The bullshit alert went off when the Chalk River Reactor was shut down and medical isotope production for most of the world was halted. Surprisingly the worlds main source of medical isotopes is this pokey old (built in 1957) NRU reactor in Chalk River Canada. At first I resisted the urge to post this incident on the site because clearly something of the story was missing. It just didn't make sense. Today the nuclear regulator Miss Linda J. Keen was fired.
Again something here is not quite right. The Minister responsible is Gary Lunn from BC. Gary is a pretty good fellow having been a practicing lawyer and a journeyman carpenter and a pretty hard working, well respected and successful person. He is a bit on the short side. Linda J. Keen is also a successful hard working well educated person and well thought of and has held several positions of responsibility. So what could go wrong here you say?
The picture below the two main players is the NRU Reactor in Chalk River Ontario (National Research Universal Reactor) They supply isotopes to16 million people in 80 countries (many in the developing world) and to provide 5 million people with medical image scans annually. ..."Chalk River's NRU produces eighty-five percent of the world's Cobalt-60 radiation therapies and two-thirds of the global supply of Technetium-99, a major medical isotope used in patient imaging for cancer, heart disease and other illnesses...."This is pretty impressive isn't it! But there is more....
Miss Keen was the President of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) from the day of her appointment in 2001 to today the day she was fired . She has a staff of 670 and chairs a 7 member quasi judicial board that sets nuclear regulatory policy and makes licensing decisions to significant nuclear facilities. A native Albertan, she holds a Bachelor of Science (Chemistry, First Class Honors) and a Masters of Science (Food and Nutrition Sciences) from the University of Alberta. She has completed the course work towards a Ph.D. in Strategic Management.
I do find Miss Keen's education to be pretty interesting. She earned an honors degree in Chemistry which is a hard science in anyone's books. But then she migrated to Food and Nutritional science for her masters - how to bake a chocolate cake or whatever and then the Phd program in Strategic Management is pretty much what I would call a bullshit specialty. I know it's being cruel. And there seems to be a bucketful of irony for a person who is attempting to earn a degree in strategic management and then gets fired for poor management! Go figure! But tossing all that aside clearly this person is smart, hard working and successful -well up until now.
Perhaps more importantly Miss Keen is a red head. Some will understand this point and others won't so there is no use spending any further energy on it.
On Nov 18/07 the NRU reactor was shut down for five days for scheduled repairs. However when they applied to the CNSE for a permit to restart the reactor the CNSE refused to issue it stating that they had been operating the last 17 months without a back up cooling pump. Shortly after the shit started hitting the fan when short lived nuclear isotopes started to run out and suddenly there was a world wide medical emergency.
Clearly this decision on the part of the CNSE was faulty given the effect it would have on the nuclear medicine community and cancer patients. Keeping in mind the damn reactor had been happily grinding away without any problems for the last 17 months. The risk situation had not increased and if anything thanks to the 5 days of routine maintenance the reactor was in better shape than before the maintenance. The person responsible for the decision was the red head. I mean Miss Keen the President of the CNSC. Not to put too fine a point on it the red head caused all this.
Parliament then passed an emergency bill to countermand Miss Keen and get the sucker I mean the NRU reactor started again so the isotopes could flow to patients all around the world so that they would happily glow in the dark.
Then the political bullshit starts thanks to Mr. Dion and Mr. Layton. And here we are today. Screwed.
Is this entire incident due to the collision of short man syndrome and red head syndrome? Possibly it is. Will the NRU reactor out of spite perform a melt down and take out half of Ontario? It might. Will Miss Keen sue her employer for wrongful dismissal and get a bag full of taxpayers money like Mr. Mulroney? She might. (oh hell she is talking to her salivating Lawyers now!) Will this incident form the grist for commentators and correspondents for a few weeks of easy work? Oh yes! And will it take everyone's mind off the important things like the ongoing meltdown in the world economy and the pending disaster in the banking industry? Yup!
What do you do- when you live in a shoe?
Update January 29/08
I caught a short part of the Linda Keen interview with the Commons Committee today. So my comments just relate to the part I saw. To paraphrase Miss Keen when asked about the isotope production she appeared to say that it wasn't her job or responsibility and she didn't appear to care much about it either. To me this was the crux of the entire problem that she showed no leadership is helping to solve the isotope problem. I would have fired her too. I will reserve comments on the rest of the interview when I chance to see them. I also noted the politics going on at the committee and am beginning to wonder just how useful these committees are if all they do is posture for their respective party position.
Update March 31/2008
Here is what happens when we don't have medical isotopes. This is Ralph the puppy. When born he had a defect which required a medicinal isotope to be used. He had a chromosomal defect that the isotope could have solved. But thanks to this Chalk River shutdown the isotope was not available.
so the disease progressed to its most unfortunate conclusion and here is Ralph today.
Beam me back to the main index please!
31/03/2008
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