Environment Committee on March 1st, 2022

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you for that clarification. We appreciate it.

We'll now go to the second round, starting with Mr. Carrie.

You have five minutes.

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I appreciate that.

I want to follow up on my colleague's question about the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission. My understanding is that it reports to the natural resources minister. I believe one of the points she brought up, which is fair, is whether people would have more confidence if it reported to the environment minister.

In your opinion, should the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission report to the environment minister instead of the natural resources minister? Do you think that would be more efficient or more effective, Mr. McBrearty?

[Joseph McBrearty]

I would say that the structures within government are the prerogative of government. As a private contractor, we should not opine on that area. That is something I believe internal government policy is best used to address.

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

Mr. Dermarkar, do you have an opinion on that, or is it basically the same idea?

[Fred Dermarkar]

It's a similar idea. We are part of government, but we do not set government policy. We implement government policy. If the government chooses to be organized in a certain way, that's the prerogative of government. AECL does not have an opinion on that.

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

That's a great political answer. Thank you for that.

I want to get back to the importance of the work you're doing. As I mentioned to the previous panel, being in Oshawa, I'm surrounded by nuclear plants. I have Clarington on one side and Pickering on the other. It's an important part of our community and economy, but we do need to look at some long-term storage.

I asked the previous panel this question and I would like to get your opinion on it. Maybe you can start off, Mr. Dermarkar. Is there any way to net zero if we don't have nuclear?

[Fred Dermarkar]

Our minister, Minister O'Regan, was very clear on this: there is no pathway to net zero without nuclear. I attended a talk by Mr. Carney at the end of October at a U.K. summit, and he repeated that. You might know that he is a special envoy for the UN looking at how to achieve a framework for managing climate change. Mr. Carney himself said that there is not a pathway to net zero without nuclear.

That's a personal view, but I'm sharing with you what others have said in that regard. I think it's a well-supported position. In January, the IEA—the International Energy Agency—wrote a country report on Canada. They reinforced in that report the importance of pursuing nuclear and, in fact, encouraged Canada to help the rest of the world pursue nuclear through both SMRs and CANDU technology, because they see Canada as a tier-one nuclear nation.

Reading all these documents, it's hard to argue that nuclear is not part of the solution to net zero.

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

Thank you very much for that opinion.

I, as well, think that Canada has a great opportunity to take a leadership role in the full cycle of nuclear, whether that's mining or long-term storage. We did hear from a previous witness that the concern and moral obligation for Canada, because we do have this waste now, is that we should be working to come up with a permanent solution. He mentioned that it might not be happening tomorrow, but eventually we're going to have some glaciers pop over again and, really, if we don't address it now, we won't have a solution for generations to come.

My question would be this. Do you see any danger or risk for accidents or anything like that, given that we don't have these small modular reactors yet with their waste products? With the waste products that we are managing now, do you see a very high level of risk with the storage that is being proposed now for our nuclear waste?

[Fred Dermarkar]

What I see, first of all, is that the waste we have right now poses a low risk to the environment. When we have that waste in a properly engineered repository, it will pose an even lower risk to the environment.

With this in mind—namely, that engineered repositories lower the risk—AECL has directed CNL to accelerate the pace of decommissioning and disposal so that we can achieve the lower risk profile sooner rather than later and not delay to future generations what our generation should be responsible for.

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

Excellent. Thank you very much.

How am I doing, Mr. Chair?

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

You have about 25 seconds left.

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

All right. I'll let the next questioner go. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

We'll bank that, I guess.

We'll go now to Mr. Longfield for five minutes.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Mr. Carrie, for a really good line of questioning, and to the witnesses for your input.

Mr. Desbiens, you've been on the sidelines of this discussion. I'm wondering, from Quebec's point of view, what happens if we don't manage this, if we don't go to proper governance and storage of long-term nuclear waste through a deep underground repository.

[Patrice Desbiens]

Thank you for the question.

As Mr. Dermarkar said, it is quite simple to manage nuclear waste, because it is passive management. What you have to do is store it and make sure that everything goes well over time. By following basic monitoring and maintenance elements, you can deal with the waste for a long time.

That's what we're doing now. Even though we are already looking at a long-term solution, the endgame is still a few decades away. As Mr. Dermarkar said, the sooner the better, but in the meantime, it is relatively simple to deal with the waste well.

For the time being, we are doing it at the Gentilly‑2 site. Our waste is in relatively new facilities. They are easy to maintain until the final stage can be carried out.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Thank you.

This is a long-term solution, and I appreciate that you're doing things safely and have been doing things safely there for a number of decades, but the problem still exists. What I'm hearing you say is that there is a nuclear waste challenge and we have to find a longer term solution for. You're nodding. That's great.

Also, Mr. McBrearty it's great to see you again. Thank you for spending time with me on this topic as I was educating myself for this study.

Mr. McBrearty, maybe I could start with you on new technologies. You mentioned some of the new medical isotopes being developed. We did discuss that previously. When we look at things like the chemical reprocessing that India's using, which a previous panellist told us about this morning, we see that it's not on the radar of Canada and not something that we're doing here. We are looking at pyroprocessing and Purex. How do those decisions go through the governance on how we process the nuclear waste in a safe manner?

[Joseph McBrearty]

There's a lot to unravel in that question, and that is okay.

We're concentrating right now on the low-level waste from our perspective, but your questions go into some of the future potential ways that we could reprocess or get rid of the waste. Certainly, the discussions on molten salt reactors lend some credence to that, but from a governance standpoint before anyone would ever even start to raise this, we would have to make sure that we had won the concurrence of the Government of Canada, that the government believes that would be a strategy we would embark on.

As you're well aware, NRCan is conducting a nuclear waste policy review. The draft comments are out on that. For the most part, I would say that we're looking at the more traditional, the deep geologic, repositories or near-surface disposal types of things. At the end of the day, the government would provide some direction and then we in the industry would analyze to see whether that was a feasible alternative. Then if it were a feasible alternative, it would be going to the regulator to analyze the safety case.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

So we have several eyes looking at this, including the public, industry, the Government of Canada, the regulator and indigenous communities.

[Joseph McBrearty]

Yes, sir, that's true.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Thank you.

Mr. Dermarkar, when we're looking at other technology like fusion reactors, or the different options that might come in the future, how does AECL evaluate those options in terms of risk management?

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Be very quick, please.

[Fred Dermarkar]

AECL is actually technology agnostic. Our position right now is that we want to enable the development of new technologies and to make available our sites for demonstration, and our labs for research and development to enable new technologies.

Safety cases will be evaluated by the regulators. Safety cases will be made by the technology proponents, and we are there as enablers.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you.

Ms. Pauzé, you have the floor for two and a half minutes.

[Monique Pauzé, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Since I was a teacher in my previous life, I'm used to giving out assignments, so I'm going to give another one to Canadian Nuclear Laboratories.

Earlier, it was mentioned that experts had chosen the Chalk River site because experts in geology and hydrogeology had rigorously recommended it. However, the environmental impact study says otherwise. So I would like the committee to be provided with the names of the experts who gave the green light to the Chalk River site.

My next question is for Atomic Energy of Canada Limited and it has to do with finances.

In the 2020 report financial summary, under decommissioning, waste management and contaminated sites expenses, it shows that the cost was $26 million in 2017, $295 million in 2018, $713 million in 2019 and $955 million in 2020.

I would like to hear an explanation for this upward trend. What is the justification for this explosion in costs?

[Fred Dermarkar]

I'm not entirely sure of the numbers you are referring to, Madame Pauzé. But if the inference is to why the costs of the legacy waste liabilities are going up with time, the reason it that as we undertake work to address the legacy liabilities and we start digging into the ground to better understand what's there, because many of these liabilities date back to the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, our records were not complete. As we start to address those legacy liabilities, we learn about the actual conditions and we are more informed about the cost of remediating the environment to address those legacy liabilities. For that reason the costs have gone up.

This is consistent with what we see in other countries, like the U.K. and the U.S. As they start to address their legacy liabilities from 50, 60, 70 years ago, they see their costs going up as well. The fact is that the actual legacy liability is going down with time as CNL executes the environmental remediation.