Nuclear Apples And Oranges
When all is said and done - and much is still being said and done - the government of this country, in deciding to override the decision made by Linda Keen, former president of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, to bring the National Research Universal Reactor at Chalk River back on line to ensure the ongoing production of nuclear medical isotopes was the right one.
In her testimony before a House of Commons Committee, Ms. Keen sought to horrify her audience with her description of the frail condition the Chalk River reactor was in, its potential for failure, its dreadful risk to Canadians. Statistics tell us things, but statistics can also be handily adjusted to tell a story the manipulator wants to tell, and that story may be very far from the reality of the situation.
And so it most certainly was when Ms. Keen sought to impress her audience with the correctness of her assessment which led to the shut-down and the consequent emergency with the diminished supply of badly-needed medical isotopes, already in emergency shortage.
She deliberately compared newly-introduced standards meant for a new generation of reactors to those that applied to reactors of the vintage of the Chalk River unit. The likelihood of a serious accident should be less than one in a million, she claimed, whereas the likelihood of "fuel failures" in the NRU was one in one thousand. The reactor was out of compliance on a scale "one thousand times greater than the international standard", she warned.
She spoke of fuel failures, of serious accidents leading to severe harm to the public, of lack of lines of defence, of the possibility of an earthquake occurrence and the subsequent utter failure of the reactor. But, it would appear that in fact, all of these harms were deliberately over-rated, they were highly unlikely, and the reactor in its current state was considered to be failsafe. All of the plant's back-up securities were in place.
Ms. Keen indulged in political skulduggery and personal umbrage at being held to account for not considering her decision in a well-rounded, and ultimately more socially responsible manner. According to John Waddington, director general of the CNSC for ten years, a professional engineer with 40 years experience in nuclear safety, and Ms. Keen's predecessor, she was, quite simply wrong.
"The combination of a low probability of occurrence and negligible consequences means that the NRU reactor did indeed meet existing international standards. The seven upgrades to the NRU reactor that the CNSC sought from AECL and which were installed in 2005, together with the connection of the two pumps to the new back-up power system, are designed to ensure the risks of operating the reactor will be close to the new international standard for new reactors being built today."
Case closed.
In her testimony before a House of Commons Committee, Ms. Keen sought to horrify her audience with her description of the frail condition the Chalk River reactor was in, its potential for failure, its dreadful risk to Canadians. Statistics tell us things, but statistics can also be handily adjusted to tell a story the manipulator wants to tell, and that story may be very far from the reality of the situation.
And so it most certainly was when Ms. Keen sought to impress her audience with the correctness of her assessment which led to the shut-down and the consequent emergency with the diminished supply of badly-needed medical isotopes, already in emergency shortage.
She deliberately compared newly-introduced standards meant for a new generation of reactors to those that applied to reactors of the vintage of the Chalk River unit. The likelihood of a serious accident should be less than one in a million, she claimed, whereas the likelihood of "fuel failures" in the NRU was one in one thousand. The reactor was out of compliance on a scale "one thousand times greater than the international standard", she warned.
She spoke of fuel failures, of serious accidents leading to severe harm to the public, of lack of lines of defence, of the possibility of an earthquake occurrence and the subsequent utter failure of the reactor. But, it would appear that in fact, all of these harms were deliberately over-rated, they were highly unlikely, and the reactor in its current state was considered to be failsafe. All of the plant's back-up securities were in place.
Ms. Keen indulged in political skulduggery and personal umbrage at being held to account for not considering her decision in a well-rounded, and ultimately more socially responsible manner. According to John Waddington, director general of the CNSC for ten years, a professional engineer with 40 years experience in nuclear safety, and Ms. Keen's predecessor, she was, quite simply wrong.
"The combination of a low probability of occurrence and negligible consequences means that the NRU reactor did indeed meet existing international standards. The seven upgrades to the NRU reactor that the CNSC sought from AECL and which were installed in 2005, together with the connection of the two pumps to the new back-up power system, are designed to ensure the risks of operating the reactor will be close to the new international standard for new reactors being built today."
Case closed.
Labels: Canada, Crisis Politics, Environment, Science
posted by Pieface | 6:16 PM
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