Blessed by the Potato

I’m in favour of nuclear energy for Canada. While it does have a history of delays and cost-overruns, the delays are often a result of making sure that we implement it safely. Plus even at double the cost, nuclear power is still one of the very cheapest forms of energy available to us, and the only large-scale carbon-free source we can count on for the medium term. There are hazards with nuclear power. The risks are very remote, but when things go wrong, they have the capability to go very wrong (whereas with other sources of power, the risks associated with them occur more frequently, but usually are more minor). However, Canada has a reactor design that is inherently safe, and a strong history of keeping things above-board and putting safety as one of the highest priorities (which is part of where all the crazy budget overruns come from).

…until the Harper government decided to thwart the nuclear regulator in order to bring the NRU reactor in Chalk River up sooner. The NRU shutdown has had a big effect on nuclear medicine scans across the country, and in fact, across the continent. Somehow, this one reactor had come to be the dominant source of molybednum-99 for much of the world, with no backups, anywhere. The shortage has turned the nuclear medicine corridor at my hospital into a ghost town, with the tiny bit of remaining isotopes used strictly for emergency patients. There was a stockpiling process before the reactor went off-line, but since the isotopes break down so quickly that could only last for a few weeks, and as the shutdown stretches on still…

Personally, I think the reactor probably could be turned on for at least a short while to do another round of stockpiling, and then upgrades can be made over the next year a week or two at a time as necessary, while keeping the medical isotopes flowing.

But I must strongly disagree with what the Harper government is doing here. Politicians do not have the expertise necessary to say with any degree of confidence things like:

“There will be no nuclear accident,” Prime Minister Stephen Harper asserted in the House of Commons, saying the government has received independent advice indicating there is no safety concern.

“On the contrary, what we do know is that the continuing actions of the Liberal-appointed Nuclear Safety Commission will jeopardize the health and safety and lives of tens of thousands of Canadians. We do have the responsibility to demand that Parliament step in and fix this situation before the health of more people is put in jeopardy.”

The Harper government has a nasty habit of closing up and relying on “independent advice” without ever sharing its sources with the public, and this is absolutely not the time for that kind of bullshit. Likewise, it’s not time to throw in nasty, probably untrue snipes at the Liberals (Hey, “Canada’s New Government” you’ve been at it for well over a year), especially as the spendiest government in our history has found billions for Quebec, arctic patrol routes, etc, but didn’t bother to throw some money at the new Maple generators until a crisis hit.

This is not an issue that should be politicized: in fact, that’s the sort of thing that makes nuclear reactors dangerous. Design them well, operate them meticulously, listen to the careful watchdogs, and spend the money it takes, and then we can all benefit from nuclear reactors (whether for energy or isotope production).

Well, with the Canadian dollar being high there is a lot of talk in the media about buying a car in the states and importing it. There are a lot of cases where that can save you a lot of money, sometimes as much as a quarter of the cost of the car. There are all kinds of artificial trade barriers put up (so much for NAFTA) to try to prevent people from doing this. Some manufacturer’s won’t honour the warranty if a car is bought across the border. Toyota for one does honour the warranty, but makes it difficult by threatening to close down any dealers that sell to Canadians, so finding one is difficult (often, I’ve heard that finding one in a border state is nearly impossible, but if you’re willing to drive a few states further south, that there is a chance of finding a dealer who will take the chance, or not even know about the prohibition). The government also puts up a few barriers, such as making sure that the car is suitable for use in Canada, with daytime running lights, an metric instrumentation (or a sticker indicating to the driver and potential future buyers that the instruments are not metric).

Now another barrier has been put up with a recent rule about engine immobilizers. When I first heard about this, I actually thought it was a decent rule, since my car had been stolen twice. However, after seeing what thieves will do to get at cars with immobilizers I have second thoughts. Doubly so after seeing that the RIV is using the “lack” of immobilizers as a reason to prevent cars bought in the States from crossing the border. Note that these cars don’t actually lack immobilizers — the Prius system, for instance, is supposed to be nigh-impossible to start without the key or a sophisticated RF-cryptographic system. It’s just that it doesn’t have exactly the right type of immobilizer, so it can’t enter the country.

And it boggles my mind why the government would force auto makers to produce unique models for the Canadian market for things like engine immobilizers, but be unwilling to do so for emissions control (and even then it wouldn’t be different than California and the other CARB states, just the dirty states!).

Update: Another story about this in the Globe: drivers can bring their cars across the border to park them at home until this is worked out, but they can’t get them plated.

I talk a lot about risk management, and risk-benefit ratios… you’d think I was in insurance or something. Anyhow, here’s a little YouTube video on the risks of action vs inaction on global weirding that you might enjoy.

Personally, I also think that we should be taking more actions on global warming, and that the “economic risks” are vastly overstated by some. There are a large number of low-hanging fruit to grab that won’t really affect our economy much, if at all.

So one country pretty much unilaterally changed the way we implement the dubious daylight savings time system.

Yes, the Americans broke time.

The effects were felt this Halloween as it didn’t get dark until a full hour after it usually did, so we didn’t get any really cute, really little kids (who are usually tuckered out and ready for bed by 7:30, when our first trick-or-treater came around this year). Of course, this was also our first Halloween in this house, so we couldn’t say for sure that the screwy change in when it gets dark was responsible for that, or if it’s just a characteristic of the neighbourhood.

I like daylight savings time — that is, summer time. If it didn’t screw with Halloween, I wouldn’t mind it running late. Since I’m not much of a morning person, I much prefer to have daylight in the afternoon. I dislike waking up in the dark, and imagine most people do too, but I also dislike being stuck at work until after dark. The few times I do wake up early in the winter, an hour here or there often wouldn’t make a difference: it’s dark. The energy saving rationale, while hard to ascertain for certain, doesn’t seem to hold water any more. Air conditioning use accounts for way more energy than lighting in the summer, and while heating/cooling is closer to neutral in the fall (so lighting might be a factor), it’s also a period of very low energy demand in general for that reason. So, there isn’t as much of a benefit to screwing with schedules this year to save energy in the fall, since that’s one of the few times of the year when most of the generating is baseline (hydroelectric, nuclear, etc).

And I hate the return to “standard time” (odd that it’s named that, since the majority of the year falls under DST). The extra hour one night in the fall, ok, I like that. And it’s a much easier shift to work into the sleep schedule. But I just don’t like it getting dark so early!

Maybe Saskatchewan has it right after all: year-long DST.

There was an article in the London Free Press today about a lack of skilled workers in the city. (Note: the LFP has pretty terrible online retention, this article may not be accessible after a week).

A London company is poised to grow, hiring as sales increase — but it will have to expand outside the city.

Autodata Solutions is an example of how the shortage of skilled workers is hurting the city’s economic growth.
…
In fact, 62 per cent of companies said they faced a shortage of qualified candidates and another 29 per cent said they had trouble finding people to relocate here.
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The most ambitious of the plans is to bring more than 1,000 students from Fanshawe College and the University of Western Ontario to the London Convention Centre in January to meet with businesses looking for workers.
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For companies such as Autodata Solutions, which cannot find software developers, the labour shortage has had a serious effect.
…
Over the last year, the company has hired about 100, and it now employs about 200.

“The problem is we do not need people out of school. We need workers with three to five years’ experience. The issue is skill,” said Lisa Harrison, director of human resources. “I would prefer to grow here; we love London, we’d be happier if we could find people here.”

[Emphasis mine]

This is just retarded. It’s not that there’s a shortage of skilled workers: this is a university town, with way more skilled workers graduating every year than the city can possibly hire all by itself. The problem is with a lack of skilled, experienced workers. But companies have to realize that someone has to hire recent grads in order for them to get skilled. Yes, they’ll need a bit more training, but they also cost less at first, so it’s a bit of an investment, really. After all, someone with 3 years seniority at another company will still need to be trained to the specificities of your company. It might take only a few months instead of a year or two, but it will hardly take 3 years for a recent grad to actually catch up in the experience specific to your company. If nobody in the city hires recent grads, then the grads move away. And once they move, it’s very hard to get them to come back. While many students may come here with a plan to move to Toronto as soon as their finals are done, there must be a substantial portion who would stay if they had a local job offer within weeks of graduation.

As one advances in life beyond graduation, one tends to settle down, start a family, etc. Once that happens, it becomes hard to convince one to move cities for a job. Especially considering how difficult the “two-body problem” is to solve in London. If I am a talented, experienced software engineer, there may be a nice selection of jobs for me. But if my wife is a teacher or librarian, then there might be no work for her, and I might instead try to find a job for myself in a larger city like Toronto or Ottawa, where we could both find jobs. These factors make it much harder to lure someone away from another city as they progress in life, and again the solution appears to be hiring recent grads and training them up within the company. Get them while they’re single, then keep them while they put down roots here, and it might even help reduce turn over down the road.

If indeed this one company in London has hired 100 skilled employees over the last year, how many of those really needed to be veterans, and how many could have been trained in house? If they have a need for another 100 in the next year or two, how much easier and how much sooner could those positions be filled with local recent grads than job searches abroad? Is it better to have a position lay vacant for a year while one searches for an experienced employee than it is to hire a fresh employee and have them trained up by the end of that year?

And, moreover, how much does training cost vs. opening another branch?

The company is looking to add branches outside London and is considering the United States, Guelph and Windsor, where there are workers.

“Our growth will not be in London and the skills shortage here is a big part of the issue,” Harrison said.

There may be skilled workers in Guelph and Windsor at the moment, but with cities that are even smaller than London, how stable is that job market/pool of workers?