Natural Resources committee  That's correct. We have completed the fabrication of the repair tooling. We have confirmed the extent of repair below the weld. We are currently not finished with the corrosion mechanism determination and the final confirmation of the extent of repair. We are about to start full-scale mock-up testing of the repair tool, and I would project that the initiated repair of the vessel will be somewhat later than on this schedule.

Natural Resources committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have with me today Mr. Richard Côté, vice-president responsible for AECL's isotope business. Hugh MacDiarmid, AECL's president and CEO, asked me to express his regret at not being able to be here. Hugh is attending his daughter's wedding in Alberta and hopes you will understand his absence.

Natural Resources committee  The calandria would be the term used on a commercial CANDU power reactor, so we would refer to it simply as the reactor vessel.

Natural Resources committee  Yes, this is the second reactor vessel. The original one was replaced between 1972 and 1974.

Natural Resources committee  The vessel does not have a prescribed life. It's really based on the results of the aging management of the vessel. The first vessel was of a somewhat different aluminum material, alloy, from the current one and had a significantly shorter life. The current vessel has been inspected several times and has been deemed to be continuing to be fit for service for an extended period into the future.

Natural Resources committee  Actually, I think there was only repair made in about 1991-92, but other than that, it has been really only inspection.

Natural Resources committee  It's all about location. So the drawings that you were handed out are really images taken from 3-D CAD models, and if you look at the first one, it's a model of the complete reactor. And what's important to note is the holes at the top, on the deck of the reactor, which in fact are the access points.

Natural Resources committee  I would just point out that I believe our first estimate was of more than three months. That estimate was based on the belief that we would be doing a simple mechanical repair of the reactor vessel at one site. After we did some inspection, we came back and said it would be late in the year, at the earliest, based on having done inspection and predicting that we would likely have to repair as many as five sites.

Natural Resources committee  The Chalk River site is licensed to process our own waste and also to accept waste from other producers, so essentially we have the rest of the supply chain. We have processing facilities that are currently available and we have a waste management stream that is currently available.

Natural Resources committee  No. The first thing we did in responding to the outage of the Petten reactor was to look at how we could modify our production without impacting the reliability of the NRU.

Natural Resources committee  As we've progressed our inspection, we have covered more of the circumference of the vessel. Initially we were dealing with one leak, and as we increased our ability to inspect, we found other locations where there was corrosion. We now believe as many as nine areas on the vessel will require repair.

Natural Resources committee  Actually, I'm not sure I can answer it either. It has certainly not been in the time that I can recall. Before the NRX reactor was taken out of service, I believe in the early 1990s, there was a second reactor at Chalk River that could back up the NRU. Since that time, I've not been aware of any isotope shortage of the magnitude that occurred at the end of 2007, or the current.

Natural Resources committee  We are in fact working to a plan and to a schedule. We are continually updating that schedule as we get new information. The point we're at is that we have enough inspection data that we have been able to make a decision on going forward with repair technology. As a result, that adds definition, I guess, to the plan that we will be executing.

Natural Resources committee  We have a schedule that we've put together, and it still does have some uncertainty around it, and that is why we have given the general range of the first quarter of 2010.

Natural Resources committee  I will speak to that, Mr. Chair. We have put a project team together to specifically address the repair and return to service of NRU. They will be selecting repair strategies in order to provide for long-term, reliable operation. Having gone to the effort of shutting down and the effort that will be required to do the inspections and assessment, we need to have a long-lasting repair.