Wednesday, February 25, 2009

No concern over small water leaks at Chalk River nuclear plant: officials

CBC reported on this late last night. Naturally, on their website, it's been relegated to the 3rd page. I guess we don't want to alarm the general public too much. This is clearly an example of "there must be something in the water".

Looks like the Con's Lisa Raitt et.al are okay with everything though.



Photobucket

5 comments:

JimBobby said...

Whooee! Lies, greed and mendacity!

We've been lied to again. We're being told that we MUST keep NRU running because it is needed to supply 70% of isotopes due to a shut down Dutch reactor.

The Dutch reactor was restarted two weeks ago.
http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2009/02/petten_nuclear_reactor_reopens.php

There is one reason we're keeping NRU running, evn though it's leaking and the Dutch reactor could take up at least most of the slack: profit. AECL sells all of NRU's isotopes to MDS Nordion, a profitable private company. If MDS can't get cheap isotopes from the Canadian taxpayer, it will need to use more costly overseas suppliers and it will not make as much money.

Lisa Raitt is putting the best financial interests of MDS Nordion above the best interests of public health and safety. Who is it she works for?

JB

James Curran said...

Too bad Minister Raitt hasn't filed her election return yet. Be interesting to see the donor list.

Big Winnie said...

I found the following statements distrubing:

"Binder said there are about 65 tonnes of heavy water at Chalk River, and he likened the 47 kg December leak to faucet trouble in your home.

"You know: drip, drip, drip. It's of the same order of magnitude," he said."

Water (H2O)is not radioactive like Heavy Water (H3O), if I remember my Chem classses, and there is certainly no environmental impact if water is leaked unlike Heavy water.

Jennifer Smith said...

There's another iteration of the story here that has a lovely photo of Lisa doing the 'No Comment Sprint' past reporters. I guess all those hours on the treadmill are serving her well.

As for her election return, we in Halton are anxiously awaiting that one too. I suspect that her biggest donor was probably Stephen Harper's "Bring Me the Head of Garth Turner" fund.

lyrical said...

This leak happened while the Minister was actually touring the Chalk River facility? So says Geoff Regan in Tuesday's Question Period (starts at 17:30 in).

Wednesday's G&M has an article on the government possibly selling its interest in AECL, but that wouldn't include the Chalk River facility.