Natural Resources committee  Yes, fix the corrosion in NRU, because fixing MAPLE will take some significant time and we don't know how long that will be.

Natural Resources committee  The shortest route to getting the supply back is to fix MAPLE. Any of the other routes, whether it's restarting MAPLE or getting the Australian reactor producing more, is likely to take a significantly longer time than getting NRU back on line.

Natural Resources committee  I beg your pardon. I meant “fix NRU”. Thank you very much for clarifying.

Natural Resources committee  Certainly. On the first question, you've already had an accurate answer from Ms. Chitra that the reactor had operated as part of its commissioning, and some of the commissioning tests were with targets in. But those targets were not processed, which is why I said it didn't produce any radioisotopes in terms of output.

Natural Resources committee  There would have been moly-99 as a fission product in the fuel in the reactor.

Natural Resources committee  In terms of milking that fuel and getting the moly out so that it would then go in to become a technetium-99 generator, that was not done.

Natural Resources committee  On the other question, you asked about safety, which is clearly of concern to you. The MAPLE reactors were safe throughout their operating history in terms of the commissioning tests. If they were not, they would not have been licensed, and they would not have been allowed to operate either by AECL or the CNSC.

Natural Resources committee  Thanks. May I just correct you? It's just Mr.; I'm not a doctor. Canada invented, as I understand it, the whole business of medical radioisotopes. As you know, the NRU has been a very solid producer of radioisotopes for many years. We do have a long history of producing radioisotopes.

Natural Resources committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for asking me to reappear before you. My name is John Waddington. I'm a professional engineer. I have spent over 40 years in the business of nuclear safety. I retired from the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission in 2002 after 27 years with that organization.

Natural Resources committee  First of all, let's clarify what is small. When I was talking about 10 millimetres, I was using an example of what the rods do to illustrate how the process works. Reactivity itself is measured in milli-k. I won't bore you with the physics, if I may, but basically the reactor currently is operating with a positive power coefficient of around plus 3 milli-k, when it was designed for minus 1 milli-k.

Natural Resources committee  Yes, I can certainly do that.

Natural Resources committee  Yes, it was. That was the answer to the second question. You can run it safely, but you would have to run it a little slower.

Natural Resources committee  Yes, they would have done that.

Natural Resources committee  The fuel that would be made would be subject to very stringent checks and balances in making sure that the right amount of uranium was in the fuel and that the fuel met the design specifications. There's a very rigorous process, particularly with enriched fuel, and of course the target is a highly enriched fuel.

Natural Resources committee  If we take the highly enriched material, there are a number or research reactors around the world that still use enriched uranium in their fuel. There is, however, a general push around the world to reduce the use of highly enriched uranium and move to low-enriched uranium. That is really for nuclear proliferation purposes.