Natural Resources committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. I would like to introduce Mr. Bill Pilkington, the chief nuclear officer at AECL. My colleague Bill Pilkington and I appreciate the opportunity to be here. We will also be very pleased to welcome you to our Chalk River facility on April 13. We very much

Natural Resources committee  Well, if there is another crisis, I may not be here responding to your questions—sorry for that offhand remark. We believe very, very much that the right decision has been made and the right direction has been taken to have the NRU as the isotope production environment for Cana

Natural Resources committee  I believe that the minister's decision to appoint an expert panel is a very wise one, because it will bring to the fore all of the possibilities that can and should be examined. That will hopefully lead to a future direction on isotope production in Canada in both nuclear and non

Natural Resources committee  The emergence of the licensing issues with the MAPLE occurred early in this decade--around 2001 or 2002. On the expert panel, it's an eminent group of individuals. They will undoubtedly want to ask good questions and undertake whatever kinds of reviews they feel are appropriate

Natural Resources committee  It's certainly not my job to comment on government policy. I execute the directions I'm given. The direction I have at this point in time is that we are to bring the isotope production capacity back online as quickly as we can, and we are to proceed with re-licensing or renewin

Natural Resources committee  The MAPLE as a viable option?

Natural Resources committee  Correct.

Natural Resources committee  I don't view it as opposing. I can imagine that in her position of responsibility she wants to ensure that no stone is left unturned and that an independent expert panel will have the opportunity to review and examine any and all options and any and all decisions that have been m

Natural Resources committee  I'm very happy to do that. First, when the decision was made just over a year ago, that was based upon third party advice and our own internal expertise, applied against a very challenging problem, which was to try to resolve a technical and licensing issue that up to that point

Natural Resources committee  I'm not all that well equipped, necessarily, to be a predictor of that, but certainly if there is an evolution to a market price that will attract investment and attract development of alternative methodologies of production, then you could naturally expect that to occur; otherwi

Natural Resources committee  Well, it would have been within days of the occurrence of the outage, because as it became evident that the outage would not be a short one, it was very clear to all concerned that this was a serious matter that would attract a lot of attention. So certainly from the very earlies

Natural Resources committee  Opinions can differ on this matter, but it's not clear to me that market prices for isotopes have in fact been at a level that would be fully compensatory for AECL. Many factors go into the determination of international market prices; we do not have control over the pricing of o

Natural Resources committee  We estimated, we provided guidance on the minimum outage, and again, that truly was our best. We knew it would not be shorter than x amount of time.

Natural Resources committee  Bill should perhaps respond to that, but I'd like one more shot at it. You go ahead.

Natural Resources committee  I consider it very formal. I consider it a formal direction.