Evidence of meeting #50 for Natural Resources in the 40th Parliament, 3rd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was plant.
A recording is available from Parliament.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
So you estimate the cost to the Japanese economy, in terms of the nuclear damage, is going to be less than $650 million?
President and Chief Executive Officer, Bruce Power
I'm not going to speculate on that. Actually the number in Japan is $309 billion. That is the damage to the economy. But none of that has been assigned to the nuclear plant.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
Japan has a $1.4 billion nuclear liability limit right now. Right?
President and Chief Executive Officer, Bruce Power
I couldn't tell you what it was. I thought it was $1.2 billion.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
The United States pools its liability to a figure of $10 billion.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Bruce Power
That's through NEIL insurance, self-insured, yes. Europe's is two billion euros.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Bruce Power
Yes, and ours would be $650 million.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
Not only did the government not call this bill back, but the government has been sitting on this bill for four months, and it's been nowhere in their order paper. And that is not for you to answer, obviously, because you're not that connected to the government. But the question I have is that a $650 million liability limit seems to me at least half of anybody else's in the world and appreciably less than our neighbours to the south. I understand the system. They have more reactors there; they can pool liability. But help me out here. Anything above a $650 million cost is borne by whom?
President and Chief Executive Officer, Bruce Power
It's borne by the Canadian people.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
So in terms of sheltering the costs above $650 million, does your industry consider that a subsidy?
President and Chief Executive Officer, Bruce Power
What my industry considers and what I personally consider is that if we wanted to have a conversation about whether $650 million is enough, it would be better to have it when $650 million was already the limit, and not $75 million. So I'd be happy to enter into the discussion. But since you've asked me, I'm incredibly frustrated that it isn't $650 million and hasn't been for the last two years. That's a political agenda.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Bruce Power
I've been in front of commissions here. I was in Senate committees two or three years ago, strongly advocating moving it to $650 million, and it's still not $650 million. If it had been $650 million two years ago, it would have been reasonable for us to come back here and ask if $650 million was enough, in light of what happened in Japan.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
That's an interesting point. How often does the nuclear liability regime get reviewed in Canada? Once about every 40 years.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Bruce Power
Again, I can't comment on that. I can tell you the Nuclear Safety and Control Act, subclause 46(3), was amended when I first came here, which was ten years ago, and we lobbied very much to have it changed, because we were the first private sector operator, and we had problems with our own insurance. So we were very keen to see the number be more credible because it was very difficult to explain.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Leon Benoit
Thank you, Mr. Cullen. Your time is up.
We'll go now to Mr. Allen for up to seven minutes.
Conservative
Mike Allen Conservative Tobique—Mactaquac, NB
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Hawthorne and Ms. Carpenter, thank you very much for being here today.
Mr. Hawthorne, I appreciate the fact of your choosing not to speculate on what may or may not have happened. With the holdup, if we hadn't had a holdup before the last election, we would have had $650 million. Then we could have had that intelligent conversation about where it goes beyond that. So I tend to agree with you on that. Having been through the bill four times myself, and I think Mr. Tonks has been through it four times, we agree with your frustration.
I just want to follow up on a couple of points that were made. In the Japan scenario, as you laid that out, it was designed not for the size of earthquake they had, but if my understanding is correct, everything was operating properly after the earthquake. So therefore by definition the rods went in and everything was shutting down. I'm not asking you to speculate, but based on your history with nuclear plants, is it your opinion that if it had not been for the tsunami, things would probably have continued their shutdown process?
President and Chief Executive Officer, Bruce Power
Yes. As I said to you, one of the things that nuclear plants are very capable of doing is shutting down very quickly. We're talking here about seconds to actually take the reactor out of service. With the post-trip cooling, all of this backup cooling equipment is functioning very shortly thereafter, and in this plant it was doing so. So if you asked me to give you a full appraisal of that, I would tell you that one of the concerns I would have, even if everything had functioned well and a tsunami hadn't done anything, is the fact that the equipment would have had to function for at least 11 days, because it took them 11 days to get an electrical supply to the plant. So if I'm speaking to you entirely objectively, I'd say even if there was no tsunami, you were relying on this backup cooling system for much longer than I would have thought would be an issue.
Having said that, however, the fact that it took 11 days was probably because the tsunami distracted them from other things. But I think it's probably fair to say, if I give you an example as an answer to that, we ourselves suffered a blackout in the whole northeast region in 2003—the 14th of August, if you remember—and that was as close to this event as we could get. All of our plants were left without any external power, and all of our backup systems had to support themselves. So we should take a lot of comfort from that, because all of our plants performed very well and did what they were designed to do.
Now, to my point, we didn't have to do it for 11 days, but we certainly did it for 72 hours without any real challenge. So as I say, we should take some real comfort from that.
Conservative
Mike Allen Conservative Tobique—Mactaquac, NB
I'm glad you brought up the blackout, because that's where I wanted to go next. You've answered that question.
One of the comments you made in March in the London Free Press was—and Mr. Coderre brought it up—that it's hard to compare. The two technologies aren't the same.
But as Canadians, when we look at our nuclear industry.... Denise brought it up well when she said we have 15% of Canadian energy coming from our nuclear plants, 50% in Ontario, and a significant 12%, I think you said, increase in GHGs in Canada if we didn't have the nuclear fleet. So I think it's important for Canadians to understand the difference, to make sure, because we can have an intelligent debate that nuclear power can have a role to play in the future.
You talked about “The way I explain it is our plants are a little bit of fuel surrounded by an awful lot of water, whereas these plants are an awful lot of fuel surrounded by a little water”. Can you comment about that difference?
President and Chief Executive Officer, Bruce Power
Yes. There are very obvious differences in the plant designs. As I mentioned before, these reactors use enriched fuel, which we don't. We use natural uranium fuel. They have a scenario where the water actually boils within the vessel itself, so there it doesn't take a very long period of interruption of cooling before you actually start boiling off the water that's present.
In our case, our reactors, our fuel channels are surrounded themselves by a shield tank that is full of water. So there's a lot more water around, and from an operational point of view we have to work hard to keep our plants at power because we have to keep adding fuel all the time, because our fuel doesn't contain anything like the level of energy. If you take a boiling water reactor, for example, they will typically run for about a year, sometimes 18 months, without needing any fuel to be added, whereas in our case, we fuel continuously. So there's a tremendous power difference between the two, and obviously in a fault scenario like this, that power difference makes a very significant change to how the plant responds.
Conservative
Mike Allen Conservative Tobique—Mactaquac, NB
Just asking you about that and the difference in the plants, I'm familiar with the Point Lepreau situation in New Brunswick and where it is built, which is quite a bit up off the bay, and I'm understanding it would take a tsunami of somewhere between 12 and 15 metres to even get up to it, and then my understanding is the backup power in that area is even much higher than that, in terms of the generators. There are mixed redundant systems.
When you look at if a quake were to happen in Canada, what would be the situation in terms of a tsunami off the lakes, for example? Would we be faced with a similar kind of thing? I know Point Lepreau is quite a bit up off the water, but in the other cases in Ontario, what is the situation there?
President and Chief Executive Officer, Bruce Power
As I mentioned earlier, that's one of the things that we will have to demonstrate in these next few months. I can speak for my own plant and obviously Pierre can answer his position, but we do want to do this review and reassure people.
If you take our own situation at the Bruce site, we would need to see something more than 15 feet for it to have any impact on our system, and there is no credible situation on Lake Huron for that level of situation to occur. Nonetheless, I think it is important that we do this analysis and we consider all of those things so that we can provide a more comprehensive reply. As I say, that would be a simple answer in terms of the Bruce situation, and I'm sure Pierre could give you an initial view on the OPG facilities.
But I think we do have to do enough of a comprehensive review to be able to answer all of those questions.