Natural Resources committee  Not that I'm aware. We have talked to a few of them. Did you want to add to that?

Natural Resources committee  I think a key element to this is that we follow through on the request to develop a road map that can help us start to align where it is we're going next. When I came into the industry, you could see there had been a huge and appropriate push on refurbishment. It's great. It makes sense.

Natural Resources committee  Right now, I will struggle to give you exact ratios. I can tell you that, obviously, the amount of external commercial funds that we're getting in revenue right now is dropping because we're not making “molly” anymore. That obviously took a bit of a dip in how much external cash we're getting in.

Natural Resources committee  Regarding the $800 million, we're looking at our spend profile and how we're going to spend it. We were trying to do it in the first five years, but the bottom line is we have to do it smartly. We're not going to rush ahead and try to spend it in five years and build something we don't need.

Natural Resources committee  Like you, there are a lot of people all around the world who are excited about it right now. Some of the countries have now established a program and are figuring out their path going forward. We're at the beginning of that journey right now. The Canadian Nuclear Association, the other utilities, ourselves, and the parliamentary secretary are all in the midst of talking about how we can put this together and put a road map together and understand where it is and how this fits into it.

Natural Resources committee  That's the intent of the proposal we have submitted. It's exactly that. We lay out those initial stages to first gauge the interest in getting some of these vendors to bring their technology. We can be the host site and do the federal work to answer some of the questions and develop the reactor and site it at one of our locations, realizing that is the first step to bringing a new technology like this on board, so local communities can come to kick the tires, to see how it looks, works, and fits in; to give us input as to what they would expect and need; to train operators; to answer technical problems that we have and just get it ready, so that a manufacturing facility could then be developed in order to make these reactors a reality for the north.

Natural Resources committee  That's a great question. This is our first full year in the contract right now. One of the deliverables that we had in our schedule of work this year was to put together the strategy going forward as to how we're going to actually realize that vision we talked about. A big part of that is how we're going to be building.

Natural Resources committee  That is a delicate—I think the word is delicate—balance. I think that would ring true with you, as well. There is no doubt that they're going to roar ahead. Any of you who have gone into Beijing realize that they had better do something. I think that they're going to march ahead with or without us.

Natural Resources committee  I understand. Other methods have been looked at. We've looked at whether we could solidify the material and put together a facility at the site and deal with it ourselves. First of all, the cost is much higher, but of course safety is always number one, so if it is going to cost far more, it would also be much safer, so that would probably be the right answer.

Natural Resources committee  I won't have the full story. Some of the arrangements for the way such sales would be done and for any kind of royalties in all this are beyond my remit, so I don't know it, but whenever we expand the fleet of CANDU reactors and take it to the next generation as well, it helps us at the lab.

Natural Resources committee  This actually predates my time, so it's rather hearsay, but if you look at the specification we were responding to, there was no hint that we were going to be chasing after that initially. I can understand this. We have a lot of work in front of us, first just in properly transitioning the reactor, closing it down, taking care of the liability, and proving that we can deliver on projects in an economic fashion.

Natural Resources committee  I am not familiar with all of the advancements in other renewables that would be able to support the microgrids. I'll be honest, on just what I said, I have to go back and do a little more research myself. From what we have seen, and what we read, actually renewables are great.

Natural Resources committee  The model is not the driver. Set the model aside. If the lab wanted to continue and be successful in nuclear technology going forward, and it still maintained that it was going to stay only with the CANDU technology going forward, I'm afraid that it would not survive without a huge injection from Canadians taxpayers.

Natural Resources committee  This is the classic neutron gap and what are we going to do. First of all, in our contract when we were established here, there was a clear indication from government—the previous government—that it didn't have an interest at that time in having a new reactor. The way I portray it with the staff at the site is that first we have to figure out how to do our knitting better.

Natural Resources committee  Do you mean the work that we do for the federal government? Yes, we have ways that we track that, and actually, we're hearing really good reports. A new committee that has been established actually funnels and understands what the different federal needs are in research. Reports are that we're working extremely well with them, so we're getting a better idea early on as to what we need to do so that we can get on with it in the year and provide the answers and the research requested of us.