Slashdot Mirror
CDN Forces Reactor Online Against Safety Regulations
Socguy writes "The Canadian government has passed legislation that will reopen an Ontario nuclear reactor that produces most of the world's supply of critical medical isotopes, even though the site has been shut down for safety maintenance. Witnesses and experts were called in to the House to face questions about safety concerns and all parties eventually voiced support for the bill, which would effectively suspend CNSC's oversight role for 120 days. The Chalk River reactor ceased operating on Nov. 18. Pressure on the government to restart operations began to build after delays in the shutdown of the government-run site, which generates two-thirds of the world's radioisotopes, began to cause a critical shortage of radioisotopes."
...why they couldn't have stockpiled their products before the shutdown, but then realized that the half-lives for the sort of thing they're offering are probably measured in days or hours, right?
It's OK, the watchdogs are also, some of them, chosen for their lack of knowledge of nuclear engineering.
Also, an isotope production reactor doesn't produce electricity, so it doesn't compete with natural gas-fired electricity producers. With natural gas at $4 million per uranium-tonne-equivalent and the real thing at only $0.24 million, and hidden taxes on the $4 million, an electricity production reactor has enemies in government that an isotope production one does not.
This is a small reactor (ie, not a power reactor), way the hell in the middle of nowhere north of Ottawa. It's upstream from Camp Petawawa (large and mostly empty Cdn Forces base), which itself is way out in the boonies.
And no, this isn't capable of "spectacular" failure for most values of spectacular.
-- Alastair
Then someone asked the question : why don't they make a four-month-reserve?
The answer IS 42.
...especially when the reactor is not near me.
Personally, I have to agree with the forced reopening of the reactor. It sounds terrifying, and it's a disgrace that we're in this situation, but the risk is very minimal. The story has been playing in the media here in Canada for a few days now.
This is not a large-scale power generating reactor. It's a relatively small "research" reactor and it is more or less middle of nowhere.
From what I recall from the news stories, the current hold up is the backup power to the second pump is offline. The backup power to the first pump is online, and only one pump needs to be operating at any one time. The truly disgraceful thing is that the plant has been improperly operating without any proper backup power lines for months and months. The current unexpectedly long shut-down occurred because the improper backup systems were discovered by the regulators during a shorter planned down time.
On the flip side, critical medical scans are being canceled by the thousands across North and South America. You can't point at any specific case, but given the large number of procedures being delayed, I'd bet that someone out there is going to die on a daily basis because a scan is postponed.
If your engine contains a nuclear reactor, then I'd say yes, stop the car.
Completely missing the point.
If you were to consider total medical isotopes by the kilo then true, chalk river is a small player, which is sort of like considering the total amount of fossil fuels used in the world when half the worlds oil production has stopped for 4 months.
If you look at Tc99 production worldwide (in terms of the commericalized amounts) chalk river is somewhere between 1/2 and 2/3rds of production. Maybe a little more, maybe a little less depending on who you ask.
Any sort of functional imaging probably involves Tc99, blood pool organ imaging etc... There are lots of reasons why Tc99 is the choice, but in short, that's what we use, so that's what detectors are designed for so changing to something else is impractical.
The isopotes produced in 'hot labs' at cancer centers etc... are for different kinds of imaging (e.g. PET scans). These can still be done of course, but they aren't the same kind of imaging as Tc99 tends to provide.
In short, yes, they load it on planes and fly it all over north america and Asia, from chalk river.
And you only say that because you've been brainwashed into thinking that nuclear power is more dangerous than fossil fuel power.
Stupid Russians aside (and trust me, Chernobyl wasn't an accident--it was the direct, foreseeable result of extreme stupidity. Quick analogy: Its crappy design made it the Pinto of nuclear reactors, and then the operators in charge basically went around slamming on their brakes randomly until they got rear-ended and the fucking thing blew up), pollution from fossil fuels (including--*gasp!*--radioactive pollution) outweighs pollution from nuclear power by many orders of magnitudes. People die every day due to the direct effects of using fossil fuels (and this isn't a snide criticism of Iraq, though that argument could certainly be made as well.) They explode. And cause cancer and respiratory illness. And then there's the whole greenhouse gas thing. Three mile island, on the other hand, dumped enough radiation into the area that they calculated there is a 50% chance that one extra person died from cancer. Eventually. Years later.
You see, what people fail to grasp is how utterly surrounded they are by radiation. Have you ever watched television on anything other than a flat screen? If so, you've been staring directly into a cathode ray tube. Wanna know what a CRT really is? A particle accelerator. It's beaming beta radiation (and some side-effect X-Rays as well) directly into your eyes. They actually have to add lead to the glass in TV sets to prevent the radiation from reaching harmful levels. I am not making this shit up; every day, millions (if not billions) of knee-jerk anti-nuclear hippies sit around for hours and stare directly into a particle accelerator. (Yes, you can argue that the power levels and leaded glass makes it a pretty safe activity, but that's PRECISELY my point. Just because radiation is involved doesn't mean something is inherently dangerous. Radiation is a danger like high current electricity or poisonous chemicals are a danger. We're surrounded by all three, all of the time, yet sane design renders these things fairly safe.)
And, of course, almost everyone will (at least a couple times in their lives) suffer a radiation burn--more commonly known as a "sunburn". Many people suffer these radiation burns repeatedly, even though they (like all radiation exposures) cause cancer, and even though they're fairly trivial to avoid.
I'm not arguing that we should have a cavalier attitude towards nuclear power--just a little sanity and appropriateness. I don't know the specifics in this case, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if the safety requirements were minor and/or highly redundant. Personally, I'd rather we get decent air filters put on our coal-burning plants first. They're far more of a threat to our well-being.