Hamilton scientist suing nuclear agency for $1.27M
Claims national regulator attacked his integrity, damaged his reputation
A RETIRED HAMILTON nuclear scientist has taken the unusual step of suing a federal government agency for defamation, breach of confidence and breach of privacy. Dr. Frank Greening is seeking $1.27 million in damages from the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission and its executive vice-president Ramzi Jammal over statements contained in documents posted on the commission’s website in 2014.
Greening, an expert in the area of radioactive chemistry, alleges Jammal and the commission attacked his personal integrity and damaged his reputation as a scientist in the posted documents, which were also sent by the commission to 2,000 email addresses.
None of the allegations contained in Greening’s statement of claim have been proven in court.
The CNSC has already acknowledged that it publicly posted Greening’s home address and
personal email information, which it has since removed from the website.
The commission also removed the allegedly defamatory correspondence from its website following an intervention by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada.
Greening, 70, said the stress from the lawsuit is having an effect on his health.
“It’s had a profound emotional impact on me and my family,” said Greening.
“Basically the CNSC represents the Canadian government and so what they say about me is what the Canadian government is saying about me,” Greening added.
“And what they’re saying is that I’m not a very good scientist, I’m irrational and illogical, I jump to conclusions, I don’t know what I’m talking about, and that’s totally unacceptable to me because it’s not true.”
Ottawa lawyer Richard Dearden, who is representing the CNSC, said the commission declines to comment on the lawsuit while the matter is still before the court.
In their statement of defence filed in court, CNSC and Jammal deny that their comments were defamatory. They argue that the statements were made in good faith, without malice and were necessary because the subject matter “was of significant public interest and public concern.”
The CNSC has already lost one legal skirmish in the lawsuit.
In November, the commission tried to have Jammal removed as one of the defendants, arguing that he can’t be sued personally because he was acting in his official capacity when he wrote one of the pieces of correspondence at issue.
But the judge refused the request, stating that Jammal could be held personally liable if it’s proved he wasn’t acting in good faith, and that, the judge added, will be up to a jury to decide.
NUCLEAR ENERGY provides more than half of Ontario’s electricity but with considerable costs attached to it.
For one thing, nuclear power plants are notoriously expensive to maintain and repair, often with price tags in the billions of dollars. For another, there’s no great way to dispose of used nuclear fuel bundles, which remain radioactive potential health risks for thousands of years.
Frank Greening has been pointing these things out to various government agencies for a number of years in written submissions, papers and oral presentations, and his comments have been occasionally picked up by news outlets across the country.
Originally from England, Greening came to Canada in 1968 and obtained his PhD in chemistry at McMaster University. During the 1970s, he spent a couple of years working under Dr. Gerhard Herzberg, the 1971 Nobel Prize winner in chemistry.
For more than 20 years, Greening was a nuclear chemistry expert with Ontario Hydro — now Ontario Power Generation — ultimately rising to the position of senior research scientist.
After his retirement in 2000, he served as a consultant to the Bruce Power nuclear plant from 2010 until 2014.
The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission was established in 2000 to replace the former Atomic Energy Control Board and it reports to the federal government through the Minister of Natural Resources.
The commission’s mandate is to regulate the development, production and use of nuclear energy in order to prevent unreasonable health and safety risks to people and the environment.
In 2013, CNSC completed a study of people living within 25 kilometres of the Pickering, Darlington and Bruce nuclear power plants to see if there was an increased risk of cancer between 1990 and 2008.
The RADICON study, as it was called, concluded there was no evidence of a cluster of childhood leukemias around the three nuclear plants.
In February 2014, Greening submitted a critique of the RADICON study he prepared to the president and CEO of CNSC. Greening’s critique challenged a number of the technical claims and assumptions made in the study.
Greening has also been opposed to OPG’s plans for a proposed Deep Geologic Repository, which would store nuclear waste underground in a facility on the Bruce nuclear site in Kincardine, near the shore of Lake Huron.
Among his concerns, Greening has questioned the accuracy of the radioactivity estimates of the waste that would be stored underground. In one affidavit, he claims the radioactivity of the material could in some cases be underestimated by a factor of up to 600 times.
In April 2014, Jammal responded with a letter to Greening that included an attached report authored by unnamed CNSC staff. The letter and the attachment were posted to the CNSC website with Greening’s personal contact information, and the posted material was also sent by email to about 2,000 email addresses.
Greening claims the posted material contained allegations that he was “illogical,” makes “irrational assumptions,” “does not understand the weight of evidence,” engaged in the “misuse of data,” committed “errors in understanding,” has a “lack of perspective,” and committed “just plain negligence.”
Greening also alleges that Jammal dismissed one of his observations by stating “From someone who claims to be a self-respecting scientist wanting to critique a study, I would have expected that you would have taken the time to review both the detailed technical report and the peer-reviewed paper.”
Jammal’s comment, according to the statement of claim, suggests Greening is “unworthy of respect as a scientist and should not be taken seriously.”
Marc Munro, a Hamilton lawyer who represents Greening, said it appears the CNSC is attempting to discredit Greening and “trying to shut him up.”
“I find it incredibly concerning that the regulator for the Canadian nuclear industry would spend such time and effort going after someone who’s raising legitimate concerns about the industry,” said Munro.
“It betrays a pettiness that should not exist in an organization such as the CNSC.”
In their statement of defence, the CNSC and Jammal stated Greening’s critique “contained a number of attacks on the validity and credibility of the RADICON study.”
They state the words they used are not defamatory, they have a qualified privilege to defend the CNSC’s reputation, and they did not act maliciously.
The CNSC and Jammal also note that Greening has been an active public participant and intervener in the past on a number of issues, and that he had indicated he intended to submit his critique for publication in a peer-reviewed journal.
In light of that, they state, Greening “was actively inviting public debate in regards to his critique of the RADICON study.”
What’s interesting is that a couple of Canadian doctors wrote their own critique of the RADICON study that came to many of the same conclusions noted by Greening in his critique. The doctors’ critique is posted on the website of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment but wasn’t submitted to the CNSC. It faults the RADICON study for poor design, making false claims and employing “meaningless” mathematical models.
Yet one of the co-authors of the critique said they never heard directly or indirectly from CNSC about their criticisms and “they did not respond to it as far as I know.
“I do not know why the CNSC responded to Dr. Greening the way they did and why they did not respond similarly to us,” stated Dr. Cathy Vakil, who is also a member of the Queen’s University medical faculty.