Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee. I'm pleased to be here. My name is Gordon Edwards, and my background is in mathematics and physics. I've acted as a consultant, part time, on nuclear matters for over 30 years. I have been qualified as an expert on nuclear safety matters by federal courts, royal commissions, and tribunals in both Canada and the United States. I'm a co-founder and am president of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility, a non-governmental organization based in Montreal.
I'm pleased that the parliamentarians on this committee are looking into nuclear issues that ultimately affect all Canadians. I believe that parliamentary accountability of Atomic Energy of Canada Limited should be regularized. Once a year at least, I believe, AECL should be required to appear before a parliamentary committee to update its members on accomplishments and unresolved problems. Had this been the practice, parliamentarians would have had a better context to work with during the isotope crisis. They would have known that AECL was many years behind schedule in bringing the two MAPLE reactors online.
These brand-new isotope production reactors, as you know, were intended to replace the NRU reactor some years ago. It was the intention of AECL to retire the NRU reactor permanently by 2005 at the latest. Although the MAPLE reactors were started up half a dozen years ago, serious defects in construction and design affecting the control rods, the shut-off rods, and the control of the power level have prevented them from performing their intended function--the production of isotopes.
Parliamentarians would also have known that AECL had over two years to perform all the safety upgrades on the 50-year-old NRU reactor, including the task of connecting an emergency power supply to the reactor pumps. AECL had not done this by December 2007, although the CNSC had been told two years earlier that all safety upgrades were completed. In fact, AECL had not even acquired the necessary equipment to carry out the job with a minimum of delay at the next opportunity--i.e., at the next maintenance shutdown.
Meanwhile, the private company, MDS Nordion, did little to alert the medical community or the other suppliers of isotopes that Canada's isotopes supply could suffer an interruption. The MAPLE reactors were way behind schedule and way over budget. Canada's entire supply of medical isotopes was depending upon a geriatric reactor past its retirement date that was not operating according to modern standards of reactor safety, yet no heads-up was apparently given to the other players.
As you know, an article in the Canadian Medical Association Journal on Monday charged that the isotope crisis could have been avoided if MDS Nordion had simply cooperated more closely with Europe's two large-scale isotope suppliers, Nuclear Research and Consultancy Group in the Netherlands and the Institut National des Radioéléments in Belgium.
It seems that this private company, MDS Nordion, the only agency that is making a profit from Canada's isotopes business, has managed to escape responsibility for the isotopes crisis in the eyes of the government. In my view, it's a perfect example of “lemon socialism”: the private company takes the profits and the public gets the lemons.
I believe the firing of Linda Keen was unjustified and unwise. In my view, she was just doing her job. It was a classic example of shooting the messenger rather than listening to the message.
The message is that AECL is not functioning as well as it should, and something should be done about that. The message is also that MDS Nordion is not doing its job of ensuring an uninterrupted supply of isotopes for the medical community, nor alerting the medical community properly of possible difficulties.
CCNR has always held that the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission should not be reporting to Parliament through the Minister of Natural Resources but through another ministry. That way, when a conflict develops between the nuclear regulator and AECL, there would be two voices at the cabinet table instead of just one. The Minister of Natural Resources, who is responsible for AECL, finds himself in a conflict of interest, forced to choose between the developer or the regulator. This is not correct. Unless this situation is rectified by having CNSC report to a different minister, I see little prospect for Canada to have a truly effective, independent nuclear regulatory agency.
It seems clear that the isotope crisis was caused by actions and omissions of AECL and MDS Nordion rather than by CNSC, who merely blew the whistle. Firing Linda Keen will not prevent future shortages of isotopes. The MAPLE reactors may never operate as planned, despite the fact that their cost has soared beyond all expectations.
There is another dark cloud on the horizon, one that all parliamentarians should be concerned about. AECL is still using highly enriched uranium target elements in order to produce molybdenum-99 for sale by MDS Nordion. Highly enriched uranium is an immediately weapons-usable material. Any criminal or terrorist organization obtaining a few kilograms of HEU could make a powerful nuclear explosive device. The presence of such strategic nuclear material at Chalk River explains why the bus that carried journalists to tour the NRU reactor after it restarted had several guards armed with machine guns.
With a change of administration in the United States following the upcoming elections, it is entirely possible that the shipments of this strategic nuclear material from the United States to Canada will be stopped. Thus we may be facing a new isotope crisis in just a few years' time.
There is a U.S. federal law called the Schumer Amendment, which seeks to eliminate all traffic in weapons-usable nuclear materials. Some years ago, the Nuclear Control Institute in Washington, D.C., launched a lawsuit in U.S. Federal Court to prevent any further shipments of highly enriched uranium to Chalk River.