The No Comment Department

It is tempting to use The New Yorker approach with the following press release and file it in the "No Comment Department" as so absurd on its face, no further comment is required.  On a Friday afternoon, May 16,  2008,  Gary Lunn, Minister of Natural Resources and the Honourable Tony Clement, Minister of Health, issued the following statement (to be fair, I am reproducing it below in its entirety):

"The Government of Canada accepts the decision of the Board of Directors of Atomic Energy of Canada (AECL) to terminate the MAPLE reactors project which was initiated in 1996 to produce medical isotopes. After 12 years, these reactors have never worked and never produced medical isotopes.

Today's decision has no impact on the supply of medical isotopes. The existing NRU facility will continue to provide a reliable and consistent supply. The Government is contacting provinces and territories and key medical experts to assure them there will be no disruption of supply.

The decision to terminate the MAPLE reactors is the result of a complete due diligence process by AECL's new management team and Board that our government appointed in January 2008. As part of this due diligence, the MAPLE project was subject to thorough testing including one in April 2008, which all failed. The Board has concluded that there is no sound reason to continue the MAPLE project.

The project has long been crippled with both technical and economic impediments, which remained unresolved. Among the many factors are:

• Regulatory challenges and commercial disputes which so far have cost hundreds of millions of dollars in private and public funds;
• Technical malfunctions that could not be resolved; and
• Reviews conducted by the Auditor General which revealed significant concerns about the costs, the delays, and the technical issues.

AECL has been asked by the Government to pursue an extension of the NRU operation beyond its current license to ensure the ongoing supply of medical isotopes.

The decision to terminate the MAPLE project is in the taxpayers' best interest and will allow AECL to focus its efforts on its existing commercial business operations that are more financially viable.

As part of a commitment to good governance, the Government of Canada is continuing with its review of AECL. This review is intended to give us the information we need to make the right decisions for the long-term future of the company."

OK, how many of you felt your jaw drop to the floor with this astonishing claim?

"Today's decision has no impact on the supply of medical isotopes."

How’s that again? 

Closely followed by this whopper:

"The existing NRU facility will continue to provide a reliable and consistent supply."

The MAPLE reactors were regarded as essential to maintain medical isotope supply precisely because the NRU facility could not be relied upon to provide a reliable and consistent supply.  That is why taxpayers have been pouring money down the nuclear drain at Chalk River to build them.  Everyone knows the NRU reactor in Chalk River is on it last legs.  That’s why it was so difficult for the nuclear regulator, CNSC, to let the more than 50 year old reactor keep functioning without more back-up systems.  That’s why last November CNSC ordered the reactor, then closed for routine maintenance, to stay shut down.

Because the NRU would be closing soon, in 1996 AECL promised to have the two MAPLE reactors up and running dedicated exclusively to making radio-isotopes. Maple 1 and 2 were budgeted at $140 million.  They have cost many tens of millions more than that, although AECL has not disclosed the extent of the cost overruns. These reactors have been completely built.  They are 100% completed.  The reason AECL has given up on them is found in this obscurely phrased admission:

"Technical malfunctions that could not be resolved."

Translation: they couldn’t get them to work.

They were supposed to have a "negative power coefficient of reactivity (PCR)" -- meaning that the nuclear reaction in the core was supposed to slow down as power increased.  This is a safety feature.  Instead of slowing down, the reaction speeds up.  This problem could not be fixed. Shouldn’t it have been noticed before they finished building the reactors?

This whole fiasco should be front page news. Why isn’t it?

For any enterprising journalists who want to build on this mess with some content-rich investigations, here are a few questions that beg for response:

1. Why was CNSC President Linda Keen fired from her role and yet no one at AECL is apparently facing repercussions for this waste of hundreds of millions of taxpayers dollars?
2. Urgent question to the Government of New Brunswick.  Are you sure you want to buy a reactor from AECL that so far is only at the design stage?  That’s what the MAPLE reactors were.  Reactors on paper.  Why would anyone have confidence in AECL?  Why go with a nuclear reactor when New Brunswick has so many other options?
3. What are the contingency plans for the next NRU malfunction/shut-down? A malfunction or shut down is not a hypothetical. It is a certainty. Where will the medical community get its diagnostic radio-nuclides? Chalk River's NRU reactor makes about 40% of the world's supply of Molybdenum 99.  Isn’t it time to start alerting the producers of the other 60% that they would be well advised to boost production, just in case?  Or is government more concerned with the commercial reputation of MDS Nordion and AECL than with the security of supply of  Molybdenum 99? 

 The Chalk River nuclear situation has been mis-handled for decades, but to Gary Lunn and the Harper government go the unique distinction of shooting (and firing) the messenger while rewarding the agency which has so blithely failed to serve the public interest.