Natural Resources Committee on Oct. 26th, 2009

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I was going to raise the same thing, even though I wasn't going to raise a point of order. It does concern me that we have very little time left for questions. Let's remember that the reason we have such a short period of time for these meetings is that a motion was passed when there was a tie, and as we know, the rules provide that the chair, in casting the chair's vote in the case of a tie, does so to maintain the status quo, which you did not do in that case, as you recall, and therefore you sided with the government, your party, and created the situation we're now in.

Frankly, I think it is good to have a range of different views on these matters, as we've had today. That is a very positive thing, I think. To have conflicting views is fine, but I think it's clear that six witnesses are too much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

On a point of order, Mr. Anderson.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Mr. Chair, on a point of order, I'm not sure why Mr. Regan feels that he should be discussing issues that were discussed in camera in public here. I don't know if he's paying attention to that or not, but that is a point. If we think we're going to go outside with a discussion that was in camera, it's going to limit what we can say in camera.

Secondly, the other option for us was to ask the members of each of the parties to limit the numbers of witnesses they put forward. We chose not to do that because we wanted to give a decent hearing to people, so we're doing that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Yes, Mr. Regan, please do be cautious on the in camera issue. I'm sure it was accidental.

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Mr. Chairman, I'll follow the rules if you will, sir.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Do I hear a carefully veiled criticism of the chair?

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Perhaps.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Could we get right to the questioning, Mr. Regan, so that we can have as many questions as possible for these witnesses, who have given very good presentations?

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. There are many questions to raise and unfortunately very little time.

Mr. Alexander, how do you respond to the concern about the power pulse issue that Dr. Duguay has raised?

[Dr. Neil Alexander]

I was intrigued. We were asked to come here and present on the state of the industry, and that's what we did. If you had wished us to come to talk about the power pulse issue, we would have been pleased to send somebody who understood that in detail to answer those questions.

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Actually, one of the concerns is that I think it would be valuable, when we have a physicist, if there are other points of view among physicists--and there may or may not be--to have other physicists and nuclear engineers to discuss that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Yes.

[Dr. Neil Alexander]

I would just like to say that so far as the state of the industry is concerned, this is a well-understood issue. Our people are still interested in buying CANDUs, understanding the issues, because it has been controlled. The implications that there is some kind of secrecy surrounding it are clearly bizarre, since the gentleman making them was holding public documents and quoted from AECL's public reports in which they made very clear statements about this issue. So it's a curious statement that we're trying to keep it secret.

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Professor Duguay, could you tell us how the South Koreans dealt with the question of the positive void coefficient with the HANARO reactor, which is based on the MAPLE design? I presume you've studied other kinds of reactors as well, and you can give us some comparisons, but in particular, do you know how that was dealt with in that case?

[Prof. Michel Duguay]

I apologize, I have not looked into the South Korean versions of the CANDU reactors. I'm mostly concerned with the Gentilly 2 nuclear reactor that we have in Quebec.

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Pardon me, Doctor, I meant the MAPLE, not the CANDU.

[Prof. Michel Duguay]

Oh, you're talking about the MAPLEs.

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

The HANARO reactor--pardon me, I'm probably not pronouncing it the way that you or our witnesses pronounce it--was the one they did based upon the MAPLE's design.

[Prof. Michel Duguay]

The Canadian MAPLE reactors are of a different design that did have a positive reactivity problem, but of a different nature than the one in the CANDU. But it's the same thing.

What is of concern with the MAPLE debacle was reported right here in this committee last June, that AECL cannot explain it. It's worrisome when the manufacturer cannot explain why something doesn't work.

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Thank you.

Mr. Lamarre, you talked about the concern that we might end up with the technology owned by another provider if it buys AECL. Could you expand on that a little bit, please?

[Patrick Lamarre]

The other major technology providers.... You have AREVA and Westinghouse, which are basically the two biggest ones in the world. You have GE Hitachi. What is forecasted in the situation...and I'll make a parallel to the Inco acquisition. When you have a foreigner coming in and taking new Canadian assets, what happens is that the priority to the company in the future is to always protect the headquarters in its own country.

Right now, Vale Inco in Brazil has been pressured by the government to spend more money in Brazil, to do more for the Brazilian people and more for the Brazilian mines. There's a slowdown in the world economy, and right now all of the Inco sites in Canada are being shut down or they're negotiating tougher conditions for the workers for some of the processes. Everything is slowing down in its Canadian operations.

The parallel I was trying to make is a little bit like what happens to Canadian companies that have been purchased by foreigners, how they become subsidiaries afterwards, and how it is dangerous when there's a slowdown in the world economy, because of what happens to the subsidiaries of any foreign country.

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

So you're concerned that the government may sell the part of AECL that it's talking about to a foreign-owned company.

[Patrick Lamarre]

The preoccupation is what has been happening historically, and it is a concern to us.

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

We saw the same sort of thing with Nortel, obviously, more recently.

Back to Professor Duguay. You talked, of course, about wind and solar power as alternatives to nuclear, and the concerns we've been hearing are twofold. One relates to the intermittent nature of wind and solar. You referred to cost-effective means of power storage, and I'd like you to talk about that for a moment, because we haven't been hearing about that.

Secondly, there's concern about transmission. As electricity is transmitted, it's depleted, and therefore we hear about smart grids. What's happening there to resolve some of these problems that we see, the concerns about wind and solar?

[Prof. Michel Duguay]

Let me tackle your last question first, on power transmission. The Europeans are starting a very large project called Desertec, where they will build solar power plants in North Africa and transmit the power to northern Europe over lines as long as 2,000 kilometres, at one million volts DC. The loss is only 3% per 1,000 kilometres of one million volts. So you can go all the way from James Bay to Toronto with only 6% loss. At the moment we have 10% losses between James Bay and Montreal, because we're using AC at 735 kilovolts. But at one million volts DC, your loss from James Bay would be only 3%.

So you should be careful to take good care of James Bay in Ontario.