Nuclear power woes are AECL's fault

The news has finally surfaced: AECL's poor practices caused the medical isotope "crisis" and other problems.

In the view of most nuclear experts and informed observers, these AECL failures are the real cause of last month's crisis in isotope production that culminated this week in the Harper government's unprecedented firing of Linda Keen, president of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission....

... top AECL management was repeatedly hauled on the carpet before the Nuclear Safety Commission and its predecessor, the Atomic Energy Control Board, to explain poor operating practices at the Universal reactor, including foot-dragging on implementing safety upgrades ordered by the federal regulator

...new reactors aren't operating because of a series of hard-to-believe blunders by once world-class Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd., the Crown corporation responsible for designing and building them.

I credit Ontario Geofish with pointing out these basic facts months ago.

Penny wise, pound foolish

That saying arose when a pound was a unit of money, a pound of sterling silver, in fact.

Study says that long waits for health care cost billions.

Conducted for the Canadian Medical Association by the Centre for Spatial Economics, the study measured the impact of the absence of both patients and their caregivers from the work force, as well as the increased costs of extra appointments, tests and medication required when patients languish in a queue.

When those factors were totalled, the authors concluded that it cost the economy $14.8-billion in 2007 to have patients wait longer than medically recommended for four procedures: joint replacements, cataract surgery, coronary bypasses and MRI scans. And that, in turn, cut federal and provincial revenues by $4.4-billion, the study says.

Only four procedures were examined in the study. Imagine what the total cost for all procedures might be!

Canada chastises Safety Commission for wanting safety

The Natural Resources Minister wants to fire the President of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission for not wanting to run a reactor without backup power. She says, "Just try it, buddy!"

The federal government has threatened to fire the head of Canada's nuclear watchdog over the Chalk River reactor shutdown, and she responded Tuesday by vowing to fight back through the courts.

Natural Resources Minister Gary Lunn wrote a letter to Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) president Linda Keen on Dec. 27 in which he questions her judgment and informs her he is considering having her removed from the post.

The letter, which was leaked to the Ottawa Citizen newspaper, was written in the wake of last fall's shutdown of the Chalk River nuclear reactor and the global shortage of radioisotopes that resulted from it.

Keen responded on Tuesday with an eight-page letter accusing Lunn of improper interference and threatening to fight in court any attempt to remove her from her job.

Keen's letter... has been posted on the CNSC website along with Lunn's....

Additionally, Keen said she has asked the privacy commissioner and the RCMP to investigate how Lunn's letter was leaked to the media.

Lunn failed to notice that there have been production stoppages before without any "emergency" being publicized, because the isotope producers sell to each other when their plants have to go offline.

Hell and damnation!

Local, that is, Toronto-area imams apparently will not pray for Benazir Bhutto because she wasn't radical enough.

By Tarek Fatah and Salma Siddiqui, National Post

Ms. Bhutto had not yet received a proper burial before the attacks on her character started appearing. The vice-president of the Canadian Arab Federation circulated an article lambasting Ms. Bhutto, mocking her as stooge of the West. It did not end at that level. Haroon Siddiqui of the Toronto Star dedicated an entire column to attacking Ms. Bhutto's legacy and labelling her as corrupt and, God forbid the thought, pro-West. As if her being pro-Western was somehow anti-Canadian.

If attempts by Islamic writers to disparage Benazir Bhutto were distasteful, the conspicuous silence of Canada's Islamic organizations was equally disturbing....

At one Mississauga mosque where supporters of Ms. Bhutto had requested a prayer for their departed leader, the imam refused to utter her name from the pulpit. A few kilometres away in one of Canada's largest mosques run by the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), Skeikh Ala ElSayed refused to utter the words "Benazir Bhutto" from the pulpit, as if it was a profanity....

In another twist, the mosque hosting the prayer event to commemorate Benazir Bhutto missed the point altogether. Instead of honouring the women who came to attend the prayer event as a mark of respect for Benazir Bhutto, they were told they would not be permitted to enter the prayer area from the main entrance. All women were asked to take the rear staircase.

Faith-based schools?

The inimitable Q_pheevr has observations on the Canadian Conservative Party's campaign promise to fund more kinds of faith-based schools.

Lumps of coal for Harper

Protesters tried to deliver lumps of coal to the official residence of Canada's prime minister, Stephen Harper, to commemmorate his refusal to live up to the Kyoto agreement to limit use of fossil fuels. (Photo from Reuters)

They're trying to sneak one in on us!

News flash! Oppose the "Unborn Victims of Violence Act"

A Conservative member of the House will introduce a private member's bill that would give fetuses a form of legal personhood is scheduled to be debated in Parliament Thursday, Dec 13. This bill conflicts with women's rights and might endanger abortion rights. We need as many people as possible to send letters and emails to their Members of Parliament!

Go here for background info on the bill and arguments against it.

The bill���s real intent is to give fetuses personhood and criminalize abortion: The narrowness of the bill indicates that the real intent is not to protect women, but to give fetuses legal personhood, for no apparent reason other than to try and use it as a wedge to re-criminalize abortion.

Canadians boil over on new copyright laws

The Conservatives' proposed new copyright laws have provoked a strong negative reaction from concerned Canadians.

Critics have said the proposed legislation will mirror the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act and take a hard line against the copying of digital materials, making illegal acts such as the television time shifting enabled by digital video recorders, file-sharing of music and video files, and copying files to DVDs or MP3 players.

Michael Geist, the Canada research chair of internet and e-commerce law at the University of Ottawa, has led the charge against the bill and has accused Prentice of caving in to lobbying from U.S. entertainment companies, who are seeking to curtail digital copying in all its forms. He has also accused the minister of ignoring the wishes of regular Canadians and for not including the public in his consultations.

Isotopes over nuclear safety

Harold at Ontario geofish has an alarming report: the Canadian government is choosing isotopes over nuclear safety. Harold says:

The government has now put a lot of pressure on the CNSC to paper over their difficulties and get the reactor running again. This, despite the fact that AECL did a Conrad Black over required seismic safety upgrades...

This bottom line is that this is an old clapped-out reactor in a very active seismic zone.

AECL vs. Canadian Society of Nuclear Medicine

Harold Asmis at Ontario Geofish points out that Atomic Energy Canada Limited has been operating a reactor without a licence... and now we're going to be short of radioactive isotopes for treating cancer patients.

New bone beds are found near Grande Prairie, Alberta

New "bone beds" of dinosaur fossils are found near Grande Prairie. From the article:

The Grande Prairie area was one of the few above water during many parts of the Cretaceous period.... A bone bed at Pipestone Creek, discovered in 1974 about 30 kilometres from Grande Prairie, has long been the region's best area. Horned dinosaurs and other plant eaters have been the most common finds in the bed, where bones of many species and specimens are being excavated from stone.

It's believed to be the remains of a river where many dinosaurs died at once, and has as many as 150 bones per square metre -- five times that of Dinosaur Provincial Park, near Drumheller.

Crime rates highest in small cities

The big city has a bad reputation. But that's because we think of each city as "my town" whether it's large or small. However, statistics show that overall, small cities have higher crime rates, but rural areas have the highest murder rates.

The overall crime rate in small urban areas was 43 per cent higher than in large urban areas and 58 per cent higher than in rural areas.

Rates of total violent crime, total property crime and break-ins were also highest in small urban areas.

Of the 658 homicides in Canada in 2005 with a known location, 427 were committed in large urban areas, 95 in small urban areas and 135 in rural areas.

Taking population into account, the homicide rate of 2.5 homicides per 100,000 people in rural areas was actually higher than the rate of 2.0 in large urban areas and the rate of 1.7 in small urban areas ��� a pattern that has held constant over the past decade.

Here is a link to a report from Statistics Canada.

Teaching about risk

SmartRisk is a non-profit organization that is dedicated to reducing harm to young people. They specialize in tested and effective messages to change behaviour and reduce risk. For fifteen years, they have been doing the research, fine-tuning the messages, and expanding the programme. What they have found is that the message must be adjusted to the audience. A high school has as many as fifteen different demographic groups, which have different worldviews and interests and which interpret messages differently. They also acknowledge that the people ordering or evaluating the messages are not the intended audience.

For example, in an attempt to discourage smoking, non-smokers like to see pictures of diseased lungs; but those pictures are likely to make smokers puff away defiantly and actually smoke more.


Another difficulty is that treatment or rescue is visible and dramatic, while prevention is invisible and boring. But it can be much more effective. I hope that this programme will expand and prosper.

Canada blocks Commonwealth climate agreement

Stephen Harper is refusing to join in a British Commonwealth agreement to limit production of greenhouse gasses.

Let's review the choices:

• Try to reduce or halt global warming, and it's not happening: low-level economic pain, preserved environment
• Try to reduce or halt global warming, and it's happening: low-level economic pain, preserved environment
• Don't try to reduce or halt global warming, and it's not happening: no economic pain, preserved environment
• Don't try to reduce or halt global warming, and it's happening: no initial economic pain, no preserved environment, ecological disaster, huge economic losses, loss of life, etc.

One of those four choices is unacceptable. It's the one where we do nothing and we're screwed by the time we're sure the climate is changing.

ROM finds skeleton in its closet

You have to admit this is funny - and a real warning about the loss of "folklore" information in organizations. The Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto has a new display hall for its dinosaur fossils. The new curator of dinos, who just started this year, was told that he could go out and get a big one. While researching in the U.S.,he found a reference to a really big skeleton that the ROM already had -- but nobody back home knew about it.

The museum traded for a large dinosaur skeleton thirty years ago - but there was no room to put it up. Over the years, the bones were stored separately and everyone forgot about it -- except for the old curator, but he retired and eventually died. I think that there's a mixture of pleasure and embarrassment for the museum in finding that they have a large Barosaurus specimen that is more complete than most. It is being lovingly assembled, the missing parts duplicated if left-right or copied from other specimens, and will be mounted at the museum by December 15 It's particularly nice since the museum has a tyrannosauroid, has a duckbilled dinosaur, and has a stegosaurus - but no diplodocoid until now. That they knew of.

The picture of Barosaurus is from Wikipedia commons.

Wind storm in British Columbia

A wind storm in British Columbia has caused power outages and forced the cancellation of ferry services.

Battle of Beaumont Hamel

The First Newfoundland Regiment, on orders, walked into machine-gun fire near the village of Beaumont Hamel. It was part of the Battle of the Somme:

Among [the dead] were 255 men from the 1st Newfoundland Regiment; of the 801 men of the Newfoundland Regiment, only 68 men answered the regimental role call after the attack. 255 were dead, 386 were wounded, and 91 were listed as missing. Every officer who had gone over the top was either wounded or dead.

- brief summary
- Wikipedia article: Canada in World War I
- Canadian archives page

Take a look at Grandfather's Great War, from the Scottish regiment The Cameronians.

More about Passchendaele

I bought my third Remembrance Day poppy today. They constantly work loose and fling themselves to the ground, so by November 11, I probably won't have one to wear.

The quick history is at about.com: Passchaendale. There is, the last I heard, one surviving Canadian British veteran, Harry Patch.

That is a tank sinking in the rear centre.


It was 90 years ago this month. Greg Clark, the gentle Canadian humourist, was a veteran. The men who came back didn't talk about it. It took six men to carry a stretcher through the waist-deep mud. Men and horses drowned in the deeper parts or were buried by shell-fire. You can read here about the battle and its cost.

Tropical Storm Noel heads for Atlantic Canada

A very strong T.S. Noel, the remains of Hurricane Noel, is heading for Atlantic Canada, including some members of my extended family. I hope everyone has battened down the hatches. It looks pretty breezy under those clouds.

What computers can swirl, computers can unswirl

Pictures on the Internet led to the arrest of a Canadian gay pedophile in Thailand. He or someone else posted pictures of him raping young boys, with his head digitally "swirled" so that the face was unrecognizable. Germany's federal crimes office reversed the process (they won't say exactly how) and Interpol released a picture of the culprit. He was recognized and a recent picture was added to the clues. Now, he has been arrested and it's time to face the music. No more posting poems about how lonely street kids admire the reassuring "prowess" of the foreign visitor.

The suspect had been a seminary student. He was a teacher of English as a second language in Korea when the warrant was issued.

Men who are attracted to children of either sex tend to go where there are children. They might be youth group leaders, teachers, ministers. Men who are conflicted about their sexuality might turn to religion in their efforts to deal with the problem. They might become priests, especially the non-marrying kind. Please warn your children. If someone touches you, move away instantly. Say "No!" loudly. Say loud and clear that this is wrong and you'll tell their boss and your family. Keep backing off. Leave. Do not be intimidated by authority. They'll pick on someone else.