Environment Committee on Feb. 3rd, 2022

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

You have time for a comment, as opposed to a question.

[Patrick Weiler, Liberal, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC]

I'll just thank the witnesses.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thanks very much.

We now go to Ms. Pauzé for six minutes.

[Monique Pauzé, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Mr. Chair, I want to start by saying how regrettable it is that the motion behind today's study is being hijacked, so I urge committee members to stick to the study in hand, nuclear waste.

My question is for Mr. Hendrickson. It has to do with waste classification.

Mr. Hendrickson, we've seen the Department of Natural Resources minimize the importance of a robust and consistent system aligned with the standards of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

I'd like to hear your comments on the situation, especially in light of the regulation made by the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission in the summer of 2020. It reclassified the level of radioactivity for waste.

Isn't that the real reason behind the reduction in intermediate-level radioactive waste in Canada's inventory, which Canada likes to boast about?

[Ole Hendrickson]

Thank you, Madame Pauzé. That's an important question.

We need to be talking about nuclear waste, not nuclear energy. High-level spent fuel waste is only the tip of the iceberg. Federal nuclear research and development has generated a $16-billion waste and decommissioning liability.

The Auditor General is anticipating the publication of an environment and sustainable development audit of nuclear waste management this year. Parliament should consider its findings before any permanent nuclear waste disposal facilities are approved. I mentioned earlier the project to dispose of a million tonnes of commercial and federal waste at Chalk River. That project has been widely criticized as not meeting international safety standards, but the CNSC has recommended its approval.

I ask that the committee consider the merits of creating an independent, publicly owned nuclear waste management and decommissioning agency, which is independent of the industry and government industries that promote the industry. It could draw upon governance models in other countries that have more advanced nuclear waste management programs.

[Monique Pauzé, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Mr. Hendrickson, sorry to cut you off, but I have a lot of questions for you and little time to ask them.

The City of Ottawa asked the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada to conduct a regional assessment of past, present and future radioactive disposal projects in the Ottawa Valley.

How do you respond to the concerns raised by the city?

[Ole Hendrickson]

It's a very important objection to bringing nuclear waste into Chalk River. That is in the resolution. We have no place at Chalk River. It is not a suitable place for the long-term storage or disposal of waste. We need a broader look at where nuclear waste could go. I'm pleased with that resolution.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Ms. Pauzé, could you please put your mike on mute?

[Monique Pauzé, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Yes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Go ahead, Mr. Hendrickson.

[Ole Hendrickson]

I was finishing up, saying it was an important request to the Minister of Environment to have a regional study. There are other nuclear waste facilities in the Ottawa Valley, but, unfortunately, that regional assessment did not go forward.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Back to you, Ms. Pauzé.

[Monique Pauzé, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

I want to follow up on the reclassification of waste.

The amount of radioactive waste at Chalk River has increased, and people are understandably worried.

Does the pace at which things are moving have anything to do with the new regulations?

Has the reclassification resulted in even more waste being sent to Chalk River?

[Ole Hendrickson]

Yes, Canada currently lacks a national radioactive waste inventory with consistent classification standards that have data on individual radionuclides. We are not fulfilling our reporting obligations under the Joint Convention on the Safety of Spent Fuel Management and on the Safety of Radioactive Waste Management.

We just don't have a good enough inventory to make long-term plans for radioactive waste disposal. We need an independent agency that can develop such a proper inventory. We don't want to see this reclassification of intermediate-level waste as low-level waste, which is, unfortunately, what's been happening at Chalk River.

[Monique Pauzé, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Hendrickson. I appreciate your being here today.

In light of what the witness just said, my next question is for Mr. Gorman.

Mr. Gorman, I gather that you are here to promote small modular reactors. What does your association do to prevent radioactive pollution and reduce radioactive waste, which is on the rise in Canada?

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

You have 30 seconds, Mr. Gorman.

[John Gorman]

Through you, Mr. Chair, to Madam Pauzé, just to clarify, I'm not here to lobby. I've been asked to appear before this committee to offer information on the nuclear industry.

When it comes to the issue of what we're doing to minimize waste, I would like to pass that question over to my co-panellist, Jason Van Wart, because he's an expert in that area. I'm not a technician.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

We'll have to address it later because we're out of time. Madam Pauzé can come back to it, and Mr. Van Wart can address it when he answers questions.

Ms. Collins, you have six minutes.

[Laurel Collins, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My first question is for Mr. Hendrickson.

Last year, when the government was approving new rules for the disposal of nuclear waste in Canada, you wrote a little bit about those new rules. Can you tell our committee a bit more about the radioactive disposal rules in Canada, how strong they are and whether they're designed to protect the environment, human health and future generations?

[Ole Hendrickson]

The new rules were developed by the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission. They are what the commission calls regulatory documents. They're not formal regulations. They are, in my view, watered-down versions of the IAEA safety standards, which do not necessarily have legal effect unless they're incorporated into licences.

One of my concerns was the new regulatory document for decommissioning, which still could be interpreted as allowing disposal of small modular reactors in place without dismantling them and moving them to a repository such as the one that Ms. Swami is talking about. The process of developing those regulatory documents was not fully transparent, in my view. There were probably meetings with the industry. When you look at how those were modified from the original drafts, you can see that virtually all the industry comments were incorporated and that fairly extensive comments from public intervenors were not.

Thank you.

[Laurel Collins, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Thanks so much.

I want to follow up on a couple of questions from my colleagues Mr. Weiler and Madam Pauzé.

In your opening statement, you talked about liabilities. As Mr. Weiler already highlighted, nuclear waste producers are supposed to be responsible for this radioactive waste as a “polluter pays” principle. We talked a little bit about a million years being the life cycle. I heard from Ms. Swami that it is 150 years for her trust.

Can you talk a bit about how these future costs, which go beyond that 150 years, are factored into the decisions about nuclear projects?

[Ole Hendrickson]

If I may use the example again of this proposed near-surface disposal facility at Chalk River, the proposal is for a 300-year institutional control period. In other words, there would have to be some kind of licence and regulatory oversight for 300 years. Unfortunately the packages that would go into that facility could have hazardous lifetimes of thousands to hundreds of thousands of years. The result is that it would essentially never be possible to abandon or unlicense a facility that's above ground and that still has significant quantities of radioactive and non-radioactive hazards in it. You essentially need a perpetual licence. This would represent a perpetual liability for the people of Canada and for our governments and taxpayers.

[Laurel Collins, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Thanks so much.

You mentioned the connection to small modular reactors and their life cycle. Can you talk a little bit about liabilities and how they might be the same or different for these new small modular reactors?

[Ole Hendrickson]

These reactors are mostly designs on paper. Earlier experiments in other countries have revealed some pretty significant problems with many of these designs. There have been attempts to make molten salt reactors and high-temperature gas-cooled reactors.

I'm not the expert on this, but because of the experimental nature, it's very difficult to assign a proper liability amount for potential accidents for those reactors.

[Laurel Collins, NDP, Victoria, BC]

My next question was going to be for Mr. Edwards, but maybe, Mr. Hendrickson, I'll see if you can take a stab at it. It connects to something you mentioned about publicly owned regulators and independent agencies.

The International Atomic Energy Agency publishes safety standards to make sure that nuclear is safe, that it's protecting people and the environment. It outlined the need for regulatory bodies to be credible, so not to have conflicts of interest and to be independent from the organizations it regulates.

In Canada we're currently regulated by the Department of Natural Resources, which is also overseeing the production of nuclear energy.

Would it make more sense for the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission to report to the Minister of Environment to mitigate some of these potential risks of conflict of interest?