Minister Gary Lunn has written the chair of the CNSC, Linda Keen, and threatened to fire her. Regulators must be at arm’s length from politics. Bodies like CNDC, CRTC, the NEB, are to be credible and independent. To assert that they must take orders from the Prime Minister’s Office is to erode the fundamental fabric and design of representative government. The regulator of nuclear energy, dealing with the most pro-nuclear government we have ever seen, one that just committed Canada to George Bush’s Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, to building reactors in northern Alberta to speed the production of oil for export, to a push for uranium mining, all of these moves suggest the increased need for independent and effective regulation. The Harper government doesn’t get it. And these moves are dangerous. Dangerous for nuclear operations. Dangerous for policy in general. We need a full public inquiry into the nuclear industry. We must have answers to the questions surrounding the Chalk River fiasco. We need to know if other reactors internationally could have been ready to meet Chalk River’s short-falls. We need to know how AECL could ignore a license requirement for so long with impunity. We need to know when Lunn and Health Minister Tony Clement were informed there was trouble. (Clement has suggested he didn’t know until early December). At the most fundamental level, we need to ensure the independence of regulatory agencies across Canada. If Mr. Harper and his merry men don’t understand the fundamentals of good government, then the Canadian public needs to explain it to them.