Canada's Nuclear Dice Game

Who are we to tell Iran or Pakistan or North Korea what to do with their nuclear energy if we play dice with our own at Chalk River? By what moral high ground do we have the authority to tell anyone else what to do?

We have created regulations that permit government to over-rule the Safety Commission and to activate risk, however low. But the thing about risk is that it is fickle in timing but completely dependable. It will in time with calculable certainty flip flop and when that happens with the nuclear industry, the costs and environmental and human health consequences will be enormous.



The political consequences of that flip flop are also enormous with all of our nuclear neighbors for whom we are as a high tech country, setting an example. We will have lost all credibility and this industry will lose its reason for being. MP Mr. Lunn in a blatant act of clearly unethical judicial interference, ordered the Reactor to start up operations without full back-up power supply to core cooling pumps and in so doing, activated the dice game. He also fired the head of the Nuclear Safety Commission who objected who incidentaly had no legal mandate to consider the nuclide shortage issue.

We have set an example for a global nuclear risk free-for-all and every nation in the world will do whatever they wish with nuclear energy because they too can make any foolish regulation they wish. Canada did it. We played dice with long term safety for short term political mining of alleged health issues. If the world were to adopt this approach, in time, we will be dealing with horrendous consequences.

It is clear to me that Canada needs to make an example of nuclear safety for the whole world and remove political risk from the equation by keeping its Watch Dog Agency completely independent. Taking chances with nuclear safety is never an option even while experts debate what that risk is.

Minister Lunn needs to look for a more suitable job like shelling clams or maybe he and Harper can get a job at NASA at the mission control station on GO/NOGO mission scrub over-ride or perhaps at Boeing in Jumbo Jet safety certification? Their pretensions to care about cancer patients is a case of 'Crockodile Tears' because these same characters oversee permitting an enormous number of licences being issued for carcinogenic and mutagenic products in Canadian industry.

Jormawankenobe
Copyright 2008 Jorma Jyrkkanen