Natural Resources Committee on June 16th, 2009

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome.

We are here today, pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), to continue our study of the Atomic Energy of Canada facility at Chalk River and the status of the production of medical isotopes.

We have today four groups of witnesses. I will introduce the groups one at a time, just before they make their presentations. We will proceed in the order the individuals or groups are on the agenda. So we'll start today with Linda Keen, specialist in safety and risk management, who's here as an individual.

Go ahead, please, Ms. Keen, for about 10 minutes.

[Linda Keen, Specialist, Safety and Risk Management, As an Individual]

Good afternoon.

Mr. Chair and members , I would like to thank you for inviting me to appear before your committee today.

My name is Linda Keen. I am appearing as a private citizen today.

I would like to give a little bit of background, for those people who haven't met me and who aren't aware of my background. I am a scientist by training, and I've been a manager and leader of science organizations for about 30 years. I came to join the federal government in 1986 from western Canada, and I rose through the federal system to become senior assistant deputy minister. From January 2001 to January 2008, I was the president and chief executive officer of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission here in Ottawa.

As you are probably aware, in January 2008 I was fired by the cabinet of the Government of Canada, and since that time I have done a number of things, but I am working for the private sector in enterprise risk management, which may be a subject of interest today in a number of areas.

I was very proud of the work that I did at the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission. I think it's an organization where there's some wonderful and talented staff. I am concerned about the developments. Some people took great joy in my losing my court case, which made it clear that I served at pleasure for the government. But I think citizens and parliamentarians should actually be very concerned about this.

What this means is that the head of the regulator of nuclear materials and substances in Canada now serves at pleasure and is a political appointee. The lawyer who was there for the government, from the Tories, a senior lawyer, said it was absolutely clear that there was no misconduct on my part. He made it clear also that this was, in the words he used, “a politically precarious position” and that no reasons had to be given for firing the president of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission. I think these implications for the future of Canada's regulator should be of concern to parliamentarians.

My other great concern, of course, today is for the future of radioisotopes and for all those patients—but more than patients, more than people involved in nuclear medicine, it's the whole cadre of people who work in hospitals who have been trying to increase their efficiency and effectiveness over the years and now are faced with even more problems than they had before, in terms of not just radioisotopes but telling cancer patients and other patients that there are interruptions of that kind. I know of what I speak, and I think waiting for that diagnosis is one of the hardest points of your life. I think this has to be looked at as a personal issue for patients in Canada and around the world.

I also feel that one of the areas that doesn't get discussed very much in this is the role of the NRU as really an incredible institution of research in Canada. Certainly it's discussed that this reactor produces more than radioisotopes, but it also is the home of research for many scientists in Canada and around the world. Its loss will certainly be felt as well for those people who have, as I and other people here today have, had an opportunity to study there and look at work from that area.

Those are just my opening remarks, Mr. Chairman. I'll be more than pleased to answer any questions later on that touch on my expertise or experience with the NRU reactor, principally during those seven years as president of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Thank you, Ms. Keen.

We will go now to Dominic Ryan, president of the Canadian Institute for Neutron Scattering.

Go ahead, please, Mr. Ryan, for around ten minutes.

[Professor Dominic Ryan, President, Canadian Institute for Neutron Scattering]

Thank you, and thank you for this invitation to appear before you.

As you said, I'm a professor of physics and president of the Canadian Institute for Neutron Scattering. This is an organization that represents researchers and students from universities and industries who need access to neutron beams to support their research programs. There are currently more than 500 individual members and 15 fee-paying institutional members from the universities. Our goal is to promote the use of neutron beam methods from materials research and to represent the interests of neutron beam use in communities. The government has announced that we're getting out of the isotope business once the national research universal reactor at Chalk River reaches the end of its operating life, probably around 2016. We've been asked to provide some input on this decision and on what should happen next.

The first part is relatively simple. It is clear the government has a role to play in providing infrastructure for science and industry, but it is not clear that the Government of Canada should be in the business of manufacturing medical isotopes for delivery below cost to a worldwide commercial enterprise, thus effectively subsidizing nuclear medicine around the world. As we understand it, it is this form of the isotope business that the government is trying to get out of--and who would argue with that?

The second part is far more complex and has much wider implications for Canada, for Canadians, and for Canadian science and industry. The NRU is far more than the world's largest single supplier of medical isotopes. It is a critical piece of infrastructure that supports stewardship and innovation in the nuclear power industry through experimental facilities located inside the core of the reactor. Neutron beams emitted from the core support research and development by Canadian industry, and the unique knowledge obtained by neutron beams helps companies to develop more competitive products that are safer, more reliable, and less expensive to manufacture.

The NRC's Canadian Neutron Beam Centre has established Canada as a worldwide leader in providing access to industry for key sectors--nuclear, aerospace, automotive, and manufacturing. The CNBC also provides competitive facilities to support fundamental and applied research in many important areas--physics, chemistry, material science, green energy technologies, communications, and materials for life sciences.

Rather than focusing on what the government should not be doing, perhaps we should ask what the government should be doing. For guidance, we can look back over NRU's 50-year history and see what the Government of Canada has already achieved through its support to the NRU facility at Chalk River. Medical isotope production at NRU has supported the health and well-being of Canadian citizens for both diagnosis and treatment of heart disease, bone disease, and cancer. Engineering research at NRU has supported Canadian industry, both nuclear and non-nuclear, improving competitiveness--

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

On a point of order, Madame Brunelle.

[Paule Brunelle, Bloc, Trois-Rivières, QC]

The interpreter is asking if the witness could speak a bit more slowly.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Could you please slow down a little bit so the interpreter can keep up?

[Prof. Dominic Ryan]

I'm sorry. I will try.

Engineering research at NRU has supported Canadian industry, both nuclear and non-nuclear, improving competitiveness and opening new markets to Canadian products. The research facilities at NRU have been used by thousands of Canadian engineers and scientists, training generations of Canadians who have added to the knowledge base of our industries and universities. This has raised Canada's profile as a technology leader around the world. The infrastructure for science and industry that the Government of Canada provided at Chalk River was an investment in Canadians that enabled Canadians to innovate and lead. This is what the Government of Canada does best, and this is what we need to do now.

What do we lose if we walk away from NRU? We abandon 50 years of Canadian leadership in nuclear science and technology. ZEEP was the first reactor ever built outside the U.S. It provided critical data for both American and Canadian reactor programs, and it led to the construction of NRX, and then a few years later NRU. When it was completed, NRU was the most powerful nuclear reactor in the world. It was big, effective, and, most importantly, flexible. It was built as a platform to enable research with neutrons. Fifty years later it continues to support world-class research--a strong testament to the vision and abilities of its designers.

The flexible design has proved to be a key feature, as almost all of the activities currently supported at NRU did not exist when it was built. There was no nuclear power industry, the medical isotope business was about to be created, and neutron beam research was in its infancy, limited by weak sources.

In-core research at NRU supported the development of the nuclear power industry in Canada by enabling fuel and component testing in realistic conditions. It continues to contribute both to the stewardship of our CANDU fleet and to the development of next-generation reactor designs.

The large flexible core permitted many materials to be irradiated, leading to the production and exploitation of a wide variety of isotopes, most notably cobalt-60 and moly-99, key medical isotopes around the world. The isotope business was invented in Canada, and the cobalt-60 irradiator was listed as number 11 of Canada's greatest inventions on the CBC. Today, 16 million radiation treatments per year depend on the cobalt-60 that is produced at NRU.

Neutron beam research facilities at Chalk River allow Canadians to study many new materials. These include High-T_c superconductors that offer the promise of zero-loss electrical power transport, hydrogen storage materials and battery electrodes that will enable more environmentally friendly uses of power, and high-strength super alloys and composites that will revolutionize manufacturing in the future.

By providing Canadians with the best neutron source in the world, the Government of Canada invested in Canadians and opened the door to innovations. Bertram Brockhouse was awarded the 1994 Nobel Prize in physics for his development of the triple-axis spectrometer, an instrument that is replicated in every nuclear neutron beam lab around the world. In many of the bigger facilities there will be several of these instruments. The stress scanner that was invented at Chalk River in the mid-1980s has also been replicated around the world.

These internationally recognized innovations bring me to what is perhaps my main point: closing NRU is not about shutting down a machine; it's about abandoning people.

With the infrastructure provided by the Government of Canada, it enabled all of these developments. But it was the people who brought their imaginations to the flexible, powerful NRU reactor and found a platform to refine their ideas into materials, products, and benefits to science and society. Today's researchers still come from around the world to NRU, not because it's the most powerful or the newest reactor, but for the people. The excellence of the technical and scientific environment provided by the NRC's neutron beam centre has been consistently recognized by NSERC and has stood up to review by international panels of experts.

I can do things in my own research at Chalk River that I could not try at other facilities because of the research environment the staff provides. It has been essential to my research and that of my many colleagues in the Canadian Institute for Neutron Scattering. We bring teams of graduate students and post-docs to NRU, where they get hands-on training by experts in neutron beam techniques and where they meet researchers from around the world. These are the next generation of Canadian researchers. But if NRU is not replaced, where will they work?

When the Challenger failed during launch, investigators focused their attention on the solid fuel boosters. One possibility was that stresses in the joints might have led to the failure. Even with access to neutron beam engineering stress-scanners in the U.S., Thiokol, the NASA contractor that built the boosters, brought a section of the booster up to Chalk River. It was analyzed there to look at the stresses around these bolt holes to make sure they were within tolerance. NASA came to Canada, to NRU, for the people and the expertise that this facility represented. So when Julie Payette goes up tomorrow to the space station, we can all be a little bit more proud knowing that NRU contributed in part to the safety of her trip.

So what happens when the government announces the closure of NRU in 2016 without making a firm commitment to replace it? We lose Canada’s involvement in medical isotope development and supply, the world loses a major supply, and there's a gap that would be tough to fill. The Canadian Neutron Beam Centre, the people who did this work, would be gone in a year. With no future at NRU and no prospect of a new reactor to replace it, the staff will simply leave. They will go and find new places to run their careers. They will go to foreign laboratories, they will be lost to Canada, and our own access to neutron beam facilities will simply disappear.

The Canadian industry will lose its access to a key engineering materials evaluation facility, affecting product reliability and competitiveness. It's not just shuttle parts that get studied at Chalk River. Canada would be unable to participate effectively in the international Generation IV reactor development program that is tasked with creating the next new generation of higher-efficiency reactor designs, which we are going to need if we are going to kick our dependence on fossil fuels technologies.

What should be done? The role of government is to provide infrastructure for science and industry that will enable Canadians to carry out research and develop their businesses. In 1994 the Bacon report recommended that “Canada should make an immediate commitment to develop a new fully equipped reactor-based national source for neutron beam research”, but we didn't. The need for neutron facilities has not diminished. We produced our report last year outlining our vision for what should be the replacement, a multi-purpose research reactor that will serve Canadians as a key piece of infrastructure for science and industry. The multi-purpose concept builds on the successes of NRU and is aimed at drawing together all of the current stakeholders while maintaining the flexibility to serve new and emerging needs. It would combine in-core research, isotope production, and neutron beams for a world-class facility.

A new world-class facility would be a magnet for talented engineers and scientists. Our continued leadership in nuclear engineering and neutron-based research, both fundamental and applied, would be assured. A stable, reliable source of medical isotopes and industrial isotopes would be put in place.

Why embark on such an expensive project in a recession? Construction of the new Canadian Neutron Beam Centre is about building for the future. It is forward-looking, investing in new industries, and training the technical and scientific leaders of tomorrow. As a stimulus project, it is a perfect fit. The construction phase would employ thousands of Canadians directly and generate many more jobs around Canada through contracts awarded to small and medium-sized enterprises. A large fraction of these would be in high value-added engineering projects that would expand Canada’s design and manufacturing base in an industry that is poised for massive market growth. The government could reasonably expect to recoup most of the costs in taxes and developed industries, and it would be strengthening Canada's economy at the same time.

How should we proceed? CINS has already produced a statement of the user requirements for a new multi-purpose centre, as a world-class laboratory for materials research with neutron beams. To make this project a reality, the next step is to establish a formal engineering design, in collaboration with all of the stakeholders, and develop an accurate costing estimate for the project so that the construction can be undertaken in a transparent and responsible manner.

A suitable federal agency should be identified that can undertake such a project. It should be given both the mandate and appropriate funding to coordinate a multi-departmental working group and bring forward a properly costed design proposal within the next year. Canada will then be properly prepared to consider an investment in the future of the Canadian Neutron Centre, a world-class resource for science and industry for the next 50 years.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Thank you very much, Mr. Ryan, for your presentation.

We have now three individuals from McMaster University. We have Mr. Christopher Heysel, director, nuclear operations and facilities, McMaster Nuclear Reactor; Dr. Dave Tucker, senior health physicist, health physics; and Dr. John Valliant, director of isotope research, McMaster Nuclear Reactor. I understand that Christopher Heysel will be giving the presentation today.

Go ahead for around ten minutes.

[Christopher Heysel, Director, Nuclear Operations and Facilities, McMaster Nuclear Reactor, McMaster University]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

I'll tell you a little bit about our background.

Before starting at McMaster in 2001, I spent 14 years at the NRU reactor in Chalk River. I started my career there as a young engineer in charge of operating the shift. I moved on to senior technical positions, and before coming to McMaster, I was the engineering manager at NRU.

With me is Dr. John Valliant, who is a professor with the university. He's both a Canadian and an internationally recognized leader in medical isotope research. In addition to teaching, he is the acting director of the McMaster Institute of Applied Radiation and Sciences. He is also the CEO and chief scientific director for the newly founded Centre for Probe Development and Commercialization.

Mr. Dave Tucker has over 20 years of radiation safety and regulatory compliance experience. Dave also spent 10 years at the Chalk River laboratories, where he had radiation, environmental, and regulatory compliance responsibilities for the NRU reactor, as well as the other associated facilities necessary for isotope production.

McMaster University is a medium-sized Canadian university. We have 20,000 undergraduate students, 3,000 graduate students, supported by a staff of about 7,000. We're a research-intensive university. We have a large research budget, given the size and constitution of our university, and our unique combination of nuclear facilities and graduate and undergraduate programs result in us being Canada's nuclear university.

I will talk a little bit about how McMaster can help on the isotope supply issue. We've approached the problem from the short term, medium term, and long term. In the short term, we've had to increase our I-125 production. The reactor at McMaster University is currently a global supplier of I-125. With the outage at Chalk River, we've been able to increase our production by 20%. This 20% is going to help prostate cancer patients, both here in Canada and around the world. Every week we're shipping to Europe, South America, North America, China. Right now, we're the largest producer of that isotope.

Our colleagues on campus, at the hospital, under the leadership of Dr. Karen Gulenchyn, have brought F-18 quickly to the clinic in support of helping display some of the treatments that rely on technetium. We continue to provide a leadership role in developing the next generation of isotopes and truly have the core-to-clinic infrastructure to carry that out.

In the medium term, we have proposed to the government to resume moly-99 production at the reactor, as we did in the seventies, and we believe we can help about 20% of North American men. Also, through the Centre for Probe Development and Commercialization, there are already new displacement technologies in front of Health Canada, soon to gain approval, hopefully, to get to the patients.

In the longer term, we intend to continue our leadership role in research for the displacement technologies through the development of the next-generation medical isotopes and through novel production techniques and applications.

A little bit about the reactor. We're the only Canadian research reactor with a full, reinforced containment structure. We are adjacent to the nuclear research building, which allows researchers close proximity to the isotopes they need to conduct their research. We're a five-megawatt MTR, or materials test reactor, design. It's an open-pool design, which is very flexible and conducive to isotope production. We currently operate on three megawatts, 16 hours a day, five days a week. For the types of isotopes that are required, we'd need to go to seven days a week, 24 hours a day.

As I said, we are in this commercial isotope production. Again, we are a global leader in I-125 production and distribution. We have a flexible and very useful and relevant education and research tool, and we hope to maximize the benefit of this infrastructure through the addition of more isotope production.

We're currently licensed until 2014, with full plans to renew our licence going forth for many years to come.

On slide 5 we've collected a couple of pictures and some data from what we did in the 1970s. Quite simply, in the isotope supply chain you need targets. We had targets manufactured. Targets were loaded into an irradiation facility. We would irradiate them for about two weeks and ship the targets to Chalk River to have them processed to recover the moly-99. During that time we made over 80 shipments and shipped over 100,000 curies of moly-99 to Chalk River. The demand at that time was much lower, so these numbers certainly don't represent our capacity.

The next slide gives you an overview of the reactor. If you look at the nine-by-six grid, each one of those blank locations is where we would put a fuel rod or fuel assembly to power the reactor. If you remember what the target irradiation holder looks like, it's exactly the same as a fuel rod or a fuel assembly. Each one of those white holes is a potential moly-99 production site.

At the bottom slide we've done some calculations on capacity. We've looked at two assemblies and four assemblies. Those numbers would be equivalent to about 20% of the North American demand. It isn't the entire demand, but it certainly could reach a significant number of patients in critical need of these isotopes.

I'd like to compare NRU and MNR, because a lot of people don't know much about the actual production of isotopes. It's all the game of flux: the amount of neutrons and target material you can get into your core. From the little comparison there you can see that NRU and MNR can irradiate the same amount of targets, but our limitation to approximately 20% of the North American market is borne out by the difference in flux between the two reactors.

On the next slide I describe the supply chain for isotopes in Canada, how McMaster can play a role, and how we played a role in the 1970s. We have our targets manufactured in France at a company called CERCA. They currently make all the irradiation targets for the European supply chain, and they make our fuel. They're tooled up and licensed to take on this work. Targets are inventoried at the Chalk River lab and brought to the reactor for irradiation on demand. We irradiate the targets for about 200 hours—about a week, ship them to ACL for processing, and then to the normal supply chain as it exists in Canada right now.

When we first looked at this proposal 18 months ago, we really saw a role for McMaster to help NRU relieve some of the pressure they have on their operating cycle. Right now they have a six-week operating schedule. Then they have a very short shutdown window of about four days. The first day they get ready to do the work and the last day they start up. They really are under a lot of pressure to do a lot of outage work in a very short period of time. We thought McMaster could help extend that outage window to allow them to take on longer inspections, more involved maintenance, and relieve some of the pressure the machine was under.

As we see it now, we can come online in a different mode, in a crisis mode, certainly not to meet the entire supply that NRU is providing, but to bring Canadian content to the international solution the federal government is looking to position.

The European model works well because they rely on a number of different machines to do the irradiations with one central processing facility. That's what we're trying to replicate here in Canada, with a machine at Chalk RIver that can do irradiations and a back-up machine in McMaster that can also irradiate targets. So you would have a distributed radiation system with one central processing facility. This model has worked well for Europe for a number of years and has kept them with a more robust supply when one facility was going through an outage.

I think the key requirements we're looking for are the staff and the fuel to take on the new duty cycle. It's quite simply scaling up. We have a certain number of staff for 16 hours a day, five days a week. In order to make this process work, we require more fuel and more people to go to a 24-hour, seven-day a week duty cycle, as we did in the 1970s.

As I pointed, we're just one member of the supply chain. It requires cooperation with a number of stakeholders, including the federal government, AECL, and those further down the supply chain. We really need to establish strong partnerships focused on a mandate to make this happen.

One of the issues that came up was the access to HEU. In recent discussions with the Americans, it's our impression that they would be more than willing to supply the target material to France to allow targets made to be irradiated at the university.

On a regulatory front, it will be very important to work with our regulators throughout this process. We see no direct change in our reactor operating licence requirements. We've done this work before. Our safety analysis report addresses this operation. We will need licensing of a flask to transfer the irradiated material, but again we'll look to the Europeans to get their designs and technical knowledge to support us on that.

We'd have to start working with Nordion to look at the impacts downstream on getting it to the patient. We're talking about using the exact same chemical composition for the targets, but the NRU target has a different geometry than a McMaster target. The NRU target is pin-shaped, whereas the McMaster target and most of the other targets used around the world are of a pleat design.

In conclusion, we're here to help. We're a Canadian institution and we're ready to use Canadian infrastructure to help Canada through this issue. We believe we can have an impact in the short term, medium term, and long term. We don't claim to be the final solution, but I think it has become clear to the international community that this is a complicated problem with no quick solution. It will require an international effort looking at a number of different solutions and coming together to protect patients around the world.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Thank you very much, Mr. Heysel.

Nigel Lockyer from TRIUMF is our next presenter.

[Dr. Nigel Lockyer, Director, TRIUMF]

Thank you for this opportunity to testify before the committee. So who is TRIUMF? TRIUMF is Canada's national laboratory for particle and nuclear physics. It's run and operated by a consortium of about 14 Canadian universities, stretching from Saint Mary's in Nova Scotia to McMaster—my colleagues next to me—through to the west coast, the University of Victoria.

We're here to talk about nuclear medicine, but first let me say a little bit about what TRIUMF does for nuclear medicine. We have five cyclotrons at TRIUMF, all of which produce medical isotopes of various types. The main research program of TRIUMF is particle physics and nuclear physics, and the nuclear physics component is studying rare isotopes—isotopes of the future, if you want to think of it that way.

The present cyclotrons, however, actually play a significant role in producing medical isotopes, so TRIUMF produces all of the PET isotopes for the British Columbia Cancer Agency for clinical use. We produce all of the isotopes for the Pacific Parkinson's Research Centre. We've had a 30-year manufacturing partnership with MDS Nordion where we produce 2.5 million patient doses of isotopes per year. We collaborate with the Cross Cancer Institute in Edmonton and with Sherbrooke. TRIUMF-designed cyclotrons are scattered around the world. They're in Taiwan, Korea, the U.S., and so on.

The point there is that TRIUMF designs the cyclotrons, which are used to make the isotopes. We're involved in the radio chemistry that's needed to attach molecules to those isotopes, and we have experts in PET imaging.

I'm here today to talk about an alternative method of producing moly-99, and that is using an accelerator. There are basically two ways to make moly-99. One is in a reactor, which you've heard about, and the other is in an accelerator. In our proposal we would use non-weapons grade uranium. We would use U-238, and I think this is a strength of what we're talking about. The result of irradiating U-238 with an electron beam, which we've proposed, is that in principle the final product should be identical to the product that comes out of the NRU.

We have recently signed an agreement with MDS Nordion, where on a time scale of 2012 we would like to irradiate a target and demonstrate this technology. What we expect to find is that the definition of moly-99, which comes from a drug master file, would be identical in the case of our radiation to the one from the NRU. If that is the case, then we think that within about a year and a half the private sector could take that, build an accelerator or accelerators, and produce moly-99 and have it in the production stream. In other words, four to five years from now, moly-99 could be in the supply chain from the private sector using an accelerator. This assumes that the five-year funding of TRIUMF, which is presently going through the Government of Canada via the National Research Council, which covers our funding from 2010 to 2015, is fully supported.

I know you are looking at moly-99 today, but in my opinion, the future of nuclear medicine is in PET cameras versus moly-99. PET does not use moly-99, as you probably know. So the fastest-growing component of nuclear medicine is PET imaging. Last year the sales of PET cameras in the U.S. exceeded the sales of SPECT cameras. SPECT cameras use moly-99. The medical revolution that you probably sense we're all part of, which is genomics plus molecular imaging—molecular imaging allows you to look inside the body and see metabolism, and nuclear medicine is a big part of molecular imaging—I see that as the future of health care around the world. I think we should be playing a big part in that.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Thank you, Mr. Lockyer.

We have finished the presentations. Now we will go directly to the questioning from the official opposition for up to seven minutes. Please go ahead, Mr. Regan.

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Through you to the witnesses, thank you all for coming today. You've given us a lot to chew on, and I'm sure we'd all like to have five hours to ask questions, but my colleagues will be pleased to know I'm not going to suggest we extend for that long.

First, let me ask Ms. Keen what your thoughts are in terms of what's happened in the intervening 18 months since the December 2006 shutdown of the NRU. The government has been telling us they were very prepared for all this, and I'm not sure I see that. For instance, a few weeks ago they said they were going to appoint a panel in response to all of this, and they still haven't named it. What is your sense, having been an observer of this and having been the president of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission for seven years and worked closely with this process?

[Linda Keen]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the question.

First of all, if there was any tiny bit of a silver lining I felt when I got fired, it was that perhaps people were going to pay attention to this issue and would not ignore the issue anymore. I say that because it was really clear at the time that AECL, its board of directors, its upper management, and the government had just become so fascinated with the idea of new reactors that every conversation was about new reactors and a nuclear renaissance, and not about some of the bread-and-butter issues, including the NRU and waste management. I thought there was going to be a focus at that time and I thought there would be some work happening.

On the positive side, I think there was work that had happened on the health side with the nuclear medicine specialists. It was obvious in that the ad hoc committee came forward with a report, although one of their report recommendations was to keep MAPLE going, which didn't happen. But I think the Health Canada people did make some real efforts. They didn't develop a crisis management plan, but they had upped their connections with the provinces and the territories.

On the other side of it, which was working with the NRU, with MAPLE, and with alternatives, I was in fact quite shocked a year ago when the minister at the time announced that MAPLE was going to be closed. I knew it had problems, but there was no sense that they couldn't be solved. I was quite surprised.

Also, I was surprised not just that MAPLE was being shut down, but that there were really no alternatives. The alternative was, in my view, pressure on the regulator to agree to another licence. In seven years as a regulator, I never, ever heard a company or a licensee, including the licensees who are here with us today, tell me that their goal was to get a licence. It's to get a facility that's up and running and that meets or exceeds regulatory areas. It was very surprising for me to see that nothing had happened on the supply side, and I know that because I keep in contact with international colleagues, particularly in Europe.

I think it's a very sad type of report that I would give: nothing had happened, and in fact things had become worse in some areas, and there was no plan in place to look at this. As was said here, we know that it closes down for work every six weeks. There is no way you could be hoping to keep this going forever.

My final comment is that after 18 months, it's a bit interesting to hear that it's now a “very old reactor that's very unreliable”, and 18 months ago it was considered neither a very old reactor nor very unreliable. But it hasn't changed a bit. It's been that way for quite some time. It's sad that this had to happen to get the focus on this reactor.

I hope that answers your question.

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Yes, thank you.

Let me ask you this. Dealing with AECL and the MAPLEs on a regular basis, as you would have been, when did it first appear that there were serious problems with the MAPLE reactors?

[Linda Keen]

This happened just in the last couple of years when it came to the point of commissioning. Clearly, AECL had significant issues before that, but really, they were issues to do with what we considered to be a poor quality of management--this is all recorded in the CNSC proceedings--poor management of contractors, and really a lack of focus, as well as a poor safety culture, etc.

But I'd say that from about 2006 on, when they started the commissioning process, this is when it really became clear that the positive coefficient of reactivity was going to be a problem and that they hadn't predicted it. They were dealing with it in-house. One of the commission members, Chris Barnes, said to them that maybe they should get some outside advice. They finally brought in the Idaho laboratory quite late in the day, and I wonder if that could have been helpful earlier.

But that wasn't really the role of the commission. It was the role of AECL and its management to look at it. It really became pretty clear at the end that there were some serious problems and they were going to have to justify it.

But MAPLE hadn't been taken off line when I was fired as the president. It was still a live project. We saw them often. We saw them every six months because they needed permission to work on it, so it's really just in that period of time that you knew things were really going bad.

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Given the government's recent announcement in relation to privatizing AECL, what was your impression of what their focus was, whether it was privatization of AECL or keeping the NRU running and dealing with isotopes?

[Linda Keen]

Clearly it's the government's decision. I think the act, by the way, is going to have to come back to Parliament to be looked at with regard to the future of AECL. But clearly it's the government's prerogative what they wish to do in terms of suggesting changes to Parliament.

Speaking about the most important thing here today, which is the NRU, I say this as a former, long-time government person. Sometimes this idea of changing management and throwing out the old management and bringing in new management seems terribly worthwhile, but despite what I thought were the problems with the upper management of AECL, including the board and the direction of the presidents and the vice-presidents--and this is my opinion--I really actually felt, to be very honest, that the vice-president who was there when I was fired and who subsequently quit, Brian McGee, was actually trying to make changes. He was trying to work on the safety culture. When you make changes to an organization that has significant, in my view, culture issues and management issues, it takes a long time, and that's what would have had to be invested after the government found a new manager.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Thank you, Ms. Keen. You've gone about a minute over time.

Thank you, Mr. Regan.

We go now to the Bloc Québécois and Madam Brunelle, for up to seven minutes. Go ahead, please.

[Paule Brunelle, Bloc, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Good morning, madam, gentlemen. Thank you for being here.

Mr. Ryan and Ms. Keen, you said two things that are very similar. You told us that the NRU plays an important role as a research institute and that we need to preserve that scientific expertise and continue to invest in innovation.

Many other organizations, including Genome Canada, are having to deal with smaller research budgets. They're telling us that they're losing ground. It puts me in mind of what happened last year when we tried to sell the company that designed the celebrated CanadArm.

Taking that into account, I think your point of view is interesting. However, one question comes to mind. If we're not supposed to shut down the NRU, what are we supposed to do? In terms of safety, I have a ton of questions. If the reactor isn't safe, Mr. Ryan, how can we keep it?

[Prof. Dominic Ryan]

You can't keep the NRU going for much longer. That's for sure. It's old and its maintenance is going up as you keep this thing going. Like an old car, it's going to take more maintenance to keep it going.

What we have been proposing is replacing it entirely. You need to build a new multi-purpose research reactor that will support all of the missions that are currently going on at the NRU and be capable of supporting new missions as they become apparent. The NRU was built as a general purpose machine that would allow things to happen and develop around it, and the new facility has to be designed in the same way. It would then support commercial production of isotopes. It would support industrial research. It would support fundamental research. It would support reactor research for the next generation of nuclear reactors.

We're proposing keeping the NRU going not indefinitely but long enough so that you can get a new reactor in place to take over its functions. The idea of having McMaster as a backup is an extremely interesting one. I think that would take some of the pressure off the NRU operations while we get a new reactor in place.

[Linda Keen]

My answer will be a bit different. I think we actually don't know how big a hole there is going to be when the NRU is closed down as a research reactor. My view was that when we lost the position of chief science advisor--Arthur Carty had occupied that spot--we really lost the ability for all of Canada, including parliamentarians, to be able to ask the questions as to what we should be investing in and where we should be investing, and with complete respect to my fellow presenters today, I think there's a tendency for all institutions to look at their own institutions and to not have that broad picture.

The answer is I don't think we really know what the gaps are and how to solve them. For instance, the U.K. and the U.S. both have chief science advisors, and I think providing those has been really worth every penny. As a small country, we need that. I don't really think we know exactly what the answer will be.

In terms of its safety, the role of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission is to ensure that anything that happens in terms of the decommissioning happens safely, and I'm sure they will do that.

[Paule Brunelle, Bloc, Trois-Rivières, QC]

My next question is for everyone.

We have heard many things in the course of this committee's proceedings. In an earlier meeting, we talked about the MAPLE 1 and MAPLE 2 reactors. The people at MDS Nordion told us that those reactors had to be reactivated. We know the cost was astronomical. I see that TRIUMF is offering another solution.

What do you think? Do we have to take the MAPLE reactor back to the drawing board? Could it eventually work?

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Who would like to answer that?

Mr. Lockyer.