Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Even though I could give my talk in French, I think I will give it in English for the benefit of most of the people here.
I am currently a professor of nuclear engineering at École Polytechnique in Montreal. I have been there for almost 25 years. Previously, I worked for 10 years at Hydro-Québec, doing nuclear safety analysis and reactor control system analysis. Before that, I worked for almost two years at the AECL laboratories in Chalk River, so I have quite a good view of what is going on in this industry.
The nuclear industry is a very large and very complex industry in Canada. We have this idea that it's about reactors, but there are many companies that are providing both services and goods of extremely high quality to the industry because of its specific requirements. This particular industry in Canada has always been based on the CANDU system. The CANDU reactor is a very complex reactor.
If you ask any person working in a CANDU plant, when they compare a CANDU plant to other types of plants that are commercially viable on this planet, they will always tell you that the CANDU reactor is a complex reactor. It has many systems and subsystems, much more so than other plants. It is because of this complexity that, if our CANDU plants are to stay competitive on a global scale, we must absolutely rely on top-notch R and D at many levels.
If I concentrate on the Chalk River laboratories, I have grave concerns about the future of our industry if the NRU reactor is closed down in the short term and is not replaced by an equivalent reactor to do specific research. First, one thing that distinguishes CANDUs all over the world is the fact that it must be refurbished or retubed every 20 to 25 years of operation, which means that these reactors have to be stopped for a year or two, three years sometimes, to refurbish and to replace the pressure tubes.
Other technologies do not have this. This is one aspect. The other aspect is the fuel development itself. The only place in Canada where advanced materials for the future of the CANDU reactor can be studied with confidence is when we have a high neutron flux in a high volume, not in a very small location but in a very large core area where conditions resemble what we have in nuclear power plants. You need this type of facility to conduct such research.
You also need a larger research reactor to accommodate actual fuel from CANDU reactors. In the absence of a large research reactor in our country, we will have to send fuel designs outside of the country. It should be clear to anyone that the facilities outside this country do not provide what is required to restore fuel in the complete fuel bundle of a CANDU reactor; they can only provide small parts.
It means that in the medium to long term, the Canadian way of dealing with nuclear power plants will simply get off the grid in global terms. We will not be able to go from generation II reactors, which we have now, to generation III, and even less so, for generation IV.
Therefore, please consider giving Canada a replacement to the NRU, or at least, let us try to keep NRU working for a longer time, which I perceive as an administrative constraint, rather than a purely technical constraint on the life of the NRU reactor.
This is one subject that I have close to my heart. I think the Chalk River laboratories will continue to do very good work in many areas. The word “laboratories” clearly states that there are many labs at the Chalk River facility, but it is vital for the country, if we are to keep the CANDU system alive, not only in Canada but abroad, that we should make all efforts possible to keep NRU and/or replace NRU itself.
This is one point. The other point is that I want to make people aware of how fragile this system is. In Quebec, we had a fully working CANDU reactor. It was going to be refurbished and the Quebec government, with a single signature, was able to completely shut this plant down, so we do not have nuclear power in Quebec anymore.
I'm not talking in a disgruntled fashion. I just want to make people aware that because of increasing cost differentials between the production of nuclear energy and the production of a softer or easier way of producing power, such as shale gas at very low prices, that puts a lot of pressure on keeping the nuclear industry alive, whether it's here or abroad.