Natural Resources Committee on May 15th, 2012

[Dr. Michael Binder]

I am not aware.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Thank you, Mr. Nicholls.

Thank you, Mr. Mowry. I understand you have to leave at 10 o'clock, so just leave as you must.

Mr. Anderson, you have up to five minutes, please.

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

Mr. Mowry, before you go, I'm just wondering what size of communities can benefit from your technology. This is a study on northern resource development. We talked a couple of years ago about the possibility of these small scale reactors being used. I'm just wondering what size of community. How big do the communities have to be before your technology is feasible for them?

[Christofer Mowry]

There are two applications. There's the industrial type application—for example, smelters and that type of this thing. I think the size of this reactor is perfectly suited to match up with one smelter, let's say. That maybe gives you a sense of the power output of this thing. Of course it depends on the geographic density; at 180 megawatts, that's for a very close-packed, high-density location. It could be a small city.

But it's also about the robustness of the power grid, right? Clearly you'd want to distribute the power, and one of the things we look at in more remote locations is the robustness of that power grid and the best size power reactor to put in one place to support a broader area. So it would be 180 megawatts, in that range. Less than 200 megawatts is a size we believe is broadly supported by existing transmission infrastructure. In the western provinces, for example, Saskatchewan is a size that does not require significant changes to the transmission grid and would allow that power to flow out across the broader part of the province.

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

How many different sizes of machines would you like to be able to produce? Are you just talking about one or two sizes, or are you talking about a variety of sizes available for different uses?

[Christofer Mowry]

Our reactor is a single-size 180 megawatts, but you've almost got to think about it like Lego building blocks. Each reactor, of course, has its own fully independent safety system, but it's really meant to be modular in the sense that you can group any number of these together depending upon the desired power output at the power plant itself. It's almost like wind turbines—you just change the number of turbines in a specific location to change the output of the plant.

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

Mr. Binder, how would your process change then as you go from one plant to, say, six of them put together? Is there a different process for you, or if they convince you that it can done properly with one unit, would it change your assessment process to see them put six together? How do you deal with that?

[Dr. Michael Binder]

As you know, in many of our nuclear sites there is more than one unit—in Darlington, in Bruce Power and Pickering. Again, with the new technologies it's hard to know a priori how they interconnect and what the safety case is if things go wrong. So we would have to assess that. I really cannot assess a priori a particular technology without knowing their safety case and all the defence in depth, with all the supporting layers. We'd have to see how they interact with each other, if there is any.

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

So do you see, say, three, or four, or five together in one excavation area, or are you using the grid and putting them in different places? How do you visualize that?

[Christofer Mowry]

It just depends on how much is needed in a specific case, but I'll answer specifically the point that Mr. Binder brought up, because we believe that this is a very important lesson learned from history, which is that you should have no safety interconnection requirements between modules. In our design at least, each SMR is fully independent by safety case, so the question that you raised never comes up. And because it's underground, the ability to envision some type of common mode environmental threat really goes away: you don't have exposure to ice storms or any other kind of natural disasters. These are fully independently safe, underground, and separated from each other. They could be within 50 acres, or something like that. You could put four of them in that area, but they wouldn't be physically connected to each other.

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

Mr. Binder, you talked about the Nunavut Impact Review Board. I'm interested in that. You have a relationship with them. I'm just wondering how far their authority extends. Where does your authority and theirs cross? You said you supply technical help to them. What is your authority in that part of the country?

[Dr. Michael Binder]

I'll start and have Dr. Thompson elaborate.

They are a board, which has to come up with approval of the environmental assessment. All we do is to provide technical support, because at the end of the day, if there's a uranium mine that will get the green light, they'll have to come to us for licensing. So it's in their interest to make sure that they want this project, and if they want the project to know what is the safety requirement we need to approve to give them a licence.

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

So nothing happens until you give the licence.

[Dr. Michael Binder]

Absolutely.

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

How does that differ from the role the provinces play then, from the authority of the provinces—

[Dr. Michael Binder]

It's very similar with the provinces.

For example, in Saskatchewan, we have this arrangement where we don't like to duplicate each other. So if they need to have something required according to their legislation, we'll let them lead, but it's in their interest is to make sure that we don't reject the environmental assessment. So we work together. We've been working together for years on those projects.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Mr. Anderson, your time is up.

Dr. Thompson, could you give a short response, please.

[Dr. Patsy Thompson, Director General, Directorate of Environmental and Radiation Protection and Assessment, Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission]

I'll provide a short response.

Essentially the Nunavut Impact Review Board is responsible for conducting the environmental assessment. What the CNSC provides is the scientific and technical support for all aspects of the environmental assessment, and we play the role of coordinating the scientific support to the NIRB with other federal government agencies like Environment Canada and DFO. So that's the role we play.

Should the project be accepted by the NIRB, then there are some water boards in Nunavut that need to give permits, and the CNSC would also need to provide a licence.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Anderson.

We go now to Ms. Liu for up to five minutes.

Go ahead, please.

[Laurin Liu, NDP, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

I want to thank our witnesses for coming to the committee today.

Mr. Von Mirbach, in your presentation, you are more or less advocating the precautionary principle. You said we do not have the required knowledge for resource development. If I understood you well, we need to develop this expertise before we start drilling.

I will now go directly to the issue of agency management.

When we talk about safety and emergency response, something that often comes up is the CNSC's relief valve capability requirement. Do you see this as an essential tool in emergency response? What would be some of the consequences of removing this requirement?

[Martin von Mirbach]

I think the NEB basically agreed with us that the CNSC relief valve requirement was a key component of safe offshore drilling. The really critical component in the Arctic is this. If you're drilling, the principle is that you need to stop drilling operations early enough in the season so that it will still be possible, in the event of a blowout at the tail end of your season, to drill a relief well before the season ends.

The consequences of having a blowout that isn't capped, that isn't stopped in the season, is that once the ice forms in the fall it's absolutely impossible to do any operations for seven to nine months, depending on how far north you are. During that time there would be oil spilling out without any mitigation measures being possible.

So not only would there be up to seven months of activity, but that oil, then, would also be coming up to the surface and fusing with the newly formed sea ice. That changes the whole trajectory of spilled oil, because the oil becomes layered in kind of a sandwich of the newly formed ice, and then it's distributed as the ice is distributed and released when the ice melts. It creates much more complex recovery and mitigation obstacles.

[Laurin Liu, NDP, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

So from what I understand there are no response measures to that?

[Martin von Mirbach]

Certainly not for ruptures that happen, for instance, just below the top of the well.... Imagine the pipe rupturing and then the oil comes out of the sides of the wellhead. That's not something that can be contained with a well cap.

[Laurin Liu, NDP, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Stakeholders have also expressed some concern about our next process in terms of the leasing option. They have expressed concerns that there are no environmental studies or insufficient environmental studies and no public input. So perhaps you could share your comments with us concerning this. What would be your recommendations or your concerns about this process?

[Martin von Mirbach]

Well, in some ways it would come down to the need. What we've been advocating for is the upfront, large-scale planning, which looks at the entire area, both at areas where it's appropriate to carry out activity and areas where it's not appropriate; and looks at what the thresholds are for the region as a whole, or the overall capacity of the region to sustain industrial activity; and then manages activity within those limits. Then it becomes much easier.

That's why we're advocating for the large-scale planning so that we're not looking project by project all the time. This does exist in Alaskan waters, where there are processes in place to do strategic environmental assessments and to set overall thresholds. Now, in Alaska they don't set spatially explicit areas, which we see as a weakness, but there are tools in place across the Arctic to do that in a more careful manner.