Fascinating testimony from four scientists yesterday at the Natural Resources Committee. Here's my take on the action:
The engineering team that built the MAPLE nuclear reactors at Chalk River, Ont., was four months away from fixing a technical problem that had kept them from getting a licence when the project was cancelled, MPs were told Thursday.
The MAPLEs are two brand new partly commissioned reactors sitting next door to the leaking, rusting NRU reactor that was shut down May 14.
That shutdown eliminated the source of 40 per cent of the world's medical isotopes, used to treat cancer, heart disease and other diseases.
One MAPLE, operating at 80 per cent power, could produce enough isotopes for the entire world.
Appearing before a parliamentary committee Thursday, the leader of the MAPLE team, nuclear physicist Harold Smith, and three independent academic nuclear scientists urged Natural Resources Minister Lisa Raitt to ask Crown corporation Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. to reconsider its decision on the MAPLEs.
“They're all saying the same thing basically, that the government has made a mistake and that it should reconsider its decision to cancel the MAPLE project,” said Liberal MP Geoff Regan. “It's a remarkable confluence of opinion we're hearing today.”
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Interesting, but I would be curious to see a graph showing time (date) on one axis and projected time to completion for this project on the other.
Or in other words, how reliable is the claim that the project was 4 months away from completion?