Politcal Meltdown
The year is 1986, we’re near the the city of Tchernobyl, Ukraine, in one of the satellite states of the USSR. Today also happens to be April 25. All is calm, yet many live near a nuclear power plant, which supplies many with clean-burning electrical power, which is supposed to be more environmentally friendly than coal-fire plants. Each of the four reactors can create 1000 Gigwatts of power. On the same day, April 25, just before the evening shift came in, an order to meet peak evening demand came in, leaving the evening shift take handle it. Yet at 1:23:40, it took only seconds and limited knowledge of the state of the state one of the reactors to lead to one of the greatest nuclear disasters in history, rivalled only by Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Other places with problems in the same time period were Sellafield, Ireland and Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.Fast forward to the year 2008, a good 22 years after Tchernobyl, to Ottawa, where a minority government is getting a might to big for its britches. A childish regime that doesn’t like to play nice with others in the playground and will take the ball home when the others don’t let him play by his rules. This kind mentality pervades the political front in Ottawa, and the casualty today is the former Canadian Nuclear Safety president, Linda Keen, whose only mistake was doing her job. She was fired by the minority government for refusing to start up a reactor that produced medical isotopes, being more than 50% of the world supply.
There had been rumours about a shortage of these isotopes, though it’s easily attributed to media sensationalism; anything to make a catchy headline and an engaging byline. There was no impending crisis despite the media’s twist on the story. It was easy to see that this was for safety and if there really was a shortage, the safety watch dog would have done something to alleviate public concerns while the safety upgrades go under way.
The Nuclear Safety Commission is a quasi-judicial arms-length body in charge of overseeing nuclear safety in Canada. As the police are there to enforce the law of the jungle in our streets, the Safety Commission is there to ensure that we don’t get exposed to the ill-effects caused by a nuclear meltdown. They are an inpendant commission who carry out safety inspections and ensure compliance.
The reactor had been shut down during a routine inspection that found the facilities weren’t in compliance with an earlier safety report to have the reactor at Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd.’s shut down because it hadn’t added the cool pumps, which would help in avoiding meltdowns during seismic activity. The reactor had been shut down in November of 2007, and would have been reopened once the upgrades had been done, and at the time of the firing, one of the two necessary upgrades had been completed, with another one due shortly after it.
On December 11th, the AECL had met with a House committee to give an update on it, and had given an estimate of 16 days or so to complete the upgrade. Neither the minority government nor the opposition governments were listening to this. Against the Nuclear Safety Commission and Linda Keen’s orders, they passed legislation, permitting the reactor to be brought back online despite that the existing safety concerns surrounding the Chalk River facilities, and the fact that there is known low but still detectable seismic activity in that region.
This put her at odds with Natural Resources Minister Gary Lunn, one of the many spineless “Yes” men in the Harper administration, who love nothing more than making senior bureaucrats operate under the party banner. It should be noted that Harper has referred to Keen has that “Liberal appointee”, effectively bringing petty partisan politics into a ring where nuclear safety is tantamount to the industry where a single fault in a reactor is the difference between life and death, as history has shown us with Tchernobyl.
16 hours before Keen was expected to testify before a House committee about the reason behind keeping the reactor down, she was fired from her position, and all because she was doing her job and not bending over backwards to cater to a childish regime that doesn’t have the guts to speak to the media directly and prefers to act like a cowardly little bully, retreating when the big boys start to call the shots.
A clearly partisan move. An attempt to silence her and keep the media in the dark about the truth. Of course, this takes into account that the voting public lives under a rock with its fingers shoved in its ears. It’s too bad the Conservatives think this; they’d know otherwise, except they’ve lost their collective head, which is shoved 20,000 leagues up the ass they so willingly kiss.
PM defends firing of nuclear watchdog
Ousted regulator just doing her job
Stumble It!
