Natural Resources Committee on June 18th, 2009

[Paul Calandra, Conservative, Oak Ridges—Markham, ON]

Mr. Smith, are you saying that if AECL were to call you tomorrow, within 15 days you could have enough medical isotopes for Canada?

[Dr. Harold J. Smith]

No, that's not what I said.

[Paul Calandra, Conservative, Oak Ridges—Markham, ON]

Sorry, I thought that's what I heard you say.

How long would it take, then?

[Dr. Harold J. Smith]

No, it's 15 days to—

[Paul Calandra, Conservative, Oak Ridges—Markham, ON]

How long would it take, roughly, to meet the current regulatory demand to have the MAPLEs up and running?

[Dr. Harold J. Smith]

As I said, I think we'd need a year to get the people back. I mean, it's not just putting the machine back; the people have to be re-certified to run it. You're looking at about a year for the timeframe.

[Paul Calandra, Conservative, Oak Ridges—Markham, ON]

About a year to meet the current regulatory framework?

[Dr. Harold J. Smith]

Yes. We could put in place any plans while the operators are being re-certified. That assumes that you can get them to come back to the project.

[Paul Calandra, Conservative, Oak Ridges—Markham, ON]

So it would take a year to get everybody back, and then it would take you a certain amount of time to make the calculations and to make sure the reactor actually worked. Then you'd have to start producing medical isotopes after that. Would it be two years, then, presumably?

[Dr. Harold J. Smith]

Yes. There's some parallelism here. Some things can be done at the same time--

[Paul Calandra, Conservative, Oak Ridges—Markham, ON]

But ultimately--

[Dr. Harold J. Smith]

--and two years, I think, is an outside--

[Paul Calandra, Conservative, Oak Ridges—Markham, ON]

I'm sorry for interrupting. I just have three minutes, so that's why I'm going fast. I apologize. I'm not trying to be rude.

[Dr. Harold J. Smith]

Okay.

[Paul Calandra, Conservative, Oak Ridges—Markham, ON]

So we're talking about two years for that.

Tell me, what is meant by “some of the emergency shut-off rods failed to deploy”?

[Dr. Harold J. Smith]

It meant that they couldn't poise them. It didn't mean that these couldn't fall in; they had some friction that was stopping it from being poised. It was a fail-safe situation.

[Paul Calandra, Conservative, Oak Ridges—Markham, ON]

What's the ultimate danger of a reactor not working, of all the safety features not working?

[Dr. Harold J. Smith]

That's not a 25-words-or-less kind of answer. Sorry. There are many different scenarios. It depends on what your accident is.

[Paul Calandra, Conservative, Oak Ridges—Markham, ON]

In essence, it's not good.

[Dr. Harold J. Smith]

It's not what you want, for sure, but that's why there are three systems in MAPLE.

[Paul Calandra, Conservative, Oak Ridges—Markham, ON]

Let me ask you another question.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Mr. Calandra, you have about 15 seconds left.

[Paul Calandra, Conservative, Oak Ridges—Markham, ON]

I would assume that none of you are suggesting, then, that we reduce the safety. As somebody who lives quite close to Darlington, I remind some of the people that there is a $38 billion unfunded liability with Ontario Hydro. None of you are suggesting that we reduce safety in order to get this project to work.

[Dr. Harold J. Smith]

Absolutely not.

[Dr. Daniel Meneley]

Absolutely not.