The [Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission] has been paying the Canadian Standards Association (CSA) millions of dollars to develop nuclear safety regulations on its behalf. That’s a problem because the CNSC is responsible for regulations, not the CSA, and because the CSA has no background whatsoever in nuclear safety.
[…]
In May of 2013, RestoreCSA contacted the CNSC. We wanted to know which CNSC regulations had been outsourced to the CSA and at what cost. To our happy surprise, they furnished some data. Here’s what we found therein.
Eighty-two percent of current CSA nuclear standards are included in the CNSC regulatory framework. That’s a lot of outsourcing! In trade for the use of CSA’s standards, the CNSC pays over $500k per year to the CSA. But the CNSC also “contributes” 440 person days to the CSA’s nuclear committees. We asked the CNSC if the cost of this contribution was included in the $500k per year figure. The CNSC replied on May 30, 2013 that staff contributions are external to the $500k per year figure but they couldn’t tell us what the actual staff value was because “the financial value of the staff effort in Table 8 has not been calculated at this time.” But the CNSC Evaluation Report notes that the “additional costs to Standards development borne by CNSC staff” was internally estimated at $495,563 in 2012.
In sum then, the CNSC is sending $1,008,888 to the CSA every year in payment for the CSA’s development of the CNSC’s nuclear regulations.
But what about the 440 person days of CNSC staff time? What do you suppose those CNSC staff are doing? Lets recall that the CNSC is Canada’s nuclear regulator, they’re our national nuclear experts. The CSA on the other hand, has no nuclear expertise at all. In this context, on September 23, 2013, we wrote to the CNSC to ask some pointed questions. What, exactly, are these 440 person days for?
[…]
Alright, if the CSA has no nuclear expertise whatsoever and only brings administrative assistance to the committee, if the CNSC would draw on the same nuclear expertise if they formed their own committee, if the CNSC is actually mandated by the Government to do all of this, and if the CSA’s administrative services are astoundingly expensive, then why is the CNSC washing regulations through the CSA?
Consider that the Nuclear Safety and Control Act contains the following provision: “Nothing in this section relieves the [CNSC] of liability in respect of a tort or extra-contractual civil liability to which the [CNSC] would otherwise be subject.” In contrast, the CSA has been repeatedly afforded broad immunities from civil litigation, well beyond those typical to the civil service. Washing nuclear regulations through the CSA affords a greater degree of immunity to the CNSC for any liabilities associated with them.
Meh, what the hell, standards were made to compromise – and skim for a few bucks doing it – capiche? .
Perhaps a little auditing of CSA books could be somewhat illuminating here.
Things like this are rarely a self-inspired phenomena, somewhere along the line a politician is getting his pocket filled.
More BS from PSKnight.
” Washing nuclear regulations through the CSA affords a greater degree of immunity to the CNSC for any liabilities associated with them.”
The entire premise hangs on this statement, and it’s wrong. Nothing including any immunity the CSA may have relieves the CNSC of any of its obligations and responsibilities in any way. Read the NSC Act.
Well, if the CSA, and not the CNSC, made the regulation, the CNSC can’t be sued for not enforcing it.
Kind of obvious an entity can’t be sued for something another entity did.
Go back and read my posts in the earlier thread on this topic. The CSA doesn’t make regulations for the CNSC.
The CSA doesn’t make regulations for the CNSC.
So, why can the CSA amend regulations drafted by the CSA without CNSC review?
Again?
It doesn’t. It amends its STANDARDS based on the conclusions of its expert committees, which includes CNSC staff. The CNSC then incorporates these standards by reference in its REGULATIONS. It is the regulatory documents which are binding on licensees; the standards are only binding by reference. CSA nuclear expert committees work by unanimity. All committee members must agree on the entire draft standard. Hence, a standard won’t get adopted if it doesn’t meet CNSC requirements because the CNSC reps will simply veto it.
And to repeat my earlier points, the CNSC gets the best of both worlds through this system. It costs them far less than it would to build an in-house department of their own. They have all the principal industry experts on specific topics drafting the standards. And they have absolute veto power over anything they don’t like that isn’t in accord with the CNSC mandate of protection of the public.
This is why PSKnight is full of crapola. He’s squawking about a lousy $500K. It would cost the CNSC at least 10 to fifty times that amount on an annual basis to maintain in-house expertise on all of the areas being covered. We know this for hard fact, because the CNSC tried to do just this in the 1990s.
The CNSC then incorporates these standards by reference in its REGULATIONS. It is the regulatory documents which are binding on licensees; the standards are only binding by reference.
Which, of course, would lessen CNSC liability in a lawsuit. They can prove due diligence by referencing CSA. Who cannot be sued.
No it doesn’t lessen the CNSC liability. It has absolute responsibility for its actions or lack thereof under the Nuclear Safety and Control Act.
CGH … I agree with you on most of this. I think that in this case PS Knight has flopped a dead hand.
That being said, their fundamental question “Who owns the standards?” remains unanswered.
In any case, the exposure of CSA practices is important.
As an aside, that figure of $1 million or so in fees for drafting and publishing the standards (as you pointed out) is perfectly justifiable. The cost to a manufacturer to produce a simple owners manual for a tractor or a piece of construction equipment or for a truck or car is easily that much. Repair and service manuals start at five times that figure.
It amends its STANDARDS based on the conclusions of its expert committees, which includes CNSC staff.
Except neither the CNSC staff, or the CSA, can be held liable.
Anyway, why is the CNSC creating regulations in which they have little expertise? Who pays in the case of liability? I’m betting the consumer and taxpayer would pay in the end.
Seems to me it’s an empty shell for the laundering of consumer and taxpayer money. The CSA and CNSC staff being beneficiaries without risk.
Ommag, I agree with you regarding the costs of these things. I’ve seen cases with things like standards for pressure-retaining components that literally took the better part of half a decade and thousands of hours, essentially volunteered by the leading industry engineers to develop these things. And that was the low-cost way of doing this. If the CNSC had to develop this in-house capacity…well it would simply be impossible. There’s maybe two or three dozen experts in Canada on the impact of neutrons on materials under high pressure and in a chemically-active environment, just to use one example. So, it borrows the expertise of industry to write these things, uses the CSA process to ensure that it has veto power over whatever comes out of the consultion process, ensures the quality and lowers the cost for everyone involved.
The ownership of CSA standards may indeed be an issue. I have no particular comment or view on that. But PSKnight distorts how nuclear regulation and product liability actually works.
Strad, I’m not going to waste time and hours spoon-feeding you how the law works. Go read the Nuclear Liability Act. Go read the Nuclear Safety and Control Act and its associated regulations. You can have all the meaningless opinions you want but they have no bearing on how things actually work.
Veto power is also a dandy way to funnel more money into the process.
CGH, The strength of your rebuttal may be compromised somewhat by the tone in which you make it. Regardless, the Acts that you direct people to are actually linked within the article at RestoreCSA, the liabilities and exemptions that you’re questioning actually do exist and are also linked within the article, and an equivalent CNSC process cannot be more expensive if they use the same volunteer experts in the same way for the same result. While we should all welcome a friendly debate, I respectfully suggest that your argument is facing some facts and mathematics challenges.
“…an equivalent CNSC process cannot be more expensive if they use the same volunteer experts in the same way for the same result.”
That’s the point. The CNSC would have to hire its own talent to build an entirely indigenous capacity. It would not get it on a volunteer basis, which is the advantage of using the CSA for this. Moreover, by the CNSC doing it, it would place the discussion of technical issues on an adversarial basis, whereas by using the CSA as a neutral ground, industry and regulators can discuss purely technical matters on a collegial basis. Worse, by building their own capacity out of a very limited pool they run the severe risk of getting it wrong, which was the actual case in the past.
…whereas by using the CSA as a neutral ground, industry and regulators can discuss purely technical matters on a collegial basis.
I always get a little suspicious when natural adversaries get all ‘collegial’. Especially when it’s behind closed doors with no records and no liability attached.
So, what’s the difference between all that ‘collegiality’ and regulatory capture?
Especially when an adversarial system works well in every other area, from competition in business to justice.
I think you have made your case, quite successfully, re: the cost of managing the safety regulatory environment.
On the other hand, given that it is a major public policy issue (folks may not know this yet), I would be interested (Oxford Union style) to hear your views on the Nuclear Liability Act (NLA), which you very adroitly (slyly?) raised, to wit:
“Resolved: the NLA promotes the safe, sustainable and growing use of nuclear energy for the generation of electric power in support of economic development, to the betterment of humankind.”
Which, by the way, is a great point, a propos of Ontario, which has no proper adversarial system with respect to electricity GT&D.
Just sell’em to the pension funds. Let’s get over this bunkum that the Lt.-Gov-in-Council can legitmately appoint the members of the Ontario Energy Board, while at the same time appointing the members of the boards of Ontario Hydro’s successor companies, and farther on down and farther afield.
Let the pension funds manage the behaviour of their own employees, rather than the current government failure system, which comes with your very own Syd Ryan dashboard bobblehead attachment…