I don't fully understand what went wrong in the design and production of the MAPLE reactor. There are MAPLE reactors in Korea that function, so I don't think it's inherent to the design. There is a long history of building research reactors around the world. A new one was just commissioned in Australia without too much trouble.
The difference between a research reactor and a power reactor is that they usually have higher flux cores, a different layout of the core, and they run at lower temperatures and lower pressure. So they're actually in some sense simpler to run and operate because you don't push the materials as hard. What you're using them for is an environment to test other materials or to draw off neutron beams. I don't think that once you put a proper team in place to do the design work that there will be any problem designing and building a nuclear reactor that would serve our purposes in Canada. I think the expertise is certainly there. I don't think I would have any hesitation in moving forward on that plan.
Remember, this is a multi-purpose facility we're talking about, so it serves many, many communities. One of the issues that came up from one of the members was whether we are going where the puck used to be, by building one of these facilities. When we built NRU we didn't even know what the game was. So that's a lot of vision. One thing I can be sure of is that when we build a replacement research reactor, it will not be doing the same jobs in 50 years that we built it for. That's for sure, because things will change. Things will move on. Different medical isotopes will be developed and be produced, and probably different techniques for studying engineering materials will have been developed and be used there. Different research techniques will be going on.
All we know is that if you build a flexible enough facility, people will find ways of using it in ways you didn't even imagine. That's what happened at NRU, and I believe that's what will continue to happen as we develop these new facilities.