The Isotope Crisis Reveals More Conservative Deceit

The Canadian public is being lied to again by our government. This time it is over isotopes and the nuclear plant at Chalk River, and involves the Prime Minister and two members of his cabinet, who have not only kept vital information from the House of Commons, but also from us.

How can we trust anything they say?

Barely a week ago, they told us that everything was fine and that there was no crisis. Then we learn that Lisa Raitt left a top secret file behind at a media outlet, which revealed many contradictions, meaning that everything wasn't fine. In fact, everything was a mess.

Don't worry, be happy. I think not.

Chalk River crisis? What crisis?
Don Martin,
Canwest News
May 26, 2009

OTTAWA -- Perhaps Canada's current minister in charge of nuclear heavy water leaks, production shutdowns and radioactive medical fallout isn't as rabidly excitable as the one who presided over the last idling of the ailing Chalk River power plant.

Natural Resources Minister Lisa Raitt deploys her natural Cape Breton serenity when confronting the indefinite shutdown of the world's most important isotope-production plant, despite the imminent spectre of cancer patients racked up and backed up waiting for increasingly scarce diagnostic imaging material.

When confronted by predictions of medical mayhem from her opponents in the House of Commons, Raitt's words translate roughly into: "Crisis? What crisis?" as she points to her "five-point plan" for handling this sort of isotope supply interruption.

This grand plan is actually a one-page ministerial statement that, among other modest moves, pledges to "ensure that Canada plays a leadership role in the planned discussions" in Paris over security of isotope supply.

She almost makes it sound as if other sources of isotopes or medical alternatives to Chalk River are an eBay order away and, to be fair, whispers say she will announce a long-term isotope supply contract on Thursday.

Still, it's all quite the contrast to the hyperkinetic Gary Lunn she replaced, who fired Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission chair Linda Keen in an early 2008 huff for refusing to kick-start the plant on his command because he was convinced the continued shutdown could spill blood on his political hands.

He whipped Parliament into a frenzy just 17 months ago and secured unanimous all-party approval to over-ride Keen's safety concerns in the public's interest and kick-start plant operations.

It wasn't just Lunn sounding the alarm.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper cautioned in 2007 that this particular reactor's shutdown would "jeopardize the health and safety and lives of tens of thousands of Canadians," yet he has yet to respond to the current crisis in the Commons.

Former health minister Tony Clement warned "every day counts in this situation. Two or three days works out to something like 210,000 procedures worldwide."

Yet the current health minister spent Tuesday banning flavoured tobacco product and discussing Gov.-Gen. Michaelle Jean's symbolic dining on a raw seat heart.

This oddly muted response confuses Keen, who returned to Parliament Hill for media interviews on Tuesday for the first time since her firing.

She rates this shutdown as much, much worse than the safety compliance concerns she raised over a pair of disconnected pumps.

With new spills being noted regularly and reluctantly released by the plant's Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. owners, Chalk River has become the most notorious leaky ship in Canada's nuclear power fleet.

That's why she's gobsmacked by missing signs of urgency in coping with a crisis the Canadian Medical Association predicts will soon impact 30,000 patients per week in Canada with another 400,000 patients in the United States cut off from precious isotopes.

As someone fired for being the catalyst of a medical crisis in 2007 only to witness an almost nonchalant government response to a far more dire situation brings a wry smile to her face. "The irony is complete."

It's not only the government shrugging off this ugly scenario. Despite experts calling it a ‘catastrophe in the making,' the Chalk River shutdown has rated just three questions in the House of Commons this week.

If the Conservative blueprint for coping with a sick nuclear plant that has immense global medical significance is a single sheet of paper, the politics of this issue will go radioactive and the public reaction will go nuclear even faster than the economic meltdown.

Leaks at a nuclear plant? What's the problem? Sure you'll glow in the dark, but just think of the money you'll save on batteries. Greg Weston also weighs in.

Minister's slip reveals deceit
By: Greg Weston
London Free Press
June 4, 2009

While Canada's broken-down medical isotope reactor is no longer producing a drop of anything of value to cancer patients, it is certainly generating ample political baloney from the Conservative government.

The 52-year-old Chalk River reactor that ordinarily produces up to half the world's supply of medical isotopes for cancer scans has been shut down indefinitely after it sprang a radioactive leak May 14.

Now the rusting relic is the subject of a different kind of leak -- an entire binder of sensitive government documents on the reactor and the federal agency that runs it, Atomic Energy of Canada.

The internal briefing notes for Natural Resources Minister Lisa Raitt were accidentally left behind at CTV's studios after a recent interview with her on the Chalk River mess and resulting medical isotope shortage.

When the network finally aired the lost-docs story, Raitt says she tendered her resignation to the prime minister, but he refused to accept it.

Instead, the axe dropped on Raitt's 26-year-old press secretary Jasmine Macdonnell, one of the brightest young lights on Parliament Hill.

As one insider said: "Someone had to take the fall."

The opposition parties, of course, wanted that somebody to be Raitt.

After all, they argued, Maxime Bernier was sacked from cabinet last year for leaving classified documents at his girlfriend's pad.

As Stephen Harper said back then: "Ministers are always responsible for the protection of classified documents. The minister (Bernier) admitted his mistake in this matter and resigned his post."

At a press conference yesterday, Harper said the difference between the two cases is "personal responsibility" -- Bernier lost documents all on his own, while Raitt could point a finger at staff.

Or not. More likely, Bernier was sacked from cabinet because his sexploits with former biker chick Julie Couillard had obscured his judgment and made him a political disaster waiting to happen. The lost documents were just the final excuse for an execution.

Raitt is exactly the opposite -- smart, experienced, politically astute, an excellent communicator, a female from seat-rich Ontario, and generally one of Harper's stronger assets in cabinet.

In short, she is worth taking a flak attack over lost documents.

Further proof this is a government that doesn't let the truth get in the way of public opinion is to be found in the contents of Raitt's lost briefing book.

For instance, taxpayers learn for the first time that the Harper government has pumped a staggering $1.7 billion into Atomic Energy just in the past three years -- most of it up in smoke if the Chalk River reactor remains beyond repair.

Even if the reactor had remained working, Raitt's briefing documents say Canadian taxpayers would have had to shell out $72 million this year to produce medical isotopes, 90% of which go to U.S. hospitals.

The documents openly admit the financial truth about Chalk River was deliberately hidden in the last federal budget.

But nowhere have Harper and his ministers been caught tripping over their outstretched noses more than in their handling of the growing medical isotope crisis caused by the Chalk River shutdown.

Sixteen months ago, the Harper government ordered the reactor restarted after a shutdown for safety reasons, saying cancer and heart patients would die without an immediate isotope supply.

At that time, the shutdown lasted four weeks and the world's other four isotope reactors were operating.

This time, the situation is far worse -- Chalk River is out of order indefinitely and two of the other reactors are also down.

Yet, Raitt testified at a Commons committee this week there is nothing to panic about. Either the Harper government lied to Canadians 16 months ago, or it is lying today. Either way, government deceit is a far bigger issue than lost documents.

Where the Isotope Story Began: A Tall Tale or Tail Between Their Legs

It's pretty clear that the Conservatives have no idea what they're doing when it comes to nuclear energy. That certainly doesn't help me to sleep at night and their latest debacle actually has me walking the floor.

On January 15, 2008, Conservative MP Gary Lunn, on the advice of Stephen Harper, fired Linda Keen, the head of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission; for refusing to reopen the Chalk River nuclear facility; because of major safety concerns.

Then in February 2009, it was learned the government had hidden the news that there was a leak in the reactor, for two months, prompting allegations of a cover-up and suggestions that the public had been put at risk. Should we be concerned that nuclear waste is leaking into our waterways? Hmmm.

In fact, they have told us that the reason they pushed for Chalk River to remain open despite the fact that it had leaked 7,000 litres of potentially carcinogenic waste into a major Canadian waterway and the former head of CNSC, Linda Keen, said that it was an accident waiting to happen; was because we needed crucial isotopes.

Now we learn that chalk river will be closed for months. What's changed? Were they lying to us then or now and do they have a clue? Apparently not.

Isotope scramble: tale of two crises

Toronto Star

May 30, 2009

When the Chalk River nuclear research reactor was down for just three weeks in late 2007, it was considered such a crisis that emergency legislation was required to reopen it.
"
Had we not acted, people invariably would have died, since medical isotopes for serious cancer procedures were not available, and we could not let that happen," said Gary Lunn, then minister of natural resources, at the time. "We had to act, and we did."

Now, with the half-century-old reactor down for at least three months (some say much longer), there's no problem, according to the government's spokespersons.

Natural Resources Minister Lisa Raitt assured Parliament this week that the government is taking "great action" on the isotope file, "is seeking to ensure global supply" and "is working to manage the shortage."

Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq also downplayed the seriousness of the looming shortage of medical isotopes sparked by the shutdown at Chalk River. "It's not a crisis," she told the Star yesterday.

How can that be? The Chalk River reactor produces half the North American supply of medical isotopes, which are used in a variety of diagnostic tests for cancer and heart ailments. Hospitals have already had to delay tests and switch to alternative methods in the face of this shortage.

The health minister can talk to hospitals about prioritizing tests, but that is no comfort to a patient with heart disease or a woman waiting to find out if her breast cancer has spread.

Stephen Harper's Conservative government is either dramatically underplaying the current medical isotope crisis or wildly overplayed the last one.

And this week's flurry of announcements, including the appointment of an expert review panel "to consider proposals for alternate sources of medical isotopes," has not reinforced our confidence that the government has a handle on the situation.

After the 2007 crisis, the government also appointed a panel of health specialists to study the matter and recommend ways to avoid a reoccurrence. The so-called "lessons learned" panel advised the government a year ago that it should "diversify generator supply sources, preferably within Canada." Specifically, it said that research reactors on university campuses across the country could be adapted to produce medical isotopes.

No apparent action was taken on that recommendation until yesterday, when the government announced funding for McMaster University to upgrade its research reactor to produce medical isotopes.

Bewilderingly, Industry Minister Tony Clement said the funding had nothing to do with Chalk River but was part of the government's "short-term stimulus" package.

The government has some explaining to do. Specifically, why did it take a second crisis to prompt the government to find a backup supplier of medical isotopes? That should have been a government priority long before now.

More of the story:

Source of Chalk River leak found

Radioactive Water; Reactor produces half of world's medical isotopes
David Akin,

Canwest News Service

May 28, 2009

Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. (AECL) said yesterday it has found the source of the leak of radioactive water at the Chalk River nuclear reactor that produces nearly half of the world's medical isotopes and that it will force the reactor to stay shut down "for at least three months."

Since the reactor was shut down on May 15, the Crown corporation had stuck to its original estimate of down time of "at least a month."

Canwest News Service reported last week that current and former engineers at the Chalk River facility believe that, in the best-case scenario, the 52-year-old reactor will be offline for at least eight months, if it comes back online at all.

AECL said it had been working around the clock to identify the source of the leak of radioactive water from the giant 15-metre-tall aluminum vessel that houses the National Research Universal (NRU) reactor's core. Though the reactor was commissioned in 1957, the vessel was replaced in 1972.

Engineering sources told Canwest News Service that the manufacturer of that vessel recommended it be replaced every 15 years.

AECL said yesterday it found the leak at the base of the 37-year-old tank in a location where there is corrosion on the outside wall of the vessel. AECL said it also found additional corrosion points on the outer wall of the vessel that require more examination.

AECL has not yet proposed a remedy for the leaks. Instead, it must prepare more specialized test equipment to inspect the interior of the vessel, which is filled with a complex array of tubes and pipes.

"Sophisticated diagnostic procedures are required to determine the exact nature and extent of the repairs before returning the NRU reactor safely to service," said Bill Pilkington, AECL's chief nuclear officer.

The NRU is the source of medical isotopes used to treat and diagnose cancer and other diseases for 20 million patients in 80 countries each year.

"Until all investigations are completed, it is premature at this point to set a definitive timeline for the return to service of the NRU reactor," said AECL chief executive Hugh McDiarmid. "We want to reassure Canadians that every effort is being taken by our team of experts to address the situation as quickly as possible while adhering to all prescribed safety procedures."

AECL said that the water initially was leaking at a rate of about 120 kilograms each day. It now says that, because it has lowered the water level in the tank, it has reduced the leak rate to about 25 kilograms of water each day.

Some of that leaked radioactive water is evaporating and being vented. AECL said there are no threats to human safety or to the environment with the release of the vapour.

The rest of the water is being stored in specially designed drums until it can be processed and, where possible, reused at the facility.

Tracking the Isotope Story:

1. Note to Leona Aglukkaq. Stephen Harper Will Not Save you Now