Thank you for the invitation.
I'd like to give a few points of information about my background. I have a PhD in nuclear physics from Yale University. I've had two careers, a 21-year career at the AT&T Bell Labs in New Jersey, during which I spent three years at the Sandia National Laboratories working on high-power laser projects. Over the last 20 years I've been a professor at Laval University in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. So this is my second career in Canada. I spent a total of 26 years in the United States. For ten years in the United States I was part of the energy policy committee of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. We used to meet in Washington about every two months, and we discussed all aspects of energy, including nuclear power.
I often asked my colleagues, some of whom were nuclear engineers, what they thought about the Canadian reactors, and they were not impressed because they thought the Canadian reactors had all these tubes that were exposed to a high neutron flux and became very fragile and were subject to bursting. When I came to Canada and I was invited by some ecological groups to look into nuclear power, I looked at it very critically. Many people have asked me what competence I have in nuclear power in Canada, and I can tell you that I have read 4,000 pages of documentation from AECL and from the CNSC, and I have understood those 4,000 pages.
One thing I've noticed in the documentation from the CNSC and the AECL is that the weakness, the basic flaw in the CANDU design, as was apparently in the MAPLE design, is this positive coefficient of nuclear reactivity. If a tube bursts, as it did in Pickering A in August 1983, the pressure goes down, because the water is at a very high temperature, 310 degrees Celsius. Bubbles form immediately, and that positive coefficient means that nuclear reactions are accelerated. So there can be a power spike, which, according to the CNSC, can increase the nuclear power, the thermal power, by a factor of 10 in a matter of one second. So the nuclear reactor at all times has to be under computer control, because only computers can react to a complex problem within half a second. So all those reactors are under computer control, and when sometimes the sensors give wrong information to the computer, you can imagine what can happen.
I happen to be a fan of Linda Keen. I have high admiration for the work that she did at the CNSC. Under her watch the CNSC brought their regulations up to the international level, and these new regulations were adopted formally in Ottawa on June 10, 2008. You should know that all the CANDU reactors in Canada don't meet the new regulations. That is why Ontario Power Generaton has been hesitating about refurbishing the four reactors at Pickering.
Regarding what my colleague Steve West said, I apologize, I have to disagree. I was at the CNSC hearing in Ajax on December 10 last year, and Bill Pilkington, the vice-president of AECL, said the following on page 14 of the transcripts:
I would just like to point out that the MAPLE reactors have never actually produced isotopes, and our assessments would say that they would not have been capable of producing isotopes for many years into the future.
I'll switch now to a second part of my presentation. I worked for my PhD with a linear electron accelerator that uses microwave cavities to accelerate electrons, and it so happens that there's a very interesting proposal, as I'm sure you're aware of, that comes from the TRIUMF group in Vancouver to use electron accelerators to produce technetium-99 isotopes. The TRIUMF-UBC group already produces isotopes for MDS Nordion by other techniques, other ions, not technetium.
They have a considerable report showing that they could easily produce as much technetium as you want by constructing perhaps half a dozen linear electronic accelerators. I think their proposal is very sound, and these accelerator groups--of which I was a part for three years when I was at Yale University--have always delivered. They've made these huge accelerators in the States, France, and different places in the world, and they work extremely well.
People on the nuclear side have not always delivered. In the States there are 104 nuclear reactors in operation, some of which are highly controversial. But 117 nuclear reactors were stopped during construction or after construction in the United States for various reasons. The nuclear reactor people don't have the track record of the people in the accelerator field. Although I haven't studied this topic to its greatest depth, I would at least look favourably at this proposal by the TRIUMF group, and call on your committee to study it further.
Thank you.