Parliament In Review: October 5, 2011

After the previous day's relatively non-partisan and specific focus, October 5 saw a return to broad debate on the economy - thanks to both a day of debate on the Cons' budget bill and a number of queries in question period.

The Big Issue

Under the economic theme, the most noteworthy development was a strong challenge against the Cons' free trade boosterism. Thomas Mulcair pointed out that reciprocity is sorely lacking in Canada's trade relationship with the U.S. Brian Masse noted that the Cons were not only putting appearances ahead of substance in valuing a photo op with Barack Obama more than the actual terms of any deal but getting rebuffed even in that pitiful pursuit - raising serious questions about their negotiating mettle. And Bob Rae demanded that the Cons give Parliament a chance to debate any agreement before locking Canada into it.

Meanwhile, Irene Mathyssen commented on the need for both public and private investment to build a strong economy. Eve Peclet challenged the Keystone XL pipeline by noting that her riding actually saw its refinery close down - putting to rest the spin that Canada doesn't have unused refining capacity. Sadia Groghue asked what the Cons plan to do for Canadians who haven't found the jobs promised as the benefit of corporate tax slashing, to about as little response as would be expected. Mulcair pointed out the environmental, social and financial debts being increased by the Cons as the cost of supposed fiscal prudence, and observed that the Cons' public-private partnerships seem to have a conspicuous habit of transferring resources from the former to the latter. John McCallum repeatedly questioned the Cons' refusal to make their tax benefits refundable such as to help those who need them most. Peggy Nash noted that if the Cons wanted to run government like a business they'd be looking to invest in a period of low interest rates and high unemployment, and also challenged the Libs to focus more on the availability of EI benefits rather than the cost of premiums.

Finally, the statement of the day went to Pierre Dionne Labelle:

They say that cutting corporate taxes will create jobs. That is not true. It is entirely untrue. The facts complete disprove such claims.

Just look at the example of Ontario, where the combined federal-provincial corporate tax rate was cut by 45% between 1999 and 2010. During this same period, investments in equipment and machinery dropped from 8% to 5%. The money these companies saved in taxes was not reinvested in the economy, did not create jobs, and was not used to buy machinery. Where did this money go? It went into hedge funds. It went into speculative bubbles. And what happens to bubbles? Sooner or later, they burst.

Private Interests

Facing questions from Joyce Murray about his party's choice to slash Audit Services Canada, Jacques Gourde revealed what the supposed cost-cutting measure is really all about:

Audit Services Canada is provided as an optional service for government departments that wish to acquire private sector audit expertise.

The services that Audit Services Canada provide are completely optional and provided on a fee-for-service basis, which is similar to the private sector. Many departments already acquire supplemental audit services directly from the private sector instead of using Audit Services Canada.

That's right: what was spun as a cost-cutting measure won't actually save the federal government a dime. Instead, the goal is to make sure that the cost of auditing is passed into corporate coffers - and any decrease in public auditing capability is only a side benefit.

Planning to Fail

In keeping with Megan Leslie's recent criticism of the Cons' environmental backsliding, Cheryl Gallant claimed that the Cons' decision to pour over $400 million into AECL at the same time as it's being sold off for a fraction of that amount is somehow an environmental program.

In Brief

Peter Julian re-introduced corporate responsibility legislation, while Scott Simms introduced a private members' bill to allow for CPP and OAS benefits to be paid bi-weekly at the election of a recipient. Marc Garneau offered the Cons a chance to answer honestly that they'll have to buy less F-35s than promised in order to stick to their supposed price figure - only to be met with a refusal to acknowledge even that seeming inevitability. Linda Duncan slammed Joe Oliver for his bizarre claim that the land where oil sands development is taking place is otherwise uninhabitable. And John Baird once again stood to answer a Charlie Angus ethics query only to say that it had nothing at all to do with him.

Deep thought

I'm sure it's utterly preposterous to even suggest that it's theoretically possible that the Harper Cons might want to torch public money just for the sake of torching public money.

Saturday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your weekend reading.

- Janice Kennedy highlights the consequences of turning back the clock 80 years when it comes to collective bargaining rights:

In the world of Stephen Harper and Co., big business rules. Period. The concept of workers' rights, especially unionized workers' rights, is a nuisance to be swatted away.

The proposition is elementary. Either you believe in collective bargaining and, therefore, in the right of workers to strike. Or you don't.

Clearly the new Conservative government does not.

So they're turning back the clock to an earlier time, a time when labour rights were minimal and unions were great collective personae non gratae. And life here is getting a whole lot simpler.

Not better, though. We are now moving into an era where issues are defined without nuance or subtlety in strict black and white. These days, there are only bad guys and good, and, in labour relations, the battle lines are clear: the ones with the power - whether corporate bosses or government decisionmakers - are the good guys.

Everyone else? Not so much. Especially unionized workers. Especially unionized striking workers. And if you can portray these workers as overpaid, underqualified slackers who exploit contract provisions to greedy personal advantage, working just a fraction as hard as hard-working non-unionized Canadians - why, so much the better. Then the picket line becomes the turf of the out-and-out baddies.
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To point to the bad apples and extrapolate is irrational and simplistic. Equally simplistic is the conviction that waving a big stick will make troubles disappear, that justifying the use of legislative force on the flimsiest of grounds is the way to labour harmony and greater productivity.

And yet, here we are. This is the new Canadian landscape. We'd better get used to it.

- But then, as Thomas Walkom notes, the Cons have already done plenty to prove they're neither willing nor able to govern competently, with the AECL selloff looming as just the most recent example:

(T)axpayers aren’t guaranteed any money from this sale. In fact, when the back and forth is totalled (Lavalin gives Ottawa $15 million; Ottawa gives Lavalin $75 million), we end up paying $60 million for the privilege of no longer owning that chunk of AECL.

Lavalin gets the lion’s share of the nuclear technology company’s $1.1 billion worth of assets — including land, buildings and tools.

The public, on the other hand, is stuck with all of all of AECL’s $4.5 billion worth of liabilities.

That means, says Lavalin vice-president Leslie Quinton, that the public is still responsible for decommission existing AECL atomic reactors and disposing of their waste.

Canadian taxpayers are also on the hook for any cost overruns from past and current AECL projects, including an estimated $1 billion that New Brunswick says it is owed for its Point Lepreau nuclear power station.

Oh yes. And Lavalin is expected to lay off at least 40 per cent of AECL’s 2,000-person commercial reactor division. Most are scientists and engineers.

In short, we pay Lavalin to take the good stuff and slash high-tech jobs. We’re left with the debts — plus the promise of unspecified royalties in the future.

Which is a pretty good deal for the Montreal-based firm. If I’d known what patsies Harper’s Conservatives are, I’d have tried to “buy” AECL.
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As the only bidder, Lavalin was in the driver’s seat. It took full advantage of its position. Who can blame it?

Blame instead the government. Conservatives insist that government has no business being in business. The hapless AECL saga suggests rather that Conservatives have no business being in government.

- Fortunately, Brian Topp points out that voters and leaders around the world are starting to wake up to the dangers of doctrinaire right-wing government:

It is Papandreou's conclusions about the future that merit thinking about next. “Are we too weak to deal with the financial and banking system?” he asked. “Are we too weak to deal the need for transparency in the financial markets? Are we too weak to deal with the ratings agencies? Are we too weak to fight tax havens?” He noted that bond rating agencies could destroy Greece's financial plan with a single additional downgrade. They have more power over the future of Greece than its people or its Parliament, “and that is totally unacceptable.”

Precisely so – which is why responsible social democrats in all jurisdictions are, and should be, allergic to excessive reliance on debt to finance government.

This is in stark contrast to conservatives in their modern form, eager as they are to finance tax cuts for their friends and other reckless spending through public debt. Doing so provides a perfect pool shot from their perspective. The rich get richer, and government is destroyed. Perfect!

But what we are seeing on our television screens from Athens is the inevitable consequence.
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The immediate financial crisis – so similar in its essentials all around the world, triggered by neo-con recklessness and misrule, and the limitless greed of financiers and speculators – needs to be addressed.

Countries around the world need to be put back on their feet -- to survive, and to win, as Papandreou says.

And the root causes of all of this madness needs to be addressed in the style Prime Minister Papandreou is using to address the crisis here in Greece, against overwhelming odds – calmly, thoughtfully, and with determination.

- Finally, Sixth Estate catches the Fraser Institute citing out-of-date disclosure guidelines in an attempt to pretend it's being transparent about research funding.

Thursday Afternoon Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Andrew Jackson points out and sums up a Statistics Canada study showing how much possible revenue is lost to the underground economy:

Statscan have produced interesting and important new estimates of the upper bound size of the “underground” or “non observed” economy, putting it at a seemingly modest 2.2% of GDP in 2008. (Some of this is already included in GDP which is adjusted to take into account some hidden and unreported economic activity.)
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Overall, Statscan estimates that corporations made as much as $17 Billion on underground activity in 2008, about half of which was in the construction sector.

Unincorporated businesses make up a much smaller share of the economy but are much more likely to skim and not report income. The estimated maximum is $10 Billion, about one half of which comes from skimming. Underground construction and contraband sales of alcohol and tobacco also loom large for this sector.

Not to make too one-sided a moral story of it, consumers are clearly complicit in a great deal of underground economy activity, getting goods and services at lower prices than in the formal, taxed economy. The underground economy is strongest in construction and in sales of tobacco, alcohol, and domestic and child care services.

Still, you can’t help but think that more stringent auditing of businesses by the tax authorities could turn up quite a useful amount of extra revenue if there is up to $27 Billion of under and unreported business income sitting on the table.

- Greg Weston sums up the Cons' AECL giveaway:

The federal government's long-awaited deal to sell off its money-losing nuclear reactor business is more like a perpetual partnership than a sale, leaving Canadian taxpayers stuck with the fiscal fall-out for years to come.

The government-owned Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. has announced it has finally reached a tentative deal to sell its commercial reactor development and repair division to Quebec-based engineering giant SNC-Lavalin.

The Montreal-based company was the only suitor in the world left at the negotiating table, a fact that helps to explain why the government is effectively paying SNC-Lavalin to take over the Crown corporation.

Under the deal, SNC will pay a paltry $15 million for AECL's nuclear reactor division, plus some as yet undisclosed "royalties" on future reactor sales.

In return, the government will give SNC up to $75 million toward the development of the next generation of AECL's once internationally successful Candu reactors.

In other words, Canadian taxpayers are giving the Quebec company $60 million to take AECL off their hands.
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Most of AECL's massive past liabilities and a lot of the financial risks going forward will remain exactly where they have always been — on taxpayers.

For instance, SNC-Lavalin will complete the current refurbishments of four reactor projects, but only "through subcontract service agreements with the government of Canada."

Translation: SNC-Lavalin will get paid for doing the work, but taxpayers will likely be on the hook for massive cost overruns and potential lawsuits that could run into the billions of dollars.
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AECL's commercial partner in (the Chalk River) snafu, MDS Nordion, is now suing the federal agency for $1.6 billion in damages.

Of course, if putting AECL under private-sector management successfully turns the nuclear reactor company into a commercial powerhouse, the federal government could ultimately reap a windfall in royalties from the sales of CANDU nukes the world over.

The fact the deal was announced by the government on the eve of summer doldrums suggests even the new owners of AECL aren't exactly overwhelmed with optimism.

- Dan runs the numbers on how a merged NDP/Liberal party might have affected this year's election - with the results showing that even under highly optimistic assumptions, the result would have been little different from the actual outcome. Which should offer reason for both parties to agree that they're best off using their time and energy to challenge the Cons, not to try to fuse two substantially different party formations.

- And finally: lest there was any doubt, no, a declaration that the Cons might eventually release notice of future regulations which could someday be adapted to apply to oil sands production isn't a departure from their usual plan to delay, distract and do nothing on climate change.

On selloffs

Sure, it takes some effort to pull a sweetheart deal out of the wreckage of AECL. But we probably shouldn't be surprised that the Cons seem to have pulled off the feat:

Versant Partners analyst Neil Linsdell told CBC News there's still a market for the existing reliable Candu technology in the developing world.

"SNC is really a great partner for [Ottawa] because of their international expertise in working with emerging economies," he said before the sale was officially announced. [Ed. note: no, this is not comforting.]

Even excluding any new sales, the servicing side of AECL's reactor business is profitable, Linsdell said. "The service business is going to be a good one," he said. "SNC is going to get a good deal out of this thing."

And all this while the Cons commit to spending five times more to support SNC Lavalin's newly-severed business than they'll recoup from the sale price.

Which of course raises the question: why in the world would the Cons be willing to take virtually nothing in exchange for a genuinely profitable part of AECL, while continuing to saddle the public with all of its liabilities?

Yes, that's a rhetorical question. And I suppose the more important one is: why are the Cons still in a position to hand out goodies to the corporate sector?

On radioactive deals

Yes, there are plenty of reasons for concern about the sale of AECL to SNC-Lavalin. But let's add another by raising the other issue that has put SNC-Lavalin in the news recently:

Hon. Jack Layton (Leader of the Opposition, NDP):

Mr. Speaker, people would think that no one would be a fan of Gadhafi, but he has been pretty good for business.

Under the government, Canada's exports to Libya have skyrocketed and that included the sale of arms to the Gadhafi regime. Canadian owned SNC-Lavalin received a $275 million contract to build a prison for Gadhafi.

Will the government finally take steps to ensure that Canadian investment never contributes to human rights violations abroad?

Of course, there's a separate set of export rules associated with the nuclear industry. But between a Harper Con government which so gleefully flouts international norms for the sake of even much smaller industries and a purchaser on record having made deals with the likes of Gadhafi, there's reason for concern that the potential costs of a sale go far beyond even the debts and hazards already inherent in nuclear development.

On insecure supplies

AECL CEO Hugh McDiarmid then:

“Returning the NRU to service to support the production of medical isotopes for Canadian patients and healthcare practitioners is our primary objective”, said AECL’s President and CEO Hugh MacDiarmid. “We have a dedicated team working around the clock to bring the NRU back to operation as quickly and as safely as possible. However, it is a complex task with many variables”, he said.

AECL CEO Hugh McDiarmid now:

Federal Natural Resources Minister Christian Paradis, who is responsible for the nuclear file, referred questions to AECL, whose CEO acknowledged that there is no requirement that any of the medical isotopes produced at Chalk River be reserved for Canadian patients.

“There never has been” the requirement to supply Canadians with isotopes from the NRU, AECL chief executive Hugh MacDiarmid said in an interview with The Globe and Mail.

Someday, this could all be ours...

Express India:

A radiation leak at the Kaiga Nuclear Plant in Karnataka's north Kannada district has left 55 employees in the maintenance unit falling sick in the suspected radiation poisoning.

The sick employees are being treated for increased level of tritium, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen in their bodies, after they drank water from a water cooler in the operations area on Tuesday (November 24).

Tritium, also known as Hydrogen-3, is used in research, fusion reactors and neutron generators.

A urine examination of the employees, which is done everyday, it was found that the tritium level was more than the normal level. The employees are receiving treatment at the plant hospital in Mallapur.

Atomic Energy Commission chairman Anil Kakodkar has called it a case of radiation overexposure.

Nuclear experts have not ruled out the possibility of sabotage behind this leak.

And for those wondering: yes, it's a CANDU reactor involved.

(h/t to @jimbobbysez.)

Someday, this could all be ours...

While one would like to think the overwhelming public opposition to nuclear power in Saskachewan would lead to the "demise" of any plans for reactor construction as theorized by Murray Mandryk, I'm still far from convinced that the Wall government won't try to find some excuse to ignore the province's input. So let's look to New Brunswick's Point Lepreau reactor for a reminder as to just how accurate nuclear backers tend to be in describing the costs and time frames involved:

New Brunswick Premier Shawn Graham is ratcheting up the pressure on the federal government to get a firm completion date for the Point Lepreau refurbishment project.

Graham announced Thursday that he has sent a second letter to Prime Minister Stephen Harper asking that the federal Department of Natural Resources, which is responsible for Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd., provide an update on the nuclear reactor refurbishment project — which is months behind schedule.
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In Graham's letter Tuesday to Harper, the premier warned the prime minister about the financial implications about any significant delays at the nuclear plant.

"The losses occasioned by these delays are extremely costly for both AECL and NB Power. AECL and NB Power have a fixed-price contract with various damage formulas," Graham's letter said.

"No doubt our respective counsel could advise on the implications for each of the parties. I am writing in the same vein as my January, to request that the federal government keep NB Power whole for these losses. We did not contract for failure and damage claims. We contracted for success."

The reactor was originally intended to begin generating electricity again on Oct. 1.

NB Power has not released an up-to-date estimate of the project's delay. However, CBC News reported earlier in September that the refurbishment is at least nine months behind schedule.

For every day that Point Lepreau remains offline, it costs the New Brunswick government roughly $1 million upfront, though that should eventually be mitigated somewhat. Before the refurbishment project started, NB Power bought insurance just in case the reactor fell behind schedule. Additionally, NB Power renegotiated a series of contracts in 2005 to include stiffer penalties on AECL if the project was not completed on time.

If the penalties and insurance funds are fully recouped, the monthly cost to NB Power would be about $20 million.

NB Power would still be on the hook for the entire cost of the delays in the month of October, which isn't covered by the insurance or penalties.

An inefficient proposal

There's plenty worth dissecting in the Wall government's latest attempt (warning: PDF) to sell anything they can think of with the word "nuclear" in the title. But here are a couple of take-away points from the isotope reactor proposal.

In terms of cost, the proposal looks to be completely out of whack with every other suggested alternative for isotope production. While the accelerator proposals from UBC and Manitoba have put forward costs in the range of $35-$50 million to get to actual isotope production, the Saskatchewan proposal involves spending roughly that much in a "development" phase before construction even begins - and 10 to 15 times as much to actually get a reactor running (without even considering how to get any isotopes processed).

Likewise, the timelines involved suggest that the Saskatchewan proposal is by far the worst available option out of the ones presented in western Canada: a 2016 start time, compared to 2012 or sooner for the other possibilities. Though that may be good news to the extent that it means the province won't be following Brad Wall's previous musings about slapping a nuclear reactor together in two years.

Of course, the proposal tries to get around its frailties compared to other alternatives by suggesting that it would create only a complementary source of isotopes. But there's little apparent reason why the federal government should be looking to pay far more for a far slower option. And the fact that Wall and his government are willing to burn more money as part of a relatively small provincial share under its proposal than it would cost to put the B.C. and Manitoba proposals into effect combined should serve as a fairly clear signal that the Sask Party's nuclear agenda has nothing at all to do with what's best for the province.

Someday, this could all be ours

The latest from Chalk River:

Radioactive water has stopped leaking from the nuclear reactor at Chalk River, Ont., ending two months of low-level radiation seeping into the atmosphere near Ottawa.

Workers with Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. recently completed draining the reactor's 65,000-litre vessel and are now preparing to dispatch a remote-controlled ultra-sonic probe deep into the disabled machine to inspect the site of a pinhole leak of tritium-laced heavy water that began May 14.

What it reveals will help determine what is expected to be a delicate, complex and potentially costly repair strategy.

Most of the leaking water was slowly captured and stored in special drums and is to be reused when the National Research Universal reactor restarts. But about 20% evaporated and was drawn into the building's ventilation system. To prevent a dangerous buildup of tritium inside the NRU building, the airborne tritium was steadily released into the atmosphere as the leak progressed.

The quantity going into the surrounding air, some of which then fell on land and into the Ottawa River, was well within current maximum health limits. Still, those limits were publicly questioned in June by the federal nuclear safety commissioner, echoing a long-running debate over what constitutes safe exposure to cancer-causing tritium, especially in drinking water.

Compare and contrast

Cost of a nuclear power plant based on the only bid for Ontario's Darlington contract which actually included the risk of cost overruns:

$13 billion

Estimated benefit from a nuclear power plant over the course of its life span in present dollars, according to the nuclear boosters involved in the UDP:

$11 billion

Based on these numbers, shouldn't we be considering whether it's easier to generate power by simply setting billions of dollars on fire?

No shock here

The Star reports on the "shockingly high" price which has forced Ontario to at least shelve for now the possibility of building new nuclear reactors: $26 billion for two reactors similar to the size which the Wall government is looking to push in Saskatchewan:

The Ontario government put its nuclear power plans on hold last month because the bid from Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd., the only "compliant" one received, was more than three times higher than what the province expected to pay, the Star has learned.

Sources close to the bidding, one involved directly in one of the bids, said that adding two next-generation Candu reactors at Darlington generating station would have cost around $26 billion.
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AECL's $26 billion bid was based on the construction of two 1,200-megawatt Advanced Candu Reactors, working out to $10,800 per kilowatt of power capacity.

By comparison, in 2007 the Ontario Power Authority had assumed for planning purposes a price of $2,900 per kilowatt, which works out to about $7 billion for the Darlington expansion. During Ontario Energy Board hearings last summer, the power authority indicated that anything higher than $3,600 per kilowatt would be uneconomical compared to alternatives, primarily natural gas.
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The bid from France's Areva NP also blew past expectations, sources said. Areva's bid came in at $23.6 billion, with two 1,600-megawatt reactors costing $7.8 billion and the rest of the plant costing $15.8 billion. It works out to $7,375 per kilowatt, and was based on a similar cost estimate Areva had submitted for a plant proposed in Maryland.

"These would be all-in costs, including building a new overpass and highway expansion to get the equipment in," said a source from one of the bidding teams, who asked to remain anonymous, citing confidentiality agreements signed with the province.

Stevens said Areva's lower price makes sense because the French company wasn't prepared to take on as much risk as the government had hoped. This made Areva's bid non-compliant in the end. Crown-owned AECL, however, complied with Ontario's risk-sharing requirement but was instructed by the federal government to price this risk into its bid. "Which is why it came out so high," said Stevens.

In fairness, there are plenty of reasons to think that the actual cost for Saskatchewan might be different. For example, with Bruce Power in the picture, there would be one more actor involved looking to skim off a layer of profits. In the absence of any experience with such projects in the region and need to import labour to get anything built, the contingencies involved might be even more severe. And of course, with Bruce Power looking to build on the old "Ontario model", the party in charge of building wouldn't be the one stuck with the tab, meaning that there would be more risk of overruns than would figure to have been built into AECL's bid.

All those factors aside, though, let's assume for the moment that the $13 billion per reactor cost presented by AECL roughly reflects what the price would be in Saskatchewan as well. That would mean that off the top, the cost of nuclear construction would shoot far past the range where it would compare to natural gas, wind or solar generation. Instead, the more pertinent comparison might be to purchasing an exercise bike for every Saskatchewan resident with the hope of powering the grid by pedaling.

Of course, Ontario is looking to get around the real cost by having the federal government pick up some of the risk to push the sticker price down. But that wouldn't do anything to actually reduce the expected costs, serving only to upload them to a different actor to try to hide the actual costs of nuclear construction. And when it's this glaringly obvious that the nuclear industry can't hold up without massive public giveaways, it should be equally clear that our resources are better put elsewhere.

One day, this could all be ours

We'd sure hate to miss out on the chance to have stories like this coming from Saskatchewan's largest city:

AECL officials said Wednesday the Chalk River leak itself is a tremendously challenging engineering problem.

For one thing, it is at the bottom of the tank nine metres below the nearest access point and that access point is nothing but a small hole just 12 centimetres in diameter. AECL must design special tools that can squeeze through that access point and then navigate to the bottom of the reactor vessel — a vessel filled with a tangle of tubes, wires, and the reactor core itself — and then complete a tricky welding and repair job in a highly radioactive, dangerous environment.

The cone shaped vessel that houses the reactor's core is about 3.5 metres tall and 3.5 metres in diameter. The vessel itself is encased in a larger structure.

"I've heard it described as . . . trying to change the oil in your car from your living room," said David Cox, the director of the NRU repair project. "We're faced with conducting remote investigations in a radioactive environment with high radiation fields, conducting the examinations and inspections through small openings in the top of the reactor and accessing, over great distances. So it's technically challenging."

And all this with a minister responsible agitating to get the unit back in service as quickly as possible even though it's already had to be shut down twice in a year and a half.

In fairness, of course, that's not the only possible outcome: a new isotope reactor could just flat out be unfit for service to begin with after a decade and hundreds of millions of dollars thrown away. So what's not to like?

Strong public opposition vs. weak private government

Shorter Brad Wall:

Why, of course I'll take into account any dissent that I hear against my plan to force an isotope-generating reactor on the province without the slightest bit of public consultation. But for some reason, I can't make any out over the sound of my own cheerleading.

On liabilities

With all the other issues surrounding nuclear power in Canada, it wouldn't have come as much surprise if the Cons' efforts to pass another sweetheart liability regime for operators both public and private had managed to slip under the radar. But fortunately, NDP MP Nathan Cullen is on the job in pointing out how the Harper government wants to leave the public on the hook for any nuclear damage:

The government wants to update the Nuclear Liability Act to increase the maximum to $650 million in damages from the current $75 million set in the 1970s, but the NDP's Nathan Cullen said it should be in the billions of dollars.

"The crux of it is how much you can sue for in the event of a nuclear accident," said the MP for Skeena-Bulkley Valley.

Cullen said it's difficult to have confidence in an industry that has to be afforded this kind of protection in the first place, but completely another matter to lowball the cost of human life. "Get somewhere in the ballpark ... into the billions for sure," he said in an interview.
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Cullen said the liability limit is about $10 billion in the U.S. In most other countries there is no ceiling.

"It is a pretty unusual situation as far as we can tell that Canada would have this very low ceiling," he said.

Cullen and other critics suspect the reason behind the $650 million figures (sic) is to make Canada more attractive for companies wanting to build nuclear power plants.

Of course, the argument for a higher (or no) liability ceiling would seem to be one that the nuclear industry would readily concede if it actually believed its own spin that nothing can possibly go wrong. But to the extent nuclear operators do actually see an exceptionally low liability cap as a reason to build in Canada, that fact would suggest that the industry itself is far less confident about the safety of nuclear power than it presents to the public.

On the other hand, one could argue that liability cap actually doesn't serve as much of an inducement. But if that's the case, then the cap would seem to be nothing more than a gratuitous giveaway to an industry that doesn't value it in the slightest. And there's little reason to believe that Canada's population at large wants to financially subsidize the effects of nuclear development gone wrong, particularly when any incident would seem sure to have plenty of other public consequences as well.

So one way or another, the Cons' attempt to keep an unusually low liability limit for nuclear operators should raise some serious questions about whose interests they really have in mind. And the likely conclusion seems to be that the public shouldn't be caught on the hook for any nuclear incidents.

Putting safety into question

Needless to say, the latest revelations about safety concerns with effectively all of AECL's CANDU nuclear reactors figure to be glossed over just as thoroughly as the recent concerns with the MAPLE and Chalk River isotope reactors. But in addition to providing evidence that nuclear technology is anything but free from trouble and uncertainty, the latest news would seem to cut to the core of any attempt to claim Saskatchewan's geography serves to favour nuclear power over healthier alternatives:

Canadian nuclear safety regulators say they have underestimated the seriousness of a design feature at the country's electricity-producing reactors that would cause them to experience dangerous power pulses during a major accident.
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The discovery prompted the regulator, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, to warn that it may have to order nuclear power plants to run at less-than-full power indefinitely to compensate for what it deems less-safe conditions at the stations, according to the document.

The commission and the three utilities that operate reactors – Ontario Power Generation, NB Power, and Hydro-Québec – will likely have to spend “considerable resources” dealing with safety issues related to the problem and still may not be able to resolve it fully, it said.
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Although positive reactivity is not well known outside the nuclear industry, problems connected with it prompted Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. to scrap its two Maple reactors in May, 2008, after spending more than $500-million on them, leading to a crisis in the supply of medical isotopes.

According to the document, commission staff have always known that Candu nuclear power plants have positive reactivity, but they conceded that they miscalculated the magnitude of the condition. For instance, they said they underestimated a number used to measure it by 50 per cent.
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Mr. Rzentkowski said the commission would consider ordering the stations to run at less than full power if safety margins shrink to unacceptable levels, with the Pickering and Darlington reactors in Ontario the first to be considered for such output cuts.

Greenpeace asked for records about positive reactivity compiled at the commission from Sept. 1 last year to March 31. But Mr. Rzentkowski said he thought the undated document, which was marked as a draft, was likely written in 2007 and was used in discussions with nuclear utility representatives.

The positive reactivity problem is highly technical, and has arisen because of the unique design of Canada's reactors. According to the document, the main factors “that introduce this hazard” are the Candu's use of natural uranium as fuel and the internal structure of the reactors, in which the heavy water used to cool them is separated from the water that moderates the pace of atomic chain reactions to safe levels.

So what does the revelation mean? Remember that the closest the Sask Party has ever come to offering a justification for pushing ahead with a nuclear reactor a vague claim that since uranium is mined in Saskatchewan, it should be used in Saskatchewan.

But even the nuclear industry's own UDP recognized that refining isn't a viable choice for the province. As a result, the only way Saskatchewan would actually have any comparative advantage over other jurisdictions in generating nuclear power would be if natural uranium can be used.

Which means in effect that if the Wall government were to push ahead with nuclear power generation, it would have one of two choices. On the one hand, it could select a non-CANDU model - which would eliminate any pretense of competitive advantage and thoroughly undermine Wall's apparent plan to buy into AECL. Or instead, the province could voluntarily choose a design which poses well-known and escalating risks which are now close to coming to fruition in the form of massive costs and potential shutdowns.

But what about the much-vaunted regulation which the CNSC in particular has spent so much time trumpeting? Well, it apparently wasn't enough to push the CNSC itself to make the known issues public two years ago. And that was before the Cons strongarmed Parliament into overruling the CNSC itself on safety issues at Chalk River.

So there's no reason for confidence that the CNSC itself is telling the public the whole story about the risks surrounding the industry under its regulation. And it's tough to take much comfort from an organization whose mandate seems to have shifted from actually regulating anything to a PR exercise in proclaiming what a wonderful job it's doing.

Finally, it's worth noting that the similarity between the issues which caused the MAPLE isotope reactors to be abandoned and the ones also present in CANDU reactors may push Wall's federal allies to the opposite side of the table. At the moment, there's a regular food fight going on between the Cons and the Libs as to whether or not the MAPLE project should have been abandoned - but Harper and company can hardly make a credible claim to have done the right thing by scrapping MAPLE while promoting the construction of new reactors which face the exact same problems.

In sum, then, today's revelations provide some compelling evidence both that the nuclear industry is less safe than it claims and that known issues are being kept from the public. And that reality certainly can't help the Sask Party's case to rush forward rather than taking a thorough look at the obvious risks from Saskatchewan's perspective.

Off message

So the latest to let inconvenient facts intrude on the Unstoppable March toward Nukes include CanWest's Paul Hanley and the Saskatchewan Union of Nurses. Anybody want to take bets on how long it takes for the Sask Party to officially start backtracking on its current full-on sprint toward reactor construction - or who will finally force them to do so?

Off the shelf

Following up on this morning's post as to the difference of opinion in how long a nuclear reactor would take to build, this too seems like a noteworthy quote from somebody who knows rather more than Brad Wall:

"A reactor isn't something you just kind of buy off the shelf," Mr. Porter said.

Which is in stark contrast to this highly sensitive leaked design showing how Wall plans to get a reactor running in a matter of two to three years.

On rush jobs

The Globe and Mail's continued coverage of a possible nuclear reactor in Saskatchewan continues to be grossly slanted toward the "pro" side, with the latest article featuring quotes from only two pro-reactor sources. But even they can't help but to point out that the government pushing the process has no idea what's involved.

Here's Brad Wall as quoted on Saturday:

Mr. Wall said he wants to launch a full-speed effort to build a research reactor within two to three years, likely at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon.
...
Mr. Wall is also hoping for expedited federal regulatory approval, so that construction could commence quickly and the reactor could be up and running in three years.

So how realistic is that time frame? Here's what the two U of S nuclear proponents told the Globe:

There are two meetings this week, the last in a series of public consultations started by the province in May. Assuming the government likes what comes out of that report, it will take at least six to 12 years before the reactor is up and running. It's still to be determined who is going to pay for the reactor, which could be as much as $2-billion.

Now, there are a couple of possible explanations for the difference between the time Wall says it'll take, and the time actually expected by those who know somewhat better. But it's hard to see any of them reflecting well on Wall: either he's completely uninformed about the very projects he's trying to force on the province, or he's willing to cut corners to the point of taking as little as a quarter of the usual required time to get a reactor up and running.

One way or the other, there's every reason for concern that Wall's plans could prove disastrous for the province. And hopefully enough people within Saskatchewan are noticing the flaws in his national message to see the need to push back here at home.

Update: Good to see the NDP is all over Wall's musings.