Thank you.
We have talked about all reactors experiencing fuel failures from time to time and that there are no safety consequences to the public, the employees, or the reactor. Now, in this situation, should there be a fuel failure as a consequence of a seismic event.... It's my understanding that a severe earthquake would have to occur with its epicentre directly under the NRU reactor at Chalk River, and there's no record of that ever happening. The provincial power grid would have to fail. Backup diesel power and backup battery power supplies would have to be knocked out. There would have to be no NRU operating staff available to take any action. After about half an hour, the reactor coolant would begin to boil. After about an hour, the reactor coolant would be boiled away, and we would have the onset of fuel failure. If all these situations arose in order, the radiation exposure to the workers would be less than half the radiation exposure received from a CT scan.
So why was it so critical to the CNSC to keep AECL in shutdown indefinitely and deprive the cancer patients of their treatments?