Abstract
The World Association of Nuclear Operators (WANO) evaluated the Bruce nuclear power station in Ontario, Canada, in 1998. But it was not until last October that a copy of WANO's report was made public, pried loose from the provincial government by a freedom of information request.
It certainly seemed as if the public ought to have been tipped off about the report earlier. There were problems at the government-owned plant, WANO declared, and they weren't trivial. For instance, plant operators had no handle on essential facts–like how long it would take for the water in the reactors to begin to boil away if the coolant water were blocked (Canadian Press, October 15, 2001). Other findings included the distressing news that plant workers disconnected warning alarms they regarded as too noisy, and that more than 2,500 changes made over the plant's working life had not been added to design manuals, making it difficult to know exactly how the reactors operated.
Jim Wilson, Ontario's energy minister, explained that the report needed to be kept secret for reasons of security: Although the information and privacy commissioner had declared there was “a compelling interest for the public to have nuclear safety information,” Wilson said government officials “need to deal with those issues in confidence.” He added that the report could always be made public later, “when appropriate.”
But it's difficult to say when Wilson's “later” might be. It was certainly not last October, three years after the report was issued. The public should not have been given information about the plant then, he said, because “terrorists might get a leg up.”
When questioned by the provincial legislature, Wilson had an opening to be conciliatory. He was told that On-tarians would have peace of mind if only they were told of the improvements that had surely been made at Bruce since 1998. But Wilson was unwilling to tell either the legislature or the public what steps had been taken to correct the plant's problems.
Instead, the citizens of Ontario were left to ponder WANO's ambiguous report update–that Bruce had become “one of the fastest improving plants in North America.”
On October 12, at about the same moment that the public in Ontario was learning that the provincial government ranked its bureaucracy's internal security above safety, U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft was giving the same business to Americans. Using the tragic events of September 11 as cover, Ashcroft urged government agencies to deny Freedom of Information Act requests made by American citizens. “When you carefully consider FOIA requests and decide to withhold records in whole or in part, you can be assured that the Department of Justice will defend your decisions,” Ashcroft wrote.
And as for revealing information later, or “when appropriate”: In November, President George W. Bush issued Executive Order 13233, seeking to rescind by decree the Presidential Records Act of 1978, to make sure that in addition to protecting the foolish or illegal acts of current government officials from public scrutiny, the acts of earlier fools and scoundrels may remain hidden as well.