Thank you very much.
With respect to this decision, obviously to terminate the MAPLE project...there were no isotopes being produced, so this decision does not impact on the production of isotopes. As far as the future goes--and I hear your comments loud and clear--let me say this. The NRU, as I've said, is a marvellous piece of technology. You're correct, it's 50 years old, but in fairness, it's had a number of upgrades done recently to meet the current licensing conditions. The reactor is operating as efficiently and as safely as it ever has before in its entire history.
When I speak with the experts--and you're going to get an opportunity to talk to AECL, I understand, after me, and you can question them--they are now working with the CNSC. They've engaged in those discussions about post-2011, and I have no reason to believe they will not be able to license that. They may require some further upgrades. I don't know that, but I can tell you this. The government is committed to putting the resources that are required to ensure that this can be done.
Those discussions are ongoing, and the fact that we've made this decision on the MAPLE project allows us now to ask, what is going to be out there in the long term? Already people from the private sector have approached me about different possibilities. Now, they are just literally discussions coming into my office, but from pretty serious people. I'm not going to get into those details. I believe that would be in their interest, not mine, to start speculating about what may or may not come out. But the fact is that we've made this decision. We can now focus on other alternatives as well.
But the NRU is doing an amazing job right now. As I said earlier, it's an amazing piece of technology. I have every reason to believe it will continue. I hear the concerns of the medical community. That is why we made the decision we did. It was long overdue. This project should never have begun. They were warned. The Auditor General, on numerous occasions, warned of the problems with this project.
This is well over a decade. I think we're acting very prudently, very responsibly. They're nuclear decisions. You just don't make them overnight. You have to do your due diligence. You have to do your homework, and that is exactly what we have done.