Thank you, again, to the witnesses.
I'm going to start with Mr. Plummer and ask a question I was hoping to ask Mr. Sullivan of Moltex before, but we ran out of time. Since I understand that's the technology New Brunswick Power will be banking on for SMRs, perhaps you can answer it, as well.
The question revolves around a letter that was sent to the Prime Minister a year ago, I believe, by 10 or so American nuclear experts, nuclear regulators, Harvard professors, top diplomats and White House advisers from past American presidencies, who were very concerned about the Moltex technology.
They had two concerns. One is around a fact that Moltex tries to sell as a benefit, and that is reducing the volume of waste that we get from CANDU reactors by 95%. The trouble is, we're ending up with 5% of the really nasty stuff that is still serious waste, and there's plutonium involved. They are concerned, as are others, about plutonium, because it gets potentially into nuclear proliferation, weapons and things like that.
Moltex has called this technology “proliferation-resistant” for various reasons, but a 2009 review by experts from six U.S. national labs found that it was as susceptible to misuse for proliferation as the standard reprocessing technology.
So there's that concern, and the second one is talking about the long-term risk of the waste. Moltex claims the removal of plutonium would reduce the long-term risk from a deep underground radioactivity waste repository, a claim these experts say has been discredited repeatedly.
Finally, they urge that Canada, before making any further commitments in support of this reprocessing, convene high-level reviews of both the non-proliferation and environmental implications of the Moltex reprocessing proposal. They believe that such reviews will find reprocessing to be counterproductive on both fronts.
That was a long lead-up question, but I'm wondering what your response to that is. Since it came out a year ago, I assume you have something to reply.