With the firing of Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission president Linda Keen you can bet that the gloves will be off in this feud.
A summary of the Crown corporation’s version of events, contained in a lengthy legal retort from its Bay Street law firm, Heenan Blaikie to the nuclear safety commission, alleges the commission knew as recently as late July – yet raised no alarm – that the National Research Universal reactor was operating without two of its most crucial water pump motor starters connected to an emergency power supply.
“While CNSC has stated repeatedly that it ‘discovered’ in November 2007 that the motor starters on (pumps) P104 and P105 had not been connected to EPS (emergency power supply), the evidence uncontrovertibly shows that on nine different occasions between June 2005 and July 2007 both CNSC and AECL explicitly stated in writing that the EPS had not been connected to the starter motors for the main heavy water pumps 104 and 105,” the letter says.
The suggestion is that AECL was caught completely off guard by an erratic change of course by the commission.
That, presumably, left AECL with no time to warn that isotope supplies were about to be cut off to hospitals and other medical users.
Moreover, by repeatedly and publicly accusing AECL of violating its Chalk River operating licence by not completing the work, the commission itself is in violation of the Nuclear Safety and Control Act for failing to provide AECL due process, as required by law, to defend against its alleged non-compliance, say AECL’s lawyers.
Source.(Emphasis mine)
