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Canadian nuclear watchdog nuked
Posted by Fired Fred on January 16, 2008 4:16 PM
Those wacky Northerners, eh? All bent out of shape because a 50 year old nuclear reactor used for making medical isotopes stayed closed down after maintenance in November because, get this, Linda Keen didn't think it was safe to turn it back on.
I for one am comforted that politicians north of the border can be as petty as our homegrown double talking self-interested ones...
If they held auditions on Parliament Hill for a hot-tempered bully and his thuggish sidekick, Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Natural Resources Minister Gary Lunn would be shoo-ins.Nice. There's plenty of blame to go around throughout the Canadian government over their little nuclear problem too...
Neither the Liberals nor the Conservatives should have been surprised last month when the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, the agency mandated to protect Canadians from radioactive leaks and spills, ordered the Chalk River reactor to remain closed until it had completed mandatory safety upgrades. They were supposed to have been done two years ago.Fix the problem, no. Fix the blame on Linda? Oh yeah. She got fired because, the politicos say, keeping Chalk River offline endangered everyone who needed isotopes.
What's more, neither party can feign innocence about the chronic money and management problems that have plagued AECL. The auditor general has flagged health and safety concerns year after year. The nuclear safety commission has sounded the alarm repeatedly.
It sounds more like Linda tried to protect people from being exposed to a whole lot of isotopes. the politicians didn't exactly give her a glowing sendoff.