Isotope privatization fiasco triggered "crisis"

Nuclear regulator overruled to help corporate beneficiary of subsidies to AECL.

Canada's medical isotopes crisis may have been politically manipulated to satisfy the needs of private corporate health care giant MDS Nordion and to boost the asset value of AECL, Canada's nuclear crown corporation.

AECL and the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) were in the process of sorting out the problem they had - that AECL had not installed backup systems as ordered for its 50-year old NRU reactor in Chalk River, Ontario. It could have been done without Parliamentary intervention, says Dr. Ole Hendrickson, a Chalk River area resident and researcher with Concerned Citizens of Renfrew County.

"In effect, this was a manufactured crisis," says Hendrickson. "The Harper government depicted the CNSC as being negligent by delaying critical medical diagnostic procedures for patients. This diverted attention away from AECL's negligence in failing to complete essential safety upgrades."

He says the Harper government was responding to pressure from corporate health care giant MDS Nordion, and that the shortage of isotopes was an isolated problem that could have been managed. Toronto Star columnist Thomas Walkom agrees. "Indeed, the main casualty of the interruption was MDS Nordion, which saw its fourth quarter profits slashed by two-thirds," he wrote on December 16, 2007.

The Harper government "does not want the public to know that tax money is being diverted into corporate profits," says Hendrickson. "Costs of medical isotopes and medical diagnostic procedures for consumers around the world are paid by Canada's taxpayers," he says, through heavy subsidies.

"AECL - a heavily subsidized federal crown corporation - does the dirty business of isotope production. MDS Nordion does the clean business of sales and distribution."

AECL runs the NRU reactor full-time for isotope production, Hendrickson writes. "It extracts molybdenum-99 from uranium-235 targets obtained from the US nuclear weapons program. AECL is saddled with managing the wastes, which remain weapons-grade and must be kept under high-security control according to International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) procedures. AECL maintains the Fissile Solution Storage Tank (FISST) where the U-235 targets are dissolved in nitric acid. This is a key step in the isotope manufacturing process. The CNSC has raised concerns that U-235 in the FISST could accumulate to sufficient levels to cause a criticality incident - a nuclear explosion. There are risks throughout this process: continuous operation of an aging reactor, management of the tank, and control of U-235 wastes."

Hendrickson wonders why taxpayers should subsidize a private corporation and keep the costs of medical diagnostic procedures - mostly done outside Canada - much lower than if production were done in the private sector. He speculates that by diverting attention from AECL's other problems, this emergency legislation helps the federal government maintain AECL's asset value for future privatization.

Another cause of the recent crisis, real or not, was AECL's incompetence in the design of the MAPLE reactors, says Hendrickson. "Under the Mulroney privatization deal, AECL was to build two new reactors. These would be owned by MDS Nordion and would replace the NRU for isotope production. MDS Nordion was to be guaranteed a supply of medical isotopes in perpetuity.

"But the MAPLE reactors never worked. Control rods and shut-off rods stuck during commissioning tests. More problematically, the MAPLE reactors have a "positive void coefficient". If void space in the reactors increases due to boiling of water or loss of coolant, energy levels also increase. If control systems do not respond quickly enough, a positive feedback loop can quickly boil away the remaining reactor coolant - as happened at Chernobyl."

He says neither AECL nor the CNSC are being forthcoming about the weaknesses of the MAPLEs. "It's time to admit that the MAPLEs are inherently unsafe and will never be brought into service."

MDS Nordion, he writes, took legal action over the problems and the federal government settled by giving the company $10 million and forcing AECL to take over control of the reactors.

"There is no alternative to the 50-year-old NRU for isotope production," writes Hendrickson. "Canada's taxpayers own two worthless reactors. The stage is set for future emergencies."

Links and sources
  Concerned Citizens of Renfrew County
  Safety agency demands answers over AECL violation that caused isotope drought, The Canadian Press, December 7, 2007

Posted: December 17, 2007

Harper Index (HarperIndex.ca) is a project of the Golden Lake Institute and the online publication StraightGoods.ca