Mr. Chair, Bob Strickert and I were asked a very simple question concerning the safety of NRU if and when it restarts and operates.
We both have a technical background. We do not speak to nor do we know the situation with regard to licensing, specifically. We are talking about safety.
Is NRU likely to be safer or less safe after it restarts than it was before? Clearly, with the addition, as I understand it, of the single seismically qualified power supply to one of the pumps, the safety of the plant should be improved relative to what it was at the time of shutdown.
Therefore, the question is this. How does the risk of that potential operation compare with the standard? It appears, according to the literature we have read, that the plant satisfies the prior licence conditions, but let us leave that one there.
Therefore, the new requirement that is placed on the plant to improve the reliability of the power supply to these pumps is an improvement, we feel, and in the long term should be an enhancement of the safety of the plant.
We come to then a comparison between the risk of continued plant operation versus the risk of the lack of medical isotopes to a large number of people. In our judgment and in our opinion, our judgment says that the risk of operation of NRU is very much less than the risk of not operating NRU.
That completes my statement.