Re: [Bulk] Re: [Bulk] Re: [cdn-nucl-l] Urgent enough to restart?

[Randal Leavitt <randal.leavitt@rogers.com>]

Andrew Daley wrote:
> Does that not strike anyone else as profoundly stupid?
Yes - at all levels.  And perhaps corrupt too - at all levels.  The fact 
that most of the details remain hidden does not make me feel better 
either.  It is a mess.

What can we learn from this?  I think serious questions have to be 
raised about the use of people watching people as our primary means for 
ensuring safety.  Sure, this technique has some value, but it is not 
good enough for a long term solution.  Let me try to make one suggestion 
just to hint at what I am thinking about - perhaps the people working as 
reactor operators and the people on the CNSC should change jobs every 
six months.  The amount of documentation needed to support this level of 
turnover might make it possible to automate the surveillance of 
operating reactors.  The inefficient review-approval meetings could 
become a thing of the past.  A lot of money and labour could be saved 
while increasing the effectiveness of the control function.

Looking at this from another angle - what is safety?  Clearly, not 
having isotopes available is unsafe.  Why is AECL allowed to run an 
isotope service with only one reactor?  Clearly there should be three 
NRUs and the CNSC should insist on this - i.e. pragmatic approaches to 
real safety, not imaginary approaches to theoretical safety.  If AECL 
cannot provide a safe isotope service in this sense then they should get 
out of the business.  And someone should pull the plug on the Maple 
project, or else call in some Russian experts and fix it.

What I am trying to say is that we need a lot of creative thinking to 
lift the nuclear power industry to the level of general acceptance that 
will lead to wide-spread use.  This thinking is needed on the regulation 
side as much as it is needed on the technical-physics side.  The goal on 
the regulation side would be to reduce the burden of such things as the 
CNSC on the industry while increasing its effectiveness.

-- 
Randal Leavitt - another Ubuntu user
http://positiveenergy.blogspot.com/
http://www.simpy.com/user/randalleavitt/links
http://tinyurl.com/hgvmg