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Keen defends her handling of isotope crisis
Linda Keen is accusing Natural Resources Minister Gary Lunn of “improper interference” in the affairs of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission and wants a public inquiry to defend her handling of the Chalk River medical isotope crisis.
In a blistering letter, the commission president yesterday dismissed Mr. Lunn’s threat to fire her over the affair as “entirely without merit,” and vowed to serve out the almost three years remaining in her term while reminding the minister that the Supreme Court of Canada has “consistently held that the principles of fundamental justice require quasi-judicial tribunals to be free from political influence or interference.”
Her comments come as new evidence surfaces that even Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. believed it was “safe and prudent” to keep its Chalk River nuclear reactor shut until a “critical” safety upgrade was completed, despite government insistence that the reactor could safely resume production of life-saving medical isotopes.
Five days later, amid a growing domestic shortage of medical isotopes to diagnose cancer and cardiac disease, the Harper government rushed through emergency legislation overruling the commission and giving Atomic Energy 120 days in which to operate the reactor for isotope production, but essentially without commission oversight.
Ms. Keen writes that Mr. Lunn’s actions in the affair, particularly a Dec. 8 phone call between her, the minister and the nuclear safety staff, are “examples of improper interference with both the institutional independence of the CNSC and with the administration of justice,” that could have a “significant chilling effect … on the practices and decisions of other tribunals who are responsible for important work on behalf of Canadians.”
Her outburst follows the Citizen’s publication yesterday of a Dec. 27 letter from Mr. Lunn to Ms. Keen.
In the letter, he accuses her of jeopardizing public health and confidence in nuclear safety, questions her judgment and leadership and threatens to have cabinet fire her. The independent nuclear agency reports to Parliament through him.
Her eight-page response, which she says she was compelled to make public after the Citizen revealed the minister’s letter, lays into Mr. Lunn in a very public spat rarely seen between a senior Ottawa bureaucrat and a federal minister.
“The manner in which you have sought to approach these issues,” writes Ms. Keen, “highlights a significant misunderstanding of the relationship between yourself and the CNSC. Neither the CNSC nor its president are obliged to report to you on the status of particular licensing matters before the CNSC.”
She also calls for some form of public inquiry, parliamentary committee or independent international review of her performance as president since 2001 and of the events leading to the shutdown of Chalk River’s National Research Universal (NRU) reactor.
“Canadians deserve and demand excellence in both nuclear safety and nuclear regulation … (and) a public inquiry into this matter would give them the requisite assurances that their nuclear regulator has always acted in their collective best interests.”
Mr. Lunn’s office issued a terse response last night: “Parliament took steps to address the immediate situation and it is now appropriate for the government to examine the options at its disposal to address the underlying issues that led to the situation in the first place.
“In that regard, the government wrote to the president of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission on Dec. 27, 2007, seeking her views.”
As a result of Mr. Lunn’s threat to have Ms. Keen fired, the Sierra Club of Canada yesterday called on Parliament to give the commission protection from political interference similar to that enjoyed by superior court judges and the auditor general.
“The safety of Canadians is threatened when our nuclear safety commission is subject to the kind of bullying the minister has demonstrated,” said Stephen Hazell, the club’s executive director. “Canadians would not accept the federal courts or the auditor general being under the thumb of a minister, and we certainly should not accept it for something as important as nuclear safety.”
Meanwhile, during a Dec. 6 emergency meeting in Ottawa between Atomic Energy and commission officials, Atomic Energy’s senior vice-president and chief nuclear officer for the Chalk River Laboratories, sided with the commission’s concern that restarting the reactor, Canada’s oldest, without the upgrade—connecting two heavy water pumps to a new emergency power system (EPS)—would be imprudent.
“I have unwavering commitment to safety … and the only safe and prudent action available to me, I believe, in this situation was to keep the reactor shut down and perform those upgrades. It’s critical to upgrade those pumps,” said Brian McGee, according to a transcript of the meeting.
The reactor was to be decommissioned in 2000. However, chronic problems with two replacement Chalk River reactors dedicated to isotope production mean it is now operating well past the date anyone previously expected.
When the commission was asked to extend the reactor’s operating licence in the spring of 2006, it seriously questioned the safety of the 50-year-old research reactor and only extended its operating licence on condition that Atomic Energy complete seven safety upgrades—including the pump connections to the emergency power system. When commission inspectors discovered in mid-November that work had not been done, Atomic Energy voluntarily shut down the reactor to complete the work.
But on Dec. 7, according to Ms. Keen, the agency informed her it wanted to restart the reactor with only one pump hooked up to the EPS, a move that would require Atomic Energy to provide new safety documentation to the commission.
Four days later, and with no further word from the agency regarding the proposed one-pump option, the commission and Ms. Keen were blindsided by a formal and binding federal cabinet directive to, “take into account the health of Canadians who, for medical purposes, depend on nuclear substances produced by nuclear reactors.”
In his Dec. 27 letter, Mr. Lunn accuses Ms. Keen of refusing to heed the directive and cites that as a key reason for her possible removal as president.
But only hours after the commission became aware of the directive on Dec. 11, the government introduced Bill C-38 in the House of Commons, to allow the reactor restart for 120 days. Ms. Keen says that eclipsed any need for the commission to regard the directive, since commission oversight of the reactor was effectively suspended and isotope production would soon resume.
Even so, Ms. Keen had repeatedly expressed her concern about the impact the reactor shutdown would have on the millions of people in need of radioisotopes produced by the reactor. The commission also amended its rules to allow hospitals and clinics access to alternative supplies and to increase the supply of foreign-made isotopes.
At the same time, however, Section 24 of the Nuclear Safety and Control Act mandates the commission to ensure that nuclear licensees, such as Atomic Energy, “make adequate provision for the protection of the environment, the health and safety of persons.”
Opposition MPs yesterday accused the government of using Ms. Keen as scapegoat to cover up its mishandling of the affair.
“Canadians should be very concerned about such bullying by our federal government, especially when their health and safety is involved,” said Omar Alghabra, the Liberal natural resources critic.
NDP critic Catherine Bell is calling for a special parliamentary committee to “get the full picture of what happened last month and how any similar situations can be averted in the future.”
© The Ottawa Citizen 2008