Evidence of meeting #37 for Natural Resources in the 39th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was reactors.
A recording is available from Parliament.
12:50 p.m.
Nuclear Safety Consultant, As an Individual
I'm not quite sure I follow the question. Do you mean in terms of the degree of enrichment in the uranium?
12:55 p.m.
Nuclear Safety Consultant, As an Individual
The fuel that would be made would be subject to very stringent checks and balances in making sure that the right amount of uranium was in the fuel and that the fuel met the design specifications. There's a very rigorous process, particularly with enriched fuel, and of course the target is a highly enriched fuel. There are very rigorous processes that control the degree of uranium in each of the fuel bundles.
12:55 p.m.
Conservative
12:55 p.m.
Nuclear Safety Consultant, As an Individual
Yes, they would have done that.
12:55 p.m.
Conservative
Cheryl Gallant Conservative Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON
Are there other entities or reactors or potential customers for this very same enriched fuel?
12:55 p.m.
Nuclear Safety Consultant, As an Individual
If we take the highly enriched material, there are a number or research reactors around the world that still use enriched uranium in their fuel. There is, however, a general push around the world to reduce the use of highly enriched uranium and move to low-enriched uranium. That is really for nuclear proliferation purposes. There is a strong push around the world to do that. With MAPLE 2, there has been a push to look at what can be done in the future to change the fuel from highly enriched uranium to low-enriched uranium, but that was a question for the future.
12:55 p.m.
Conservative
Cheryl Gallant Conservative Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON
That was evolution down the way.
Are you aware of any interest from other private companies to develop a nuclear reactor for medical isotope production, either in Canada or internationally?
12:55 p.m.
President, MDS Nordion
In terms of a commercially viable operation, no, I'm not. Actually, people came to us some years ago and said they thought they had a design that might work, but it was purely a paper design. At the time we were looking at MAPLE coming on stream, so I don't think we were in the position of investing in a second technology--
12:55 p.m.
Conservative
Cheryl Gallant Conservative Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON
Are you aware of other national governments that are interested in developing a nuclear reactor for medical isotope production?
12:55 p.m.
President, MDS Nordion
We have heard of discussion in the United States, because there is concern, obviously, in the medical community about the long-term supply of isotopes. We're aware that there has been discussion by the Department of Energy, a U.S. government institution, about possibly expanding a reactor in the United States. There has been discussion.
12:55 p.m.
Conservative
Cheryl Gallant Conservative Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON
Is that the same source of your enriched fuel?
12:55 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Leon Benoit
Thank you, Ms. Gallant.
We will have two minutes from each party wishing to question again, starting with Mr. Tonks from the official opposition.
12:55 p.m.
Liberal
Alan Tonks Liberal York South—Weston, ON
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you very much for being here. I found it really very enlightening. I didn't know anything about it and still don't know that much, but thank you very much for giving the overview. People, especially patients and consumers out there, are very concerned about what the future holds.
I have a question that was prepared by our researcher, so I will go to you, Mr. Waddington.
The South Koreans have their HANARO 30-megawatt nuclear reactor, and it's MAPLE-based technology, apparently. Is that the kind of system that could be converted to produce isotopes? That is a searching question, inasmuch as Mr. West has indicated that internationally there is a real shortage.
Could you address that issue, please?
12:55 p.m.
Nuclear Safety Consultant, As an Individual
Theoretically I would say yes for somebody who uses the same fuel. The main driver fuel in the HANARO reactor is similar to that in MAPLE. It would not be a small matter: you'd have to do a complete new physics analysis, because you replace some of the normal fuel with this very specialized target fuel from which you harvest radioisotopes. That's a very specialized fuel and gives you very strange flux shapes; that is, if you look at the neutron density across the core, in a power reactor you'd generally like a nice smooth shape and for it to be very nice and predictable. When you put a small amount of highly enriched uranium in a small spot to give you your source of isotopes, you get very big peaks in flux shapes, so you'd have to go through that physics analysis and so on.
But theoretically, I would imagine it is possible.
12:55 p.m.
Conservative
1 p.m.
Conservative
Mike Allen Conservative Tobique—Mactaquac, NB
Thank you.
Mr. Waddington, you said you could not predict if you were running at a positive coefficient, and you said you could if it was small. Using your 10 millimetre analogy, what is small?
My second question is, if it continues to operate, what is the result?
1 p.m.
Nuclear Safety Consultant, As an Individual
First of all, let's clarify what is small. When I was talking about 10 millimetres, I was using an example of what the rods do to illustrate how the process works.
Reactivity itself is measured in milli-k. I won't bore you with the physics, if I may, but basically the reactor currently is operating with a positive power coefficient of around plus 3 milli-k, when it was designed for minus 1 milli-k.
Again, this would be a decision for the CNSC to make, not me, but if you understood exactly what was causing it and you were running with a positive power coefficient around 1 milli-k, or somewhere around that, I would have thought you could make a safety case to the CNSC.
The effect of a small positive reactivity like that would mean that you would change the speed at which you could move the control rods up and down. You'd slow them down a bit to compensate for the fact that you have a slight positive reactivity in there, and as long as you were quite small with that positive, the slowing down of the control rods would still leave you with a viable production unit.
Basically, the MAPLE reactor has to be shut down at regular points to remove the isotope material for Nordion and then it's restarted. If you do that too slowly, you get buildup of xenon in the reactor, which then poisons the reactor out, and you can't start it for a long time, some 36 hours or so. So there is a window of opportunity there where you shut the reactor down, remove your radioisotopes for harvesting, and restart it. That's a function of the speed with which you can move control rods and things like that, so there is a limit to how positive you can go for that purpose.
1 p.m.
Conservative
Mike Allen Conservative Tobique—Mactaquac, NB
On a point of clarification, Mr. Chair, about the second question, if he has to answer it in writing, that's fine.
1 p.m.
Conservative
Mike Allen Conservative Tobique—Mactaquac, NB
The second question was what happens if you do run it at that positive coefficient. Was your answer that you manage the rods?
1 p.m.
Nuclear Safety Consultant, As an Individual
Yes, it was. That was the answer to the second question. You can run it safely, but you would have to run it a little slower.
1 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Leon Benoit
Thank you very much.
Thank you to all of you for coming today. The information you have given has been very helpful. Mr. Waddington, in particular, managed to take a very complex subject and simplify it for the committee. That is much appreciated.
We will continue with this study on Thursday. Until then, the meeting is adjourned.