Oh what a tangled web ...

I think it is great that New Brunswick is finally getting around to suing 14 tobacco companies for the healthcare costs we have paid for over the years. I suspect that the basis for this lawsuit is the half-truths told to us for a long time about the dangers of cigarette smoking - at least that has been the basis for state- and province-wide lawsuits elsewhere.

But, it is here that our story gets a bit twisted.

The public relations campaign for Big Tobacco was handled, at least in part, by Hill & Knowlton. This campaign included issuing The Frank Statement and helping to organize the Council for Tobacco Research which was used to cast doubt on the many scientific papers that raised health concerns about smoking. (The Council for Tobacco Research closed in 1999.)

While this ancient history is being rehashed in our province, we seem to be headed down a similar path.

One of Hill & Knowlton's more recent clients is the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) which has focused on marketing nuclear power as the new "green" energy. Interestingly, a 1998 ruling by the National Advertising Division (NAD) of the Council of Better Business Bureaus in the United States has issued a warning to the NEI recommending that "water and air pollution claims be carefully qualified to avoid any potential for customer confusion, and that the broad, unqualified claims that nuclear energy is 'Environmentally Clean' or produces electricity 'without polluting the environment' be discontinued."

It is also interesting to note that one of the members for the pro-nuclear front group established by Hill & Knowlton is none other than Patrick Moore who made a pro-nuclear presentation in Saint John in early 2008.

When will we ever learn?

Chalk River Fallout - Manufactured Crisis?

The events at the Chalk River nuclear reactor seem to be nothing more than a thinly disguised attempt by a government to assume control of the nuclear industry in Canada. The firing of Linda Keen, the Executive Director of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, takes on a whole new meaning in light of this story.

Government inflated fear of medical isotope shortage

Backup supplies were readily available from reactors in Europe and South Africa

March 01, 2008

TORONTO STAR

Alan Kuperman

When Canada's Parliament overrode the country's top nuclear-safety regulator in December, ordering the restart of a nuclear reactor at Chalk River in the absence of documented safety upgrades to guard against a core meltdown, most Canadians assumed such emergency action was necessary to assure a continued supply of vital medical isotopes.

But this assumption was false – a canard employed to persuade legislators to sidestep the safety officials, thereby protecting the profits of a private Canadian company at the expense of risking a nuclear accident.

The company, MDS Nordion, now admits that prior to the emergency legislation of Dec. 12, it already was receiving backup isotope supplies from a South African producer, NTP.

Two days later, Nordion started receiving isotopes from Europe, another backup that it knew was on the way prior to Parliament's action.

Such facts were not reported at the time, which leaves only two possibilities: The information was withheld by Nordion or by the government.

In light of these revelations, Nordion now insists that all potential backup supplies were inadequate to satisfy customer demand without also restarting the National Research Universal reactor at Chalk River.

Says a Nordion spokesperson: "None of the other commercial isotope reactors have the ability to do more than increase their collective production capacity by 10 to 15 per cent in this type of an unplanned event. These producers collectively cannot mitigate this type of a precipitous event."

But this latest Nordion claim also is false, according to a definitive accounting of global isotope production capacity presented at an international conference in 2005 by Belgian scientists from one of the world's largest isotope producers, Institut National des Radioéléments.

The report documents that European and South African reactors typically operate well below capacity, which is why they together produce less than 60 per cent of world demand, while Nordion produces almost as much at a single reactor. But at peak operation, the non-Canadian reactors are capable of producing a collective 160 per cent of world demand.

In other words, these foreign sources can increase production not by a mere 10 to 15 per cent, as Nordion claims, but several-fold, sufficient to fully satisfy global demand even during a temporary Canadian shutdown.

Obviously, Nordion has grossly understated the foreign backup capacity, but it is equally important not to exaggerate it. Overseas facilities undergo planned and unplanned outages, so the peak capacity of non-Canadian reactors at any point in time could be somewhat less than 160 per cent of world demand. Still, under typical circumstances, they are able to satisfy global demand.

Of course, peak capacity cannot be sustained indefinitely. Therefore, a permanent shutdown of the NRU reactor at Chalk River, in the absence of new reactors, would adversely affect the global supply of medical isotopes.

But a short-term shutdown, such as the several weeks that were required to connect backup power to the NRU's emergency coolant pumps, could have been compensated for by a surge in operation of the foreign reactors.

Another concern is that overseas production could be constrained not only by availability of reactors but by the capacity of associated facilities that process irradiated uranium to extract the isotopes.

Typically, however, such facilities likewise operate well below peak capacity, so they too can surge in a crisis.

Finally, money affects production capacity. If a customer asks the operator of a reactor or a processing facility to operate overtime or during a scheduled vacation, it may have to pay extra for the privilege.

Nordion insists that it tried and failed to obtain isotopes from Europe during the NRU shutdown, but some European facilities actually were sitting idle. So the real obstacle may have been Nordion's unwillingness to pay a premium, rather than any alleged inadequacy of European capacity.

Last month, Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. and the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission announced a jointly sponsored investigation of their actions.

Certainly an inquiry is warranted by a series of missteps:

AECL falsely assured regulators two years ago that safety upgrades were complete.

The shutdown of the reactor was not reported for 12 days to the responsible cabinet minister, who waited three more days to start addressing the issue.

The government then intervened heavy-handedly, waiving the requirement for a safety review and firing the official who had demanded it, even though the review would have delayed the restart by only two days, according to AECL's own estimates.

The proposed inquiry, however, hardly qualifies as independent or comprehensive: AECL is deeply implicated in the events; the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission has been neutered by the demotion of its courageous president Linda Keen; and Nordion is strangely left out of the equation.

In light of the gravity of the public health, public safety and governance issues implicated by this scandal, a much deeper investigation is warranted by Canada's Parliament and independent watchdogs.

As the facts now appear, Ottawa quashed safety regulators to restart a potentially risky nuclear reactor, imperilling its citizens for the benefit of a private company, despite the availability of backup isotope supplies from abroad.

Canadian citizens have a right to know why.

Alan J. Kuperman is an assistant professor at the LBJ School of Public Affairs, University of Texas at Austin, and a senior policy analyst at the Nuclear Control Institute in Washington, D.C.

Letter Exchange

I won't publish the whole sordid story here, but the essence is that after nuclear-apologist and paid consultant, Patrick Moore, came to NB to spread some questionable advice/propaganda about nuclear power, I wrote a letter to the editor. I basically pointed out that Patrick Moore lacks credibility. At one point I said he does little to reconcile his figure of 60 dead with stats suggesting that the numbers may be in the hundreds of thousands. This was published in all of the 3 major Irving papers and the Irving-owned Kings County Record.

A Dr. Lowe (physicist from Etobicoke, ON) sent a reply to my letter which was published on Feb 19 in the Kings County Record. He (and the letter's headline) claimed Moore was right and Moir was wrong. Given this letter could almost be considered libelous - he's attacking my research credibility - I sent in a reply. We'll see if they publish it, but I include it below, because it has some links to data (sources that are pointed to) that discredit the argument that only 60 people died.

Moir replies (Published in the Kings County Record on February 26)

On Feb. 19, the Kings County Record presented a reply to a letter I wrote questioning one of the controversial statistics presented by pro-nuclear activist, Patrick Moore - that just 60 people died in the Chernobyl accident. At the risk of prolonging the debate, I felt it important that I should be allowed to reply as my credibility as a researcher has been brought to question.

As Dr. Lowe points out, the initial UN report claimed around 60 deaths. However, a 2005 report by the International Atomic Energy Association and the World Health Organization, both of which are UN organizations, increased that number officially to 4,000, and suggested there might be an additional 5,000 estimated deaths. Moreover, as reported in the April 2006 New Scientist, “Zhanat Carr, a radiation scientist with the WHO in Geneva, says the 5,000 deaths were omitted [from the 2005 report] because the report was a ‘political communications tool’.” In 2006, the WHO officially reported that there may be “up to 9,000 excess cancer deaths due to Chernobyl.”

Various groups criticize even this number of 9,000 because the WHO report only considered “Belarus, the Russian Federation and Ukraine.” Indeed, significant parts of Europe also suffered from fallout.

Perhaps more convincing is the work of Dr. Richard L. Garwin, Philip D. Reed Senior Fellow for Science and Technology and IBM Fellow Emeritus, who has published more than 500 papers and been granted 45 U.S. patents. He has been involved in the design of nuclear weapons and is a reasoned proponent of the expansion of nuclear power. He certainly cannot be accused of being anti-nuclear power.

In the Letters section of Physics and Society (Jan. 1999) he explains that “even for low-level radiation, deaths due to cancer occur at a rate of … 400 per million person-rem” and with relatively unanimous agreement of an exposure of 600,000 persons, this amounts to early cancer deaths of about 24,000. He repeated this calculation in a speech to the Nuclear Control Institute, Washington DC in 2001.

It is also true that Greenpeace and scientists within Russia place the death toll due to early cancer and other illnesses between 100,000 and 500,000.

In my initial letter, I pointed out that it is difficult to ‘reconcile’ the claims of Patrick Moore with other research. I did not claim that other research is in fact correct as it is very difficult to tabulate death tolls in this situation. However, I still stand by my claim that Patrick Moore’s figure of 60 deaths (as stated in 2008) is difficult to reconcile with other evidence.

I absolutely disagree with Dr. Lowe’s assertion that “Dr. Moore is correct.” Even he claims to accept that there may be an additional 9,000 early cancer deaths. Under the new math, 9,000 is still significantly greater than 60. Indeed, given he is on the pro-nuclear side, one would reasonably have to accept Dr. Garwin’s calculation of 24,000 early cancer deaths as at least a minimum.

I may be an economist, but I am fundamentally a researcher. The data both cited and presented here was found and read in perhaps an hour and a half.

Finally, if I may be so bold, have people thought to question why a scientist in Etobicoke, ON finds it necessary to reply to a letter in the Kings County Record, published in Sussex, NB? While I welcome his attempt at criticism, I find it strange that “experts from away” need to come to New Brunswick’s aid.

Submitted to TJ

Hi all - another one, I'm not sure will be published. It was published 9 Feb. in the TJ and 12 Feb. in the King's County Record.

Equal coverage on nuclear debate

On Feb. 5, the Telegraph Journal wrote a long front page article on Dr. Patrick Moore and his support for the nuclear industry. Given the provincial interest in nuclear power and uranium mining, I attended his talk to see what he might have to say.

While he provides an interesting case and is quite obviously a polished speaker, a number of people were taken aback by his attack on climate change science. I found his stance interesting because if climate change is untrue then why don’t we continue to generate power using fossil fuel technology which is, by Dr. Moore’s admission, cheaper than nuclear? (For the record, I am convinced that current climate change is accelerated by human activity and I conduct research studying how economic methods can be used to reduce emissions and enhance cooperation.)

I was taken aback when he claimed that only 60 people died in the Chernobyl nuclear disaster when Russian scientists and officials claim the number is in the hundreds of thousands.

Perhaps most disturbing was the emphasis of his academic credentials and the “credentialization” of his current stance on nuclear power. Dr. Moore has absolutely zero peer-reviewed - the hallmark of scientific credibility - papers on the subject of nuclear power. After extensive research, I found that, including his thesis, Dr. Moore has exactly one peer-reviewed publication at all – his thesis!

To show fairness to the hardworking taxpayers of New Brunswick, all of our weekly newspapers should give equal coverage to an expert like Dr. Helen Caldicott (who visited New Brunswick recently) who opposes expansion of the nuclear industry. That way the taxpaying and rate-paying public is informed and can enter into meaningful debate.