Shutdown at Chalk River worse than before: ex-nuclear safety watchdog

Canada’s former nuclear safety watchdog says the latest Chalk River reactor shutdown is far worse than the one she was fired over.

This time around, no one knows how long the aging Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. reactor will be down, Linda Keen said Tuesday. “This time, it’s worse because they’re indefinite about the corrosion, they’re indefinite about the leaks, and it’s very unclear as to how they’re going to get it back on,” she said in an interview.

“This isn’t a regulatory problem. This is a problem of an old reactor.”

Keen was head of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission during a 2007 shutdown.

At that time, she said, the ill-fated MAPLE project – which would have replaced the Chalk River reactor – was still very much alive.

But AECL scrapped two MAPLE reactors last year due to design flaws. They were millions over budget and years behind schedule.

So it still falls to the 52-year-old National Research Universal reactor at Chalk River, Ont., to provide over half the global supply of medical isotopes used to detect cancer and heart ailments.

That reactor was shut down May 15 after inspectors found a heavy-water leak inside the facility – its second major shutdown in less than two years.

Officials say the reactor will be down for more than a month – and possibly much longer. AECL says it will know next week of how long repairs will take.

AECL ran out of medical isotopes over the weekend and doctors are scrambling to gather a scarce supply from the world’s four other isotope-producing reactors.

The Conservative government says Canada is working with other countries to keep the isotope supply flowing. Natural Resources Minister Lisa Raitt said the government will look for alternatives to the radio-isotopes produced at Chalk River.

In November 2007, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission discovered that emergency backup power wasn’t connected to two pumps designed to prevent a meltdown at the Chalk River reactor.

The reactor was off-line for nearly a month until Parliament voted to overrule the regulator and restart the reactor.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Keen and her colleagues were risking lives by not authorizing the restart of the reactor. He also politicized the matter, saying safety officials were “Liberal-appointed.”

The Conservatives later fired Keen for her refusal to authorize the restart.

Raitt said this latest shutdown differs from the one in December 2007 because the government has the benefit of hindsight.

“What I imagine happened (in 2007) was a complete shock. And it was a shock to the system. But we’ve learned since then and we’ve put plans in place,” she said.

“We’re using every lever that we’ve developed in the past 18 months in order to both increase the global supply and then secondly to have the minister of health work with her counterparts in managing that shortage of supply.”

Green party Leader Elizabeth May called Tuesday for a federal inquiry into AECL and the isotope shortage.

May also urged the Ontario government not to pick federally owned AECL to build two new reactors in the province.

AECL is up against Areva Group of France and U.S.-based Westinghouse Electric Co. for a contract to build two nuclear reactors in Ontario.

May said AECL loves to research and design new products, but she warns the Crown company is not so good at delivering and has built two reactors that “simply don’t work.”

The Organization of Candu Industries, which represents 140 nuclear-related companies employing more than 30,000 Canadians, called May’s comments “incredibly irresponsible.”

Neil Alexander, president of the Candu industries group, said the Green party leader is comparing apples and oranges – Ontario wants to build power reactors while the facilities at Chalk River are research reactors.

Source: Yahoo! News