Thank you.
To open, in the spirit of reconciliation, I want to acknowledge that I live, work and play on the traditional territories of the Blackfoot Confederacy—the Siksika, Kainai, Piikani—the Tsuut'ina, the Îyâxe Nakoda Nations, the Métis Nation region 3, and I want to acknowledge all who make their homes in the Treaty 7 region of southern Alberta.
I teach nuclear, solar, hydro power and a general course on energy at the University of Calgary. I run a free online encyclopedia that covers the entire energy sector. As far as we know, it's most used web-based resource dedicated to explaining energy issues to adults in the world. I'm also a reviewer for the IPCC's report to the United Nations.
Society needs aggressive decarbonization and nuclear power is essential to that process.
I'm often asked if I would live on top of a deep geologic repository. Yes, and I would raise my family there.
My wife and I moved to Alberta to raise our family specifically because we thought this province would be getting nuclear power. Most of the 70,000 Canadians working in the nuclear sector live and raise their families around nuclear reactors and with radioactive materials like spent nuclear fuel.
Aren't radioactive materials dangerous? Canadian nuclear technology has saved millions of lives. Radioactive materials for medicine and many industrial applications are a societal good, but radioactive material must be handled carefully at every stage.
The Government of Canada regulates the use of radioactive materials. These regulations keep workers, the public and the environment safe. The Canadian nuclear industry has an extraordinary record of safety, safe practice and compliance.
Power plants have stored spent fuel on site for decades. Over the decades of storage, the radioactivity naturally dies down, making the fuel easier to handle. Unlike most types of waste, spent nuclear fuel gets less hazardous with age, rather than more hazardous. The waiting was prudent.
The NWMO developed a robust plan. The science and technology are sound and thoroughly tested. The waste can be moved to either site they're considering safely and stored safely. Why not leave it on the surface? Every country in the world that faces the decision of what to do with spent nuclear fuel has said the same thing: Put it safely underground, out of the weather that we're talking about. We are the society that benefited from the power. We are the society that must dispose of the waste.
Will new nuclear reactors technology make more electricity and transform the spent fuels? Maybe. We should aggressively fund research and development to deploy a suite of nuclear reactors that can burn this waste to make more carbon-free electricity. However, even those reactors still generate waste that will eventually lead to long-term needs for storage—probably underground. In the mean time, it is responsible to move forward with a plan of building a long-term disposal site until these reactors exist.
How do we know it won't leak?
Radiation is like light from a flashlight. A few metres of rock stops the radiation. The 500 metres of rock that is proposed will stop all of the radiation. Where environmental concerns get tricky is that radioactive material could be spread through water in the environment. Water could move those little flashlights. The system is designed to limit water in the repository. No water in, no water out. The fuel is a ceramic that doesn't dissolve in water, in a bundle that's watertight, in a used fuel container that's watertight, in a bentonite clay box that absorbs water, isolated from the biosphere by half a kilometre of solid rock.
How do we know it will stay stable for a million years? Geologists see natural systems around the world that kept their radioactive materials isolated from the surface biosphere hundreds of time longer than necessary, without any engineering. The engineering works with nature to be even more confident the radioactive material will stay put.
Why bother? Our world needs energy to feed, clothe and care for its people. It needs more energy than ever before. However, five-sixths of that comes from burning fossil fuels, which are changing the climate in disastrous ways. The worlds needs nuclear power along with hydro, wind and solar to meet the challenging world of the 21st century.
Thank you for your attention.