Overriding the safety concerns of its regulator, the Canadian government is rushing through legislation to reopen a nuclear reactor that produces most of the world's supply of a medically important diagnostic isotope.
Hospitals worldwide have canceled or delayed thousands of nuclear medicine tests because of the prolonged shutdown of the reactor in Chalk River, Ontario, near Ottawa.
Atomic Energy of Canada, the government company that owns the reactor, closed it for regular maintenance on Nov. 18. But inspectors from Canada's nuclear regulatory agency subsequently discovered that the 50-year-old reactor still lacked systems that Atomic Energy was ordered to install to prevent a potentially dangerous reactor failure after a natural disaster like an earthquake.
The legislation, which was pushed through the House of Commons late on Tuesday night, will suspend the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission's oversight of the reactor for 120 days and allow Atomic Energy to restart it immediately. The bill was approved by Canada's unelected Senate on Wednesday night.
"There will be no nuclear accident," Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper told the House of Commons on Tuesday. "On the contrary, what we do know is that the continuing actions of the Liberal-appointed Nuclear Safety Commission will jeopardize the health and safety and lives of tens of thousands of Canadians."
Neither Harper, nor anyone in his government offered any evidence that the commission, a quasi-judicial body headed by a former public servant, acted for partisan reasons. But to support his safety claim, he cited an eight-paragraph report written by the former chief engineer of Atomic Energy and the former manager of two nuclear power stations built by the company.
In a letter submitted to the government this week, Linda Keen, the president of the safety commission, said the Chalk River reactor, which is known as the National Research Universal, or NRU, had an unusual design that required its cooling-water pumps to operate at all times.
The emergency backup for those pumps, she added, "is essential for the safe operation of the NRU reactor."
NO EXCUSES: Marcos said his administration was acting on voters’ demands, but an academic said the move was emotionally motivated after a poor midterm showing Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr yesterday sought the resignation of all his Cabinet secretaries, in a move seen as an attempt to reset the political agenda and assert his authority over the second half of his single six-year term. The order came after the president’s allies failed to win a majority of Senate seats contested in the 12 polls on Monday last week, leaving Marcos facing a divided political and legislative landscape that could thwart his attempts to have an ally succeed him in 2028. “He’s talking to the people, trying to salvage whatever political capital he has left. I think it’s
Polish presidential candidates offered different visions of Poland and its relations with Ukraine in a televised debate ahead of next week’s run-off, which remains on a knife-edge. During a head-to-head debate lasting two hours, centrist Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, from Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s governing pro-European coalition, faced the Eurosceptic historian Karol Nawrocki, backed by the right-wing populist Law and Justice party (PiS). The two candidates, who qualified for the second round after coming in the top two places in the first vote on Sunday last week, clashed over Poland’s relations with Ukraine, EU policy and the track records of their
UNSCHEDULED VISIT: ‘It’s a very bulky new neighbor, but it will soon go away,’ said Johan Helberg of the 135m container ship that run aground near his house A man in Norway awoke early on Thursday to discover a huge container ship had run aground a stone’s throw from his fjord-side house — and he had slept through the commotion. For an as-yet unknown reason, the 135m NCL Salten sailed up onto shore just meters from Johan Helberg’s house in a fjord near Trondheim in central Norway. Helberg only discovered the unexpected visitor when a panicked neighbor who had rung his doorbell repeatedly to no avail gave up and called him on the phone. “The doorbell rang at a time of day when I don’t like to open,” Helberg told television
‘A THREAT’: Guyanese President Irfan Ali called on Venezuela to follow international court rulings over the region, whose border Guyana says was ratified back in 1899 Misael Zapara said he would vote in Venezuela’s first elections yesterday for the territory of Essequibo, despite living more than 100km away from the oil-rich Guyana-administered region. Both countries lay claim to Essequibo, which makes up two-thirds of Guyana’s territory and is home to 125,000 of its 800,000 citizens. Guyana has administered the region for decades. The centuries-old dispute has intensified since ExxonMobil discovered massive offshore oil deposits a decade ago, giving Guyana the largest crude oil reserves per capita in the world. Venezuela would elect a governor, eight National Assembly deputies and regional councilors in a newly created constituency for the 160,000
RSS