Natural Resources committee  Well, it probably is a definition of trying to figure out exactly what looking at the reactor design.... I'll give you an example. At the very beginning, when I got there, there was an issue that the shut-off rods weren't falling all the time. Now, the shut-off rods are absolutel

Natural Resources committee  I think you'd have to go back and look at the experiments that happened, but in terms of the licences that we gave, which were these very specific licences to look at bringing it up to power.... I don't have the schedule in front of me; they were the licences at the very end. Tha

Natural Resources committee  From listening to the meeting of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission on June 11, I think there was no projected change. AECL was saying at least three months, but I think they agreed they were behind in terms of their initial work and hoped to make that up. So I couldn't say

Natural Resources committee  Any licensee is able to bring in whoever they wish at any time to advise them. What I was talking about is when it was clear that there was a problem at the commissioning phase. That's when we became aware of that. I'm not trying to make it 2006 or whatever; I'm just saying that

Natural Resources committee  I think in terms of technological areas, the reactor is safe until it's started. The job at the CNSC is to make sure that whatever happens on that site is safe and that there's training, etc. The issue of the safety of a reactor becomes paramount for the CNSC when it starts to op

Natural Resources committee  You test a reactor when it's commissioned. There is not a separation of the two. When we talk about testing the reactor, we're talking about the commissioning phase. Until that time when it was being commissioned, it was really in a safe state. We looked at the licensing of the

Natural Resources committee  First of all, the webcasts of the CNSC meeting of June 11 are still available on the net, so all of this is public knowledge. There were a lot of questions by the commission members about how this happened over the period of time--the concentrations on the vessel itself, the cor

Natural Resources committee  I think one of the problems that AECL management had was that the NRU wasn't top of mind. It was the new reactors that were top of mind. There was a lot of focus on what had to be done with the ACR-700 and then the ACR-1000, etc. I think there was a feeling--I feel, and I can't

Natural Resources committee  Mr. Chairman, I think the committee had the benefit of the advice of the experts from the Society of Nuclear Medicine. You also hear of the reports now from their conference in Toronto, illustrating their concerns. I have a lot of respect for them. I think their assessment proces

Natural Resources committee  Can I answer? There were two questions.

Natural Resources committee  That is the view of my staff in the last year. The person who retired was in the last year. That was their view. When I asked what happened to the MAPLE reactor in the end, they said it was an inherently flawed design and that it was going to be finished. It was going to be finis

Natural Resources committee  Well, I'll explain. When I arrived in 2001, as I answered the earlier question, there were really serious problems with the MAPLEs, in terms of housekeeping and—

Natural Resources committee  Sir, I'm here as a private citizen. You could put me under oath and I would say exactly the same thing.

Natural Resources committee  I don't have those figures in front of me.

Natural Resources committee  This is going to be a bit of a technical answer, but what has to happen is that they have to be licensed to start the commissioning process. When they're in a safe state, they have one kind of licence that is really for while they're being built. Then they came back for six-month