Debates of Dec. 11th, 2007

An Act to permit the resumption and continuation of the operation of the National Research Universal Reactor at Chalk River

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, York—Simcoe, ON]

Mr. Chair, as discussed earlier, witnesses are still arriving. Some have arrived from AECL.

One from AECL is still on the way. However, in his stead, and I have not yet had an opportunity to advise my friends from the other parties of this, we would like to seek the consent of the committee of the whole to add Brian McGee, senior vice-president, chief nuclear officer of Atomic Energy of Canada Limited, as a witness who can provide answers.

[The Chair, NDP, Bill Blaikie]

Is there unanimous consent to add Mr. McGee to the list?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, NDP, Bill Blaikie]

Agreed and so ordered.

I think we now have some of the additional witnesses here. We are going to pause while they come in and take their seats at the table.

Would the hon. member for Etobicoke--Lakeshore like to continue his questioning at this time? Or we could proceed to give someone from AECL an opportunity to make a statement before that.

[Michael Ignatieff, Liberal, Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON]

Mr. Chair, I will complete my questions.

[The Chair, NDP, Bill Blaikie]

We will do it that way. Resuming the 20 minute round, then, for the official opposition, the hon. member for Etobicoke--Lakeshore.

[Michael Ignatieff, Liberal, Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON]

Mr. Chair, if I understand the answer to the previous question about the safety case, AECL is close to providing a safety case. Could the witness please tell the House how long it would take, upon receipt of a safety case, to assess and certify this reactor as safe?

[Linda J. Keen]

Mr. Chair, I would like to start by saying that after the safety case and the request for a licence amendment are made, then the CNSC staff will analyze this. I will ask Mr. Howden to give an estimate of that. An application is then put before the tribunal. We can put the tribunal together in 24 hours for a licence amendment to hear this. It is the tribunal that will give this licence amendment, but we are ready to move quickly on that, and we are prepared to issue a decision one way or another from the chair without reasons for a decision.

Mr. Howden, do you have an estimate of the time?

[Barclay D. Howden]

Mr. Chair, the amount of time it is going to take to review the safety case depends on the quality of the information submitted. However, our understanding is that there is a good understanding between AECL and ourselves, so that when the information comes in, we expect it would take only a couple of days to look at it. But again, it is dependent on the quality of the information. That is why we have been working closely with AECL to make it clear what the needed information is such that they can deliver it.

[Michael Ignatieff, Liberal, Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON]

Mr. Chair, can I just get a sense of the safety risk that we are talking about? How serious is a one pump situation? What is the nature of the risk of which the public should be aware, the risk that the witness is assessing in that safety case? What kind of risks are we talking about?

[Barclay D. Howden]

Mr. Chair, right now the proof's licensing basis is with two pumps connected. The situation right now is no pumps connected. However, AECL is in the process of connecting one pump.

As for the safety case that we are reviewing, our expectation is that with this connection the likelihood of an accident having a negative impact on the reactor would be reduced by about 100 times, just to give a sense of what it would be. With the two pumps connected, our expectation, and these are just relative numbers, is that the improvement in safety from the reduction of likelihood would be 1,000 times better, so this is what we are looking at.

[Linda J. Keen]

Mr. Chair, I would also like to add that what we are talking about is an industry standard that we would require of any research reactor in Canada. I talked today with my colleague from the United States, Chairman Klein of the NRC in the United States, and he said that he is fully in agreement with us requiring the two pumps for the safety and for licensing in the United States as well.

[Michael Ignatieff, Liberal, Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON]

Mr. Chair, I would ask Madam Commissioner if she has had an opportunity to review Bill C-38, the legislation tabled before the House today.

[Linda J. Keen]

Mr. Chair, I received a very preliminary copy. I do not know if it is the final copy or not. I have had some preliminary reviews of this.

[Michael Ignatieff, Liberal, Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON]

Mr. Chair, in this legislation I would like her reaction specifically on subclause (1)2, which states:

Atomic Energy of Canada Limited may resume and continue the operation of the National Research Universal Reactor at Chalk River only if it is satisfied that it is safe to do so.

Does she have any comment to make on the drafting of that clause?

[Linda J. Keen]

Mr. Chair, as I said in my opening statement, there are no nuclear facilities in Canada that are not regulated by the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission.

My interpretation of this clause as an expert is that AECL would be self-regulating its own reactor and that it would not be under this. This provides significant risk not only to the reactor, but to the employees and the communities that live around this reactor. There would not be the benefit of the oversight of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission.

I would like to add that I am the chair of the Convention on Nuclear Safety and we in Canada are acclaimed for the quality of the nuclear regulation that we have, so this would be without precedent in Canada.

[Michael Ignatieff, Liberal, Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON]

Mr. Chair, the witness used the phrase “significant risk” in the previous answer. Could the witness be more precise and tell us what is meant exactly? The witness spoke of risk to the Chalk River community and risk in a wider sense. What precisely did the witness mean and how would the witness assess the seriousness of the risk that was described?

[Barclay D. Howden]

Mr. Chair, as for what we are looking at from risk, we have to remember that it has two components: it has likelihood and it has consequence.

With the situation in November when the reactor was shut down and kept down when the two pumps were not connected, the risk of that was in the event of an external event. There is a number of events, such as earthquakes, floods, fires, tornadoes, et cetera. The reactor would not necessarily have a qualified emergency power system that would then be available to continue to provide electrical power to the main heavy water pumps at the NRU reactor.

The NRU reactor requires the main heavy water pumps to be operating at all times to provide cooling to the reactor. Cooling is essential, the pumps are essential, and an emergency power system is essential. I said that the safety case being proposed by AECL for one pump operation has not been fully completed. That is why we want to see its further justifications to support the safety case to ensure that it is robust, so that the safety that would be claimed is indeed that.

If an accident occurred, the emergency power system was not available and the pumps were not able to function, there would be nuclear fuel failures, which could then lead to releases of radioactive material to the atmosphere, which would then impact people and the environment.

[Michael Ignatieff, Liberal, Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON]

Mr. Chair, if the legislation passes, if we pass Bill C-38, could Madam Commissioner please outline for us the effect the legislation would have on CNSC's ability to discharge its regulatory responsibilities, given that this is a temporary measure for 120 days under the proposed legislation? I would ask her to speak to the impact of this legislation and the discharge of her responsibilities as a regulator.

[Linda J. Keen]

Mr. Chair, because this is an unprecedented case and there is no unregulated facility in Canada, the CNSC has been looking at exactly what that impact would be.

In fact, would we have, for example, site staff? Would we have experts that would be available? It is not clear that we would be having regulatory control and regulatory review of this reactor at all during these 120 days. There would be no assurances to Canadians. Parliament could not turn to the CNSC and ask what is happening at this reactor, because we would have no idea of this.

We are unable to have counsel right now to know about the assessment of what this would look like, but our review would be that we would not be in the position to exercise regulatory control over this legally. We have several licences at this facility, but particularly, would we be involved in even seeing the NRU building? Would we be involved in it? What would we do in the case of an emergency? Would we be there? Would we be providing regulatory control?

It really is such uncharted territory that we have absolutely no idea of what we would do in terms of providing Canadians with the assurances that we do every day. That is our job. We have taken this risk assessment and we are prepared to do that.

But we believe that this precedent would also be very serious for Canadians. They trust us. They know that we are in existence. What exactly would this mean for other facilities? What would happen, in their view, about what would happen at other reactors and other facilities? I am sorry that I cannot be more specific, but it is very uncharted territory for us.

[Michael Ignatieff, Liberal, Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON]

Mr. Chair, if this legislation is before us because we are faced with a public health crisis and the legislation is held to be necessary to get speedy resolution of this to get the reactor up again, is there any solution short of legislation that the president can propose, regulator working with operator under a very short timeline, compressing the timeline to the limits possible, that would allow us to get this reactor started without precipitating a public health crisis?

I am asking essentially, is the legislation necessary? Is there any other way we can go here?

[Linda J. Keen]

Mr. Chair, the view of the commission is that, as Mr. Howden has said, if AECL supplied a complete safety case and a licence amendment, and the licence amendment is very straightforward, had the staff review it, and called the commission together on an emergency basis, all of which we are prepared to do to help out in this crisis, it would take, if the safety case were complete, approximately a week.

I think this is partly asking AECL where it is on the safety case because we have not received it yet. However, we believe that all facilities in Canada should be regulated under the Nuclear Safety and Control Act because that is what we are paid to do. That is what we are paid to do as nuclear experts, to look at this oversight. We really do believe that this would set an unfortunate circumstance in this case.

So, that would be our best estimate if the safety case were ready, but I think that is a question for AECL because as we said, we do not have it yet.

[The Chair, NDP, Bill Blaikie]

Before we proceed to hear from the Bloc Québécois, I think that in the view of the Chair it would be appropriate first of all to welcome to the committee Mr. Torgerson, the Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer and President for the Research and Technology Division of AECL and also Mr. Brian McGee, Senior Vice-President and Chief Nuclear Officer.

I would ask whether either of you gentlemen or one of you would wish to make a five minute statement giving the position of AECL to the committee.

[David F. Torgerson, Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer and President for the Research and Technology Division AECL]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. My name is David Torgerson. I am, as you have said, the Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer at AECL.

One of my responsibilities is the Chalk River laboratories and the NRU reactor. The NRU reactor is an absolutely marvellous piece of technology. I do not know of any research reactor anywhere that has created so much leading edge technology as has the NRU reactor.

We have used it to invent the Candu reactor. We have used it to invent the whole field of medical isotopes. We have used it to explore the fundamental characteristics of matter for which a Nobel prize was actually won for the work done by Chalk River in neutron scattering, and I can go on and on and on. It is really the birthplace for the Canadian nuclear industry and it is a 50-year-old reactor. It is really a marvellous reactor.

I was reminded today that we create medical isotopes for about 25 million diagnoses a year. Over the last 10 to 15 years that is almost 250 million procedures that have been used with the medical isotopes.

I personally have a lot of confidence in our ability to operate NRU safely. We have done so for many, many decades and we will for as long as we go into the future. I personally live very close to the NRU reactor, more than most people. I have absolutely no hesitation to say that the reactor is safe and it will continue to be operated safely.

I should also mention that the NRU reactor is used by many people from around the world. It is used for training, students, and university research. We take it very seriously that this reactor must be operated safely.

If we cannot operate the reactor safely, it will be shut down. The Chief Nuclear Officer has the full authority to not consult me, if he believes that the reactor cannot be operated safely. He will shut it down on his own authority.

I just want to say that we take safety very seriously. That is number one. But we also do have a responsibility, of course, to produce medical isotopes. We take that very seriously as well, but safety is the thing that we take the most seriously. So, we are not going to operate that reactor under any conditions that we think are unsafe.

[The Chair, NDP, Bill Blaikie]

Thank you, Mr. Torgerson.

With that, we will proceed to a 20-minute round from the Bloc Québécois.

The hon. member for Québec.