Natural Resources Committee on May 15th, 2012

[Royal Galipeau, Conservative, Ottawa—Orléans, ON]

It was a consortium and included SNC-Lavalin, Marshall Macklin Monaghan, and a few other engineering firms.

[Barclay Howden]

I believe it was created for some large projects and existed for quite a while, but it hasn't been around for maybe 10 years.

[Royal Galipeau, Conservative, Ottawa—Orléans, ON]

Are there any Canadian firms involved in this now?

[Barclay Howden]

Candu Energy Inc. bought the Candu arm of AECL and Candu Energy Inc. is owned by SNC-Lavalin.

[Dr. Michael Binder]

Well, there are a couple of things. On your first point with the public, I have to tell you we do not a priori screen who can come in front of us, who cannot. Everybody's welcome to a public hearing, and we have many of them through licensing processes, though environmental assessments.

We have proponents for nuclear, we have opponents of nuclear. We have Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, as well as OPG and Bruce Power. They all come in front of us; they all have a say. And the commission integrates all of the material that comes in front of us in the deliberation and rendering of a decision.

With the application, with the applicant, it's always what the safety case is and how we can make sure that the operation will be safe. That's always something we don't compromise on, and it's up to them to prove the case. We have a lot of technical experts who can challenge the assumption, challenge the design, and we'll ask for mitigation to deal with any particular impact on the environment, and more importantly, follow through to make sure that what was promised is delivered.

Just as a point to correct Mr. McGuinty when he asked the question about the north, I'd like to remind everybody that in the north most of the environmental assessments are being conducted with boards from the north. So in Nunavut it's the Nunavut Impact Review Board that conducts the assessment. We provide just technical support to them in terms of the nuclear technology. But the assessments are conducted by those independent boards, which most of the time are composed of aboriginal communities.

So we are absolutely agnostic about who appears in front of us. What we want is the safety case, and that's the only way we render a decision.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Thank you, Mr. Galipeau.

We go now to Mr. Daniel, for up to five minutes, please.

[Joe Daniel, Conservative, Don Valley East, ON]

Thank you, chair, and thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for coming here.

Clearly, you've obviously done a good job of assessing your designs, etc. But have you actually assessed the requirement for a catastrophic failure? What could cause a catastrophic failure for this sort of system?

[Dr. Michael Binder]

That's a good question, and post-Fukushima we decided that we would look at what the industry in Canada is calling the “Binder's doomsday scenario”, which is that we don't care how we got into the doomsday scenario but that what we want to know is how we're going to mitigate the disaster.

That means, for example, that one of the important new enhancements in safety is that the industry is now talking about putting assets outside the site. So if you recall, in Japan what happened was it took them a long time to bring assets into the site. So the industry in the U.S., and in fact globally, is looking into how to enhance. This is only one point. They're also having backup to backup, so they can operate with diesel, and backup to diesel, etc. All of these have now been put in our task force report, and the commission is now looking into actually implementing them.

[Joe Daniel, Conservative, Don Valley East, ON]

So from backup and backup in your design, what considerations have you taken to make sure that there isn't a catastrophic failure?

[Christofer Mowry]

There are two things. One is that we have moved beyond, let's say, a more deterministic approach to safety, in which you try to guess what the specific catastrophe would be, to more of what we call a risk-informed design, which is more a defence in-depth strategy.

If you look, for example, at the Fukushima incident, the plant itself survived the earthquake and the tsunami and actually shut down. The problem was that it required, after a very few hours, outside help for power and for water, and other types of things. We see that we need to move past that what I'll call fragile design and on to a more robust design that doesn't require this outside intervention. That is especially appropriate for the discussion we're having today regarding northern Canada.

Mr. Binder, you talked about these assets that are located not directly on site. That is an approach being taken to, again, mitigate the more fragile nature of some of the older operating plants, which, again, is not necessarily practical or appropriate for application in northern Canada, because they would be very difficult logistically.

Our approach is actually to make the reactor system itself very robust in terms of what I call a coping time. The idea is that it can survive for two to four weeks without any outside help whatsoever after the most severe type of accident. You can almost look at it as being that these extra assets are pre-positioned inside the containment underground, safely protected. So you have layer upon layer of defence. That's the way you need to think about how to create a system that is safe.

For example, for the airline industry, advanced airplanes today are designed to have an accident once in every 10 million years per flight. We try to take that to even a couple of orders of magnitude safer than that. In order to do that, you need to think differently about safety. The safety case we are in the process of starting to share with the CNSC does exactly that.

I'll give just one example to make my point. If you think about power, I made the comment that we have a passively safe design that doesn't require power. But we don't ever want to get to that situation. So of course the first line of defence is that you're connected to a power grid. If you lose the power grid because of an ice storm or something like that, then you have on-site diesel generators. If you lose those on-site diesel generators, you have backup batteries. If you lose those batteries, then of course you have natural circulation from gravity. Behind that, you have another layer of defence. So there are many layers here.

The key is that all of these designs are contained inside this safety containment underground. It's a very different approach. There's a shift from what I'll call a fragile design that is dependent upon outside help in a very short period of time to a very robust design with multiple layers of defence that has long-term coping capabilities so that it doesn't rely on immediate outside assistance. This is designed in from the beginning. Again, part of the reason was to create an option that is applicable to more remote locations where you don't have these kinds of support capabilities.

[Joe Daniel, Conservative, Don Valley East, ON]

So you say that—

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Thank you, Mr. Mowry.

Mr. Daniel, your time is up.

Mr. Nicholls, you have up to five minutes. Go ahead, please.

[Jamie Nicholls, NDP, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

This is a question for Mr. Mowry. You spoke about desired changes to the 1976 Canadian Nuclear Liability Act. Presently we have the polluter-pays model. The operator pays for on-site and off-site damages from the accident, without having to prove negligence. In turn, the public is guaranteed an expedited claims process and the right to collect.

Given the history of the company B&W, the fact of the Three Mile Island accident, and the fact that the company went bankrupt in February of 2000 due to asbestos claims, I'm concerned about what changes you would be proposing to the 1976 act.

Could you elaborate briefly on that?

[Christofer Mowry]

Sure. I'd be happy to do that. In fact, I grew up 50 miles from Three Mile Island. I was in high school when that happened. So I have a very personal and deep connection to that event and happen to know quite a bit about it.

The consensus from every industry expert who's evaluated it is that the accident was actually a result of operator error, not design. That's not to say the design couldn't have been more robust. But I believe the assertion that it was a B&W-induced event misses the mark in the consensus of the industry.

[Jamie Nicholls, NDP, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

In the interest of precision, I'm interested in what changes you want to make to the 1976 act.

[Christofer Mowry]

The change to the act is more about the magnitude of the liability protection and the cross-border aspect of this thing.

[Jamie Nicholls, NDP, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

In other words, you mean changing the insurance cap from the present $75 million to—I think it's been proposed four times—$650 million. However, if I'm correct—and correct me if I'm wrong—the U.S. presently has a cap of $10 billion. So why the differential? Would you support a cap that would be similar to that of the U.S.?

[Christofer Mowry]

The CSC, which is what we're talking about, the Convention on Supplementary Compensation, seeks to harmonize the overall backup across borders and in other countries. What we are proposing and asking for would be something that would be harmonized with what the U.S. has today, because the U.S. has ratified the CSC. So it would not be any more than what the U.S. has ratified under the CSC.

[Jamie Nicholls, NDP, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

I have a question specific to the mPower and the underground containment aspect. There are risks associated with periglacial environments. One of them is frost heaving in bedrock. In the south bedrock is fairly stable, but in northern climates you have frost heaving, which makes the bedrock unstable. Has your company prepared a risk management plan for such unstable and unpredictable events?

[Christofer Mowry]

I think there are two answers.

One is the general answer, which is that whatever assessment or mitigation we come up with will have to get past Mr. Binder's agency. We'll have to make the safety case and will have to satisfy him and all the stakeholders.

The specific answer is that at the depths of embedment we're talking about, this isn't the same type of issue. Once you get down to 100 or 150 feet, you don't have the same challenges as in the top 10 to 20 feet of subsoil.

[Jamie Nicholls, NDP, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

My final question would be to Mr. Binder, then. Has Canada signed any international agreements on nuclear liability, to the best of your knowledge?

[Dr. Michael Binder]

No, I don't know. This is a policy or particular file that NRCan is managing. I'm not aware of it.

[Jamie Nicholls, NDP, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

You're not aware of it. So the Nuclear Safety Commission isn't aware of whether we are party to nuclear liability agreements. Is that the case?

[Dr. Michael Binder]

It's a piece of legislation that right now sets the rules, and we abide by the rules. I think the government has proposed a few times to amend this legislation; it just isn't passed yet.

[Jamie Nicholls, NDP, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

Okay, but to the best of your knowledge we're not party to international agreements on nuclear liability?