Evidence of meeting #30 for Natural Resources in the 40th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was reactor.
A recording is available from Parliament.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
Did that ever strain the reactor, putting that much isotope production out?
Senior Vice-President and Chief Nuclear Officer, Atomic Energy of Canada Limited
No. The first thing we did in responding to the outage of the Petten reactor was to look at how we could modify our production without impacting the reliability of the NRU.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
You understand my line of questioning. We suddenly had to replace another downed reactor. We upped our supply. Within months of having done that, our reactor went down with holes in it. The public could be forgiven.
I want to get to the question of your comfort with the timeline as proposed. You're saying the first quarter of 2010--nine months from now, give or take, eight or nine months. When the reactor first went down in May of this year you also issued some timelines and some estimates of when the reactor would come back up, and you were comfortable with those as well.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Atomic Energy of Canada Limited
We estimated, we provided guidance on the minimum outage, and again, that truly was our best. We knew it would not be shorter than x amount of time.
NDP
President and Chief Executive Officer, Atomic Energy of Canada Limited
Bill should perhaps respond to that, but I'd like one more shot at it. You go ahead.
Senior Vice-President and Chief Nuclear Officer, Atomic Energy of Canada Limited
I would just point out that I believe our first estimate was of more than three months. That estimate was based on the belief that we would be doing a simple mechanical repair of the reactor vessel at one site. After we did some inspection, we came back and said it would be late in the year, at the earliest, based on having done inspection and predicting that we would likely have to repair as many as five sites.
We are now expecting to have to repair as many as nine sites. We have bounded the total number of sites by moving to this band of weld buildup as the repair method.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Leon Benoit
Mr. Cullen, Mr. MacDiarmid had indicated he wanted to finish his answer to the question.
NDP
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
We're operating under the minister's request to return to service. This is a ministerial request. Is it a formal thing? Is it an informal thing? Is it a--
President and Chief Executive Officer, Atomic Energy of Canada Limited
I consider it very formal. I consider it a formal direction.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Atomic Energy of Canada Limited
Well, it would have been within days of the occurrence of the outage, because as it became evident that the outage would not be a short one, it was very clear to all concerned that this was a serious matter that would attract a lot of attention. So certainly from the very earliest stages the direction has been clear from our minister.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Leon Benoit
Thank you, Mr. Cullen. Your time is up.
We go now to the government side and to Ms. Gallant, for up to seven minutes. Go ahead, please.
Conservative
Cheryl Gallant Conservative Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and through you, thank you to the witnesses.
First of all, I must say how refreshing it is to hear the new-found support of the nuclear industry from the New Democratic Party.
We've heard that even though there may be many reactors or other sources of moly-99, the bottleneck may really be the limited number of places where the radioactive targets can be received and processed to make the medical products. There must also be a challenge to find locations for the handling of the resulting radioactive waste. Can you tell us the role of Chalk River Laboratories, presently and in the foreseeable future, in providing these essential services as part of the supply chain for medical isotopes?
Senior Vice-President and Chief Nuclear Officer, Atomic Energy of Canada Limited
The Chalk River site is licensed to process our own waste and also to accept waste from other producers, so essentially we have the rest of the supply chain. We have processing facilities that are currently available and we have a waste management stream that is currently available. What we lack right now is a supply of the radioactive targets.
Conservative
Cheryl Gallant Conservative Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON
Okay.
Now, isotopes seem to be very critical and important to the entire world. They also, according to testimony, seem to be financially lucrative. Why aren't there many other reactors or producers throughout the world?
President and Chief Executive Officer, Atomic Energy of Canada Limited
Opinions can differ on this matter, but it's not clear to me that market prices for isotopes have in fact been at a level that would be fully compensatory for AECL. Many factors go into the determination of international market prices; we do not have control over the pricing of our product in that marketplace, so I would take some issue with the notion that isotopes are a highly profitable business for us. We receive a revenue share, but we incur significant costs, and at this point in time this business line is one in which our cash out has substantially exceeded our cash in.
Conservative
Cheryl Gallant Conservative Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON
Given what you just said, do you see a shift to alternative isotope sources in the future?
President and Chief Executive Officer, Atomic Energy of Canada Limited
I'm not all that well equipped, necessarily, to be a predictor of that, but certainly if there is an evolution to a market price that will attract investment and attract development of alternative methodologies of production, then you could naturally expect that to occur; otherwise, it will need to be through the commitment of public funds, whether here in Canada or in other jurisdictions.
Conservative
Cheryl Gallant Conservative Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON
There seems to be quite a concern about the length of time that it is taking to repair. I understand the name of the item that has to be repaired is the calandria.
Senior Vice-President and Chief Nuclear Officer, Atomic Energy of Canada Limited
The calandria would be the term used on a commercial CANDU power reactor, so we would refer to it simply as the reactor vessel.
Conservative
Cheryl Gallant Conservative Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON
Okay. So has this been replaced in the past?