Evidence of meeting #50 for Natural Resources in the 39th 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.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Nuclear Association
You can send them to me, but I think you have misconstrued some numbers.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Lee Richardson
May I just intervene to suggest, Monsieur Ouellet, that I think it's not up to Mr. Elston to explain where the government spends its money. You can probably better put that question to the government when they appear—as you did, and you got an answer from the minister when he was here. But I don't think it's fair to ask Mr. Elston the question of how the government invests its money.
Bloc
Christian Ouellet Bloc Brome—Missisquoi, QC
We are still looking for an official site to bury leftover waste. It has been discussed for 30 years. Where in Canada do you find a site like that? You must have an idea, given that you have been looking for 30 years.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Nuclear Association
There is a process available to find a site that has been offered for decision to the federal authorities. It was filed by the Nuclear Waste Management Organization in November of 2005. It resided with the previous government. It is now residing with the current government to give the go-ahead to begin a process to find a site.
There is no site yet identified. It is particularly important for us to find one eventually, but in the current state of affairs, our management of the waste stream, which is quite modest by comparison to the amount of electricity we've generated, is well handled on each of the sites we now run in the country.
Bloc
Christian Ouellet Bloc Brome—Missisquoi, QC
Do you not think that it is dangerous to want to keep producing nuclear energy without having a site to bury leftover waste? You have been looking for a site for 30 years. With no site considered safe and officially approved by the government, you are still advocating nuclear energy. Do you find that appropriate and rational?
President and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Nuclear Association
There is a secure, safe, well-founded, and well-funded way to manage our waste currently. Our capacity to manage going into the future is well secure until the process that has been identified by the Nuclear Waste Management Organization has been permitted to proceed.
There is no danger with respect to the fuels we now manage. There is not an issue with respect to capacity. Every time there is a building of a new containment facility in dry storage, there is a request for a licence to the regulator. We go through all of the things we have to go through to make sure that the people know we are being safe and wise with respect to that management. So there is not an issue of safety with respect to managing.
There is not an issue with respect to capacity. In fact, as we get more experienced with our operations, we are getting more mileage out of the materials we use and we see a reduction in the waste stream or the used fuel stream as we introduce new technologies going forward.
So far from there being a safety or security issue without the long-term repository, we are well set, with safe and secure management of our waste facilities.
Bloc
Christian Ouellet Bloc Brome—Missisquoi, QC
You surprise me greatly. In the United States, NASA considers present and future waste as a terrorism-related danger. But you do not consider it a danger.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Nuclear Association
The advantage of having CANDU technology has been that the used fuel we generate is not as easily used for the purposes of terrorism. It is very difficult to....
You've seen the fuel bundles, I suspect, which are basically a series of cylinders formed in a larger-cylinder style. They are not easily moved into a terrorist's undertaking that would cause the same problems.
Having said that, we have very strong security measures, as everybody has since September 11, which have been increased. We look at the way we manage our entire site, and that includes the management of the waste stream. So ultimately, while terrorism is always out there and always a consideration, just as safety is inside the plant, we are not unprepared for it. We are not a security problem in the same way as I think other facilities might be.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Lee Richardson
Thank you, Mr. Ouellet.
Thank you, Mr. Elston.
We'll go now to Mr. Harris.
Conservative
Dick Harris Conservative Cariboo—Prince George, BC
With regard to the talk recently about the application of nuclear energy as a power source in the Athabasca oil sands area, have there been professional feasibility studies to determine whether this is feasible both from an environmental and a business point of view?
President and Co-Chairman , Energy Alberta Corporation
On the business point of view, we did that ourselves. We did that because it's for us and it's for a company that's actually taking it, so they did the feasibility on whether it's economical. We're selling them that power at a price for which AECL says they can actually build the facility as well as looking at all the economics of running the facility, buying the uranium, commissioning, and operating the facility day to day. So, yes, we have.
Conservative
Conservative
Jacques Gourde Conservative Lotbinière—Chutes-de-la-Chaudière, QC
Thank you.
Do you have data showing support for nuclear energy from communities that get their electricity from that source?
President and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Nuclear Association
In what way? I'm sorry, we have lots of statistics and we have lots of material with respect to satisfaction generally in the area. But I can tell you, just like working with safety, keeping host communities content that you are doing all that you should for the benefit of safety and security is an ongoing business that each of our operators works pretty hard at. In terms of statistics, I'm not sure if you want satisfaction levels or what.
President and Co-Chairman , Energy Alberta Corporation
I can answer that a little bit. On the economical side, with having so much power in Quebec and Ontario, with 50% of it coming from nuclear in Ontario, with their hydro, that brought a great economic base to your community with a stable energy cost. That stable energy cost is very important for the majority of manufacturing businesses to make sure that they can stay alive, because that's one of their major costs.
Is that what you're looking for?
Conservative
Jacques Gourde Conservative Lotbinière—Chutes-de-la-Chaudière, QC
Yes. I would like to know if communities that have lived near a nuclear power station for 20, 30 or 40 years are still afraid. How have they come to terms with the situation?
President and Co-Chairman , Energy Alberta Corporation
For our town-hall meeting tomorrow, we're actually bringing one of the mayors from one of the existing communities that actually has nuclear power today. The polls generally show that there's substantially more approval for nuclear power in the communities that actually have nuclear power today, so they accept it, like it, and feel it's safe, and they work in the facilities every day. That's why you're getting such a positive opinion in those communities.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Nuclear Association
I think there are two responses, however. One is that people generally, and this I shouldn't think would surprise us, are comfortable with what they have, but when people decide that they're going to change the nature of a unit, maybe add or whatever, people want to go back to square one and go through the very ideas that are going to be put in front of them. So generally there are very high satisfaction rates, but when there are changes to the processes, changes to the size of the plant, that generates as much interest in the local communities as anything else.
We had one situation in Port Hope where in fact people who had historically worked at what used to be the Eldorado facility there, and now is a chemical facility, the application to CNSC turned out to be quite a major community issue. Just because a community is host to a facility doesn't mean that they are not questioning and are not very concerned about changes. Ultimately, that's why there's a tremendous amount of outreach now being done by each of the operators at each of the facilities.
President and Co-Chairman , Energy Alberta Corporation
I have just one thing to clarify that. OPG or Bruce has done four open houses in the communities to tell them what they are doing with their plans of siting more reactors on the existing site, and in four open houses, they had fewer than 200 people show up. So people aren't that concerned, to only have 200 people in four different open houses.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Nuclear Association
I think the other thing that happens, particularly in a place like Bruce, is that the population generally knows everything that's going on at that plant. It's relatively small by numbers, compared to Toronto or Montreal or Vancouver or anything like that. So people are generally aware of what's happening. And I think those who recognize that there's a certain transparency that's going along with the operation already, as you move into other facilities where the people have moved towards and have settled in around an existing facility, you tend to have a lot more interest and activity. But certainly it's not uncommon to have the open houses generating modest returns where people have already been informed about a whole lot of things happening.