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Good luck to opposition members of the House of Commons natural resources committee who will demand Tuesday that Gary Lunn be dragged before them to answer questions on his handling of the Chalk River isotope cock-up. They’ll have to find him first.
The Minister of Natural Resources hasn’t been seen in public since before Christmas, except by one alert letter-to-the-editor writer who spotted him in a Canadian Tire store in Vancouver.
No wonder he’s made himself scarce. Who’d want to be hauled in front of a parliamentary committee and asked awkward questions such as: “Minister, did you really write that letter to nuclear regulator Linda Keen asking her to give one good reason why she shouldn’t be fired, or was it penned by someone in the Prime Minister’s Office, who told you to sign your name to it on pain of political death?”
We are reliably informed that’s what happened. Mr. Lunn has been widely condemned for making Ms. Keen, president of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, the scapegoat in this whole affair. But it’s possible that the Minister is the fall guy for a caper dreamt up in the Prime Minister’s Office.
There is no doubt Stephen Harper was telling the truth and nothing but the truth when he said the government acted to resolve the impasse between Ms. Keen and Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. over the closure of the Chalk River reactor because it deemed there was a risk to the health of Canadians.
But it may not have been the whole truth.
Political and industry sources suggest the Chalk River crisis was very timely for the government, breaking just as it mulled transferring AECL, and its voracious appetite for federal cash, to the private sector. The isotope issue allowed the government to impugn a regulator that has acted as an obstacle to that privatization.
As the Auditor-General’s recent report on AECL made clear, the Crown corporation’s future rests on its ability to fund and develop the next generation of reactors, the Advanced CANDU Reactor (ACR). This project is already behind schedule and significantly over budget—problems that were exacerbated in December, 2006, when CNSC said it would no longer pre-review the ACR design (pre-review is a process used to ensure no fundamental barriers exist that would prevent a license being issued once the reactor is fully developed).
At the time, CNSC said this was due to resource constraints but, as the Auditor-General pointed out, “the loss of such a statement puts AECL at a competitive disadvantage.”
One industry source said Canada is now the only country in the world where the regulator won’t carry out a pre-review. “The U.S. does work before you submit your license application and this prevents huge scheduling delays,” he said.
The issue has become acute because the government is keen to entice potential investors such as GE Energy of the U.S. and AREVA of France to inject hundreds of millions of dollars into Canada’s nuclear industry.
But it takes 17 years for a nuclear reactor to move from the drawing board to producing power and, not surprisingly, the price of any privatization falls considerably if there is a prospect that the buyer might find out in Year 16 that they can’t get an operating license.
Sources suggest the government is seeking “more flexibility” from the regulator—a quality Ms. Keen does not appear to possess in abundance. Last year, she upset many people in the industry and government when she ruled that all new reactor designs must meet tough new international safety requirements such that they could withstand the impact of a commercial jetliner crash.
The decision hurt the sales prospects for AECL’s existing CANDU 6 reactor, which the Crown corporation is trying to sell to the Ontario government, because it is not considered robust enough to pass the new rules.
All of which has made Ms. Keen about as popular as halitosis in Ottawa and helps explain why Mr. Harper’s reaction was so visceral in the House of Commons when the isotope crisis blew up.
The working theory seems to be that a new regulator, with a fresh mandate, might bring a much more open mind to issues such as licensing pre-reviews and safety standards. No one contacted would officially confirm this version of events but, if true, it would suggest that the nuclear file has already proven radioactive to two careers and may yet claim more victims.
Mr. Lunn, for one, must be hoping there is swift resolution to the matter, if only so he can leave the black furry eyebrows and moustache disguise at home next time he goes to Canadian Tire.
National Postjivison@nationalpost.com