Yesterday, Linda Keen, former head of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, took the government to court over her firing, which she claims was politically motivated:
In her statement of claim, Ms. Keen accuses the federal cabinet of acting in a manner that violated the principles of justice and fairness, both in the way her termination was conducted and in the "comments of the Minister of Natural Resources, the Minister of Health and the Prime Minister of Canada, all of which raised a reasonable apprehension of bias."
Let's look at the chain of events which led to this.
The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission is the main regulatory body for Canada's nuclear reactors. On November 18, 2007, the Chalk River nuclear reactor in Ontario was shut down for routine maintenance and inspection. Chalk River is rather unique, as nuclear reactors go; it is one of the few sources of radioisotopes for medical use:
The government-run reactor at Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd.'s Chalk River Laboratories supplies more than two-thirds of the world's demand for medical radioisotopes, which are used to diagnose cancer and cardiovascular diseases.
In the inspection process, the CPSC regulators found something at the 50-year-old reactor that was terrifying:
...the reactor had been operating for 17 months without two cooling pumps hooked up to an additional emergency back-up power system capable of withstanding a severe earthquake.
Earthquakes were indeed something to be worried about in that region, the New York Times reported that two minor earthquakes occurred near the reactor in December. If a major earthquake did hit the region, the reactor could easily melt down. So, Ms. Keen ordered the reactor to remain shut down until the pumps could be installed.
And then, as they say, the fecal matter hit the rotary air impeller.
The reactor stayed closed for the next month, as supplies of radioisotopes dwindled. Then Parliament, under the belief that they were facing an "isotope crisis", ordered the reactor started again on December 16. On December 27, Gary Lunn, Keen's boss and Federal Natural Resources Minister, sent a letter to Keen criticizing her decision to keep the plant closed, and that he was considering firing her. This prompted Keen to send him a letter back accusing him of improper interference and threatening to take any firings to court.
Finally, on January 15, 2008, the night before she and her boss were to appear before Parliament on the Chalk River event, Linda Keen was fired:
"I can tell you it was a shock," she told reporters. "I was fired. That's clearly how I felt. And I joined the commission seven years ago to be the president. I was a science manager. I was a science leader. That's why I joined, to have the privilege of running the organization."
According to the CBC, Lunn told Parliament the next day that the government had lost confidence in her following her "lack of leadership" in the isotope crisis.
Some wonder, though, if the crisis could have been avoided...
Canada could have avoided the recent medical isotope crisis if supplier MDS Nordion had joined international efforts to co-ordinate global production, a report in the Canadian Medical Association Journal says.
The article Monday in the journal says MDS Nordion wouldn't co-operate with Europe's two large-scale isotope suppliers – Nuclear Research and Consultancy Group in the Netherlands, and the Institut National des Radioelements in Belgium.
A point of clarification: the Chalk River reactor is run by AECL, a Crown corporation. But the isotopes from the reactor are collected and sold by MDS Nordion, a private company. To continue:
Alan J. Kuperman, a policy analyst for the Nuclear Control Institute in the United States, told the journal it's not in MDS Nordion's commercial interests to join in international contingency planning with rival suppliers in Europe.
"They see themselves as the big dog," said Kuperman, a professor of public affairs at the University of Texas. "They are not going to share information with the small ones nipping at their heels."
Kuperman maintained there is plenty of "surplus capacity" among isotope suppliers but MDS Nordion and AECL didn't want their competitors to pick up the slack when the Chalk River reactor was shut down.
"Instead, they went to the public and the Canadian government. That was misleading and, one could argue, socially irresponsible."
Of course, MDS Nordion didn't exactly profit from the crisis. So if the crisis was avoidable...why did Nordion instead go to the government, which fired Linda Keen? Hmm...
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.
[...]
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.
And there it is. Linda Keen was chafing the Conservative government with her concerns for nuclear safety over corporate profit. So, the government looked for ways to get rid of her...and the isotope "crisis" was the perfect opportunity. With her out of the way, AECL can privatize on schedule.
And who, pray tell, was Linda Keen's replacement?
Assistant deputy industry minister Michael Binder has been named as interim president.
Now it all makes sense. A scientific bureaucrat is replaced by a trade-friendly bureaucrat. We Americans have seen this before, and it's sickening when safety takes a backseat to profit. GOP-style firings like this are something that shouldn't be happening in Canada -- especially in an area like nuclear safety. Good luck to you, Ms. Keen.