Thank you.
John and I are from Tyne Engineering. We're a private company. We assume that we've been invited to give a perspective from small and medium industry on how the decisions made will affect a company such as ours. We've been in the nuclear industry through the successful periods, through the 1960s to the 1980s, with John having worked in the overseas markets with CANDU development. We also experienced a sort of moratorium on nuclear, so we can tell you how a company like ours was affected and how we see the new opportunities that are emerging now.
The CANDU industry, for us, is an industry that we're proud of. It creates high-tech jobs within our company and for our peers. We see the CANDU nuclear industry as a clean source of plentiful, safe, environmentally clean power that's independent of overseas markets.
In terms of opportunities, as we see it, one major challenge we've experienced with the CANDU technology is the tritium issue that occurs in heavy water reactors. A lot of our focus over the years, both internally and with the larger organizations that were mentioned by the university—Kinectrics, OPG, AECL, etc.—has been associated with the tritium issue in heavy water reactors. There's an opportunity to advance the development of tritium extraction technologies and the demonstration of those technologies, which will in turn improve the chance of sales of the CANDU overseas.
With regard to the state of the CANDU technology, we attend a lot of international conferences as a smaller private industry, particularly conferences associated with tritium and heavy water management. We can say that the Canadian technology is still very highly respected as a source of the best data on R and D programs. Other countries are seeking Canadian input. However, we can say that through recent years, particularly at the tritium conference in France in 2013 and at the 2016 conference in Charleston, South Carolina, the Canadian representation is falling fairly dramatically compared to that of other countries in terms of the size and support of the Canadian contingent. When we were in Charleston, there was one representative from CNL, one representative from Kinectrics, and John and I. This is in comparison with contingencies from China, France, Romania, and the United States, which had in excess of 15, 20, or more people representing them. We see that as a problem if we're to continue to compete.
In terms of benefits of the CANDU technologies to other natural resources, well, there are particular spinoff technologies in particular that we've been involved in. One is associated with hydrogen technologies and the development of electrolysis that's used in heavy water management, upgrading, and tritium extraction. Those technologies in electrolysis are transferable to hydrogen as a fuel source industry.
Obviously, as I've described, the tritium technologies have benefits in pharmaceutical and other monitoring industries. Radiation monitoring in general is a very strong focus of our company and the R and D that we do. Radiation monitoring is transferable to, for example, mining. Those skills seem to be transferable.
The last item is helium-3, a by-product of the decay of tritium. When tritium is removed, as it is at the Darlington reactor, and stored on metal hydride getter beds, over time the tritium will decay to helium-3. There's an opportunity for extracting that helium-3, not only to satisfy a need to release pressure from those getter beds but also to create spinoff industries. Helium-3 is a highly valuable gas that can be used to create the most sensitive neutron detectors, that can be used in homeland security applications as well as the highest-quality medical imaging equipment.
As to the future of R and D, with the shutdown of the NRU, our company has found that the strength in the Canadian nuclear industry over the years was primarily due to some focal points in R and D, such as the NRU reactor and the fusion industry. That's how our company was created. We've managed to commercialize those technologies, but it was due to the government focus on key specialized areas, such as the NRU, the CANDU fusion research...and a focus on transferring the R and D that's created on some of those larger organizations that were mentioned by the university. The key that we found is to transfer that to small and medium industries, because we are the ones that commercialize and create commercially viable products. We've done that with ionization chambers, radiation monitors, electrolysis systems, tritium extraction, etc. We've found that in areas of commercialization we've been able to do that more efficiently than a larger organization, but we need the government to focus on transferring those technologies to us rather than competing with us.
As to waste management, our company doesn't operate heavily in that realm. As a general comment, Canada is a very geographically large country, so clearly it has areas where the risk of doing that would be lower than in other countries. We see it as a good area for the government to focus on. It's large, and there are a lot of remote areas where waste could be stored in solid rock or salt formations. We have the strong regulatory standards and structure within which to do that.
On decommissioning, we have worked a lot with CNL and have people on our staff who have done a lot of work on the hot cells that are available at CNL. Clearly that is an area where there's a lot of expertise that could be further developed. We have some of the oldest reactors in the world that are being decommissioned, so there's an opportunity to be ahead of the game. Those situations will appear in our other markets down the road, and if we develop decommissioning technologies now, we'll reap economic benefits in the future.
That's our introduction for the committee.