I believe I understood the question.
Thank you for your question.
The stated reason that the NRU reactor is being shut down is a financial reason, because the cost of running the NRU reactor is in excess of $100 million a year. Shutting down the reactor is a bit of a shock to the scientific system and perhaps the impact on materials researchers who come to use the beams at the NRU reactor was not realized. What can we do to preserve that capability, while Canada takes a breath and thinks about the future, rather than throw the baby out with the bathwater, by accident perhaps?
What we are proposing is that we ramp up a national program that uses access to other neutron sources temporarily, perhaps for 10 years, so that the scientists and the thought leaders can maintain a Canadian program and a Canadian community. This would enable science to continue and young people to be trained, rejuvenation of the community, and also have a pool of expertise that can inform future government decisions about possibly investing in a replacement for the NRU reactor. This is something that seems to be very far down the road, but if you lose that expertise now, you have a voice missing at the time you're thinking about that kind of investment.
There's a twofold benefit that we're trying to preserve and it's not just because we're old guys with a little bit of white in our beards and we want to keep doing the same old thing. There's a true belief that the knowledge you get from neutron beams research on materials benefits every part of Canadian society and delivers benefits to the world in health, safety, transportation, communication, and all sorts of things that affect the lives of everyone.