Evidence of meeting #6 for Environment and Sustainable Development in the 44th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was facility.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Professor, School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, University of British Columbia, As an Individual
Thank you very much.
Bloc
Monique Pauzé Bloc Repentigny, QC
Thank you, Mr. Ramana.
Mr. Whitlock, on the International Atomic Energy Agency website, it explains what the ARTEMIS service is. Can you tell us why this was not implemented in the Chalk River project at Canadian Nuclear Laboratories?
For his part, Mr. Ramzi Jammal, vice-president of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, had committed to it.
Liberal
Section Head, Concepts and Approaches, Department of Safeguards, International Atomic Energy Agency, As an Individual
I'm sorry. I'm not familiar with that term, the Artemis project. I cannot speak to that.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Francis Scarpaleggia
Your time is almost up, Ms. Pauzé.
I now give the floor to Ms. Collins.
NDP
Laurel Collins NDP Victoria, BC
Thank you, Mr. Chair, and to both of the witnesses.
Dr. Ramana, the world is deeply concerned about nuclear weapons right now, given Putin's war against Ukraine. Canada is standing in solidarity with the people of Ukraine as they stand up to Putin's aggression. It's been extremely troubling to see him threatening the world with the use of nuclear warfare.
You mentioned in your opening remarks the risk of nuclear proliferation. Can you speak a bit more about that danger?
Professor, School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, University of British Columbia, As an Individual
The main obstacle that any country faces in trying to develop nuclear weapons is acquiring the fissile material that is used to make the bomb. That's the plutonium or highly enriched uranium.
The chemical process, called reprocessing, is used to deal with radioactive waste in some countries. Canada does not do it, though it did in the past, in the 1950s. What it does is separate out the uranium and plutonium from the other radioactive fission products that are produced in a nuclear reactor through the fission reaction that happens there. When it separates, it becomes much easier to take the plutonium away from it. Any process that deals with the spent fuel is typically aiming at reducing the radioactive barrier that prevents people from being able to use it. That is the main connection.
Look at the Cirus reactor that Canada supplied to India. The way that India managed to produce plutonium for its 1974 nuclear weapons test was through this very process in spent fuel from the Cirus reactor.
In the science like the Moltex reactor's, they want to use a fuel that includes plutonium. Therefore, they have to do some kind of reprocessing prior to that.
NDP
Laurel Collins NDP Victoria, BC
Thank you so much.
Dr. Ramana, in a 2018 paper on the technical and social problems of nuclear waste, you said that “the nuclear industry does not yet have a working solution for managing spent fuel and high level waste”. You also raised concerns about “the propaganda effort by the nuclear industry to market nuclear power as a solution to climate change”.
Given the industry's interest in the expansion of nuclear energy, are you concerned about the role of NWMO in developing an effective waste management policy?
Professor, School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, University of British Columbia, As an Individual
Yes. I am indeed concerned about it. I'm concerned about it partly because, to my understanding of how NWMO was set up, it was intended to deal with radioactive waste produced by current reactors. Their consultation process basically was emphasizing the point that this waste has been produced, and the electricity generated by these reactors has already been used, so we have a responsibility to deal with the waste that has been already generated. However, they have pivoted now, trying to say that because we have developed a methodology to try to deal with the current reactors, we can do this for any future reactor, thereby opening the possibility of constructing new reactors.
I think that's a concerning aspect for two reasons. One is for all the technical reasons I mentioned. The way that NWMO has tried to address CANDU reactor waste would not apply exactly as it does to the kind of small modular reactors that are concerned.
The second is because it was compacted, the idea was that the current generation, which has the responsibility to deal with the radioactive waste produced by electricity that was generated earlier, cannot translate into taking responsibility for any future reactors that are being considered. That I see as part of the effort to try to sell small modular reactors as a potential solution to climate change.
I also, as you mentioned, don't think nuclear power can be an effective solution to climate change.
NDP
Laurel Collins NDP Victoria, BC
Thank you so much.
On that piece, you recently co-authored a paper about how small modular reactors fail the test of time and cost, and aren't up to meeting the challenge of climate change. Specifically, you talked about the timeline to 2030 and 2035. Industry witnesses have kind of held up small modular reactors as a silver bullet when it comes to Canada's emissions reductions, or as a really important piece.
Can you talk a little bit more about your response to those?
Professor, School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, University of British Columbia, As an Individual
Yes. We've been hearing about small modular reactors for a long time. In 2001, for example, the U.S. Department of Energy put out a report in which they promised that some reactors were ready for commissioning by the end of the decade. That was 2010. Current estimates are that the earliest small modular reactors in the United States might be commissioned by 2029-30. That's 20 years past that deadline.
This has been the historical pattern. A new reactor design is very easy to conceive of on paper, but not when you try to translate that into a reactor design that can actually be constructed and that can answer all the questions that any good regulator will pose. What is the risk of this reactor having an accident in the event of a fire or in the event of an operator making a mistake or in the event of a flood? Those are very difficult questions.
Professor, School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, University of British Columbia, As an Individual
It takes a long time for any reactor design to be able to develop up to that point, and that's why I don't—
Liberal
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Francis Scarpaleggia
We'll go to our second round.
Mr. Seeback, you have five minutes.
Conservative
Kyle Seeback Conservative Dufferin—Caledon, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Dr. Whitlock, I'm going to ask you a bunch of questions and try to unpack some of the answers we've just heard. I don't have a lot of time, so I'm hoping you can answer succinctly.
It was suggested that there's no plan for the disposal of waste, and there are concerns about the plans of NWMO. That's number one. There seem to be concerns about dealing with waste from SMRs.
Could you comment on both of those things?
Section Head, Concepts and Approaches, Department of Safeguards, International Atomic Energy Agency, As an Individual
There is obviously a plan—the plan that's being implemented that we have been talking about. The plan includes, and always did include, all types of nuclear spent fuel. It's just that CANDU's spent fuel was the prominent one and still is the prominent one to be speaking about.
So it always did include, although SMRs weren't even a gleam in the eye back then, SMR spent fuel. There will be technical challenges that one will have to address before the spent fuel from the SMRs can be put into a geological repository, so I agree with Dr. Ramana on that. I have great faith in the technical ability of our scientists and engineers to do that. There are things you have to do. They will do it.
On the repository itself, the concept of the repository remains the same—all kinds of radioactive material in the earth that Mother Nature has isolated for billions of years.
Conservative
Kyle Seeback Conservative Dufferin—Caledon, ON
With the system we have now, do you think it has proper oversight and that there is insurance that the agencies responsible for waste are independent?
Section Head, Concepts and Approaches, Department of Safeguards, International Atomic Energy Agency, As an Individual
I believe so. I know there have been criticisms because people follow the money and the NWMO is funded by the nuclear industry, so people think there must be a conspiracy theory to cut things short. The NWMO itself functions as an independent body, and it's arm's length and has a very transparent process that started off by talking to Canadians and asking them how they would deal with nuclear waste going forward, including doing what we're doing now and building more and bigger surface storage facilities. The Canadians who attended the meetings spoke strongly in favour of a geological repository, taking into account new technologies that would come along. That was the adaptive phased management approach. We have a long time before the spent fuel from the SMRs is going to have to go into a repository, and all of that time will be spent working on the technology to be able to put it there.
Conservative
Kyle Seeback Conservative Dufferin—Caledon, ON
In your view, would you say in general that the current framework Canada has with regard to managing nuclear waste works well?
Section Head, Concepts and Approaches, Department of Safeguards, International Atomic Energy Agency, As an Individual
In my observations and in talking to Canadians, yes.
Conservative
Kyle Seeback Conservative Dufferin—Caledon, ON
One other comment by Dr. Ramana that I want to ask you about is his saying that none of this factors in the cost of potential accidents. Given your area of expertise, what are the risks of accidents with the storage of nuclear materials?
Section Head, Concepts and Approaches, Department of Safeguards, International Atomic Energy Agency, As an Individual
We have to keep in mind the difference in the types of materials. Yes, the spent fuel from SMRs will be different from CANDU spent fuel, but it's not going to be like the stuff that was in the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in the U.S. that had the accident, which was weapons processing waste and has a very different composition and treatment. Certainly, they learned some lessons there, but those lessons specifically do not impinge upon the technology for power reactors, including small modular reactors. Yes, there is a technological hurdle that will have to be addressed, we have time to do that, and there will be some costs that will have to be addressed and you always have to address the safety, but I don't think it's something that's unmanageable. It's something we need to include in our tool box. We need to have nuclear power as one of the tools going forward.
Conservative
Kyle Seeback Conservative Dufferin—Caledon, ON
I don't know if you can do this, but would you assess the risk of accidents as very low, low, incredibly low, medium, or high? Is there a scale you could give on this?