NUCLEAR watchdogs have a straightforward job to do: safeguard the public and workers at nuclear plants from the well-established dangers of nuclear power. Not so in Canada, apparently, where the head of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, Linda Keen, found herself without a job last week when the government took offence at her shutting down a reactor whose safety was causing concern.
The reactor, at Chalk River, Ontario, makes more than half the world’s medical isotopes, the type used in diagnostic imaging for cancer or heart disease. Closing it down led to an acute shortage of these isotopes, and the…
