Natural Resources committee  Mr. Thompson mentioned probabilistic risk assessments. We require them. We have a CSA standard based on IAEA guidance, so we have international guidance on this one. We also require the licensees to look at design-basis accidents. We require them to look beyond design basis or severe accidents.

Natural Resources committee  There isn't enough in that picture. It's a picture of the reactor, but you can't tell the details of what fuel rods are in or out. Technically, you could say that as soon as there's fuel in the reactor you are producing isotopes, because medical isotopes, the moly, is produced within the fuel.

Natural Resources committee  Just to provide some idea of what they do on a regular basis, one, they observe the inspections AECL has done. As was pointed out, this part of the reactor is very hard to get at; it's done remotely with cameras. We don't put our own cameras in, but we just watch what AECL does and we do our own analysis and detailed review of what comes out of those inspections.

Natural Resources committee  There are twenty power reactors in Canada operating or undergoing refurbishment, and there are five small reactors at universities, plus NRU, plus a number of decommissioned reactors. The team is also looking at how we regulate uranium mining and the use of medical substances, as well as the other processing facilities associated with production of nuclear fuel.

Natural Resources committee  The comparison they're using is the standards set by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Natural Resources committee  That's correct. They do quite a detailed two weeks here, then they will present a final report to us some time in the fall.

Natural Resources committee  No.

Natural Resources committee  I wasn't directly involved in the MAPLE reactors at that stage, but had been involved earlier. To my knowledge, they had never actually put in the targets that produce the medical isotopes. It was just the driver fuel, the normal fuel that had been tested for commissioning tests.

Natural Resources committee  The issue is not whether, necessarily, there's any problem with a positive coefficient. It was a mismatch between the predicted in their safety case in the computer codes that said it should be negative and the actual measurements in the reactor that turned out to be positive, which means there was something in those computer codes that was not modelling what was really happening in the reactor.