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Many Canadians are not happy about the stoppage of isotope production at the Chalk River nuclear facility. Residents of Ottawa are likely to be especially concerned, and not just because we too need isotopes for medical imaging.
Isotope production was stopped because the National Research Universal reactor is falling apart. That puts the national capital region, situated as it is downriver and downwind from Chalk River, in a precarious spot. Crumbling, unreliable reactors are scary things, at least in the public eye.
No one is suggesting, and it would be irresponsible to do so, that there’s a potential Chernobyl on the Ottawa River. But the truth of the matter is that the NRU reactor has been operating since 1957. As many baby boomers can attest, as they start queuing up for hip and knee replacements, machinery assembled more than a half-century ago tends to break down.
The NRU reactor is springing a leak — a leak double the magnitude that would require repair — and tritium is escaping. Now, the amount of tritium lost is well within current health limits, a least by today’s standards. History shows, however, that allowable limits of this or that chemical or element are often reduced over time, in response to new science showing exactly what the substances do to the human body.
It’s worth noting that the U.S. limit for tritium is much lower than Canada’s, and that Europe’s is lower than that of the U.S. The Ontario Drinking Water Advisory Council has suggested slashing the allowable level for tritium.
At present, tritium leaving the Chalk River plant is dispersed into the atmosphere, onto surrounding land or into the Ottawa River. The level of dispersal is enormous. The chance of a health risk is low. Yet a Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission document raises worthwhile concerns, one of them being that five or six spots of corrosion are showing on the reactor vessel that spawned the current leak.
Turns out that an inspection five years ago didn’t spot these weak locations. What’s more, Atomic Energy of Canada Limited is unsure of the timeline of the repair.
Clearly, AECL is an organization with problems. Its Maple reactors were scrapped at great cost because they didn’t work, and the company has had enormous cost overruns in refurbishing Ontario nuclear reactors. There have been dust-ups with the federal government and its regulatory agency. Recently leaked documents show the company is worried about cost overruns if it wins its bid to construct Ontario’s huge nuclear build-out.
AECL has enough of a public relations problem, revolving around issues of reliability and money management, that it really doesn’t need people to start worrying about safety. The levels of escaping tritium may be officially safe, but this is a company that has had difficulty staying under budget, that builds reactors that don’t work, that springs leaks on reactors that do work — all of which do not inspire confidence.
There’s no evidence that anything at Chalk River is dangerous, but there is evidence that the operation is a troubled one. What makes people nervous is not what they know, but what they don’t know.
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