I don't know much more. It's somewhat speculative on my part, but I've heard from senior people at Chalk River that the original design, which was defective, had been fixed by Chalk River staff and could now be operated. That's only a speculative statement, I'm sure you understand.
On the second point, even if the material were produced in MAPLE, it could still be processed in the old NRU processing facility, temporarily, until the MAPLE thing was finished. It's quite possible to do that.
That's all I know.