Natural Resources Committee on Nov. 22nd, 2016

[Jerry Hopwood]

If you don't mind, I'll add another point to this question of cost to follow up on what Glenn mentioned with regard to how to develop a small modular reactor type or how to deploy small modular reactors.

I think one of the other areas where cost has been affected is the changing in of requirements during a project. The nuclear industry fell afoul of this in its earlier years. These days, we know a great deal more about how to regulate and how to ensure safety, in our view as industry practitioners. We feel that safety requirements can be settled in advance of a project so that the person who is building it knows exactly what to do. It's a bit like building a house and discovering that your electrical code has changed halfway through the construction. That's really hard to deal with. If we can eliminate this, that would be very good.

From the small modular reactor point of view, I would very much emphasize that there are many ways to build a small modular reactor. Several have already been done successfully. The key is to know what requirements they would have to meet in places such as a remote community or a northern community, or even in a small-town setting. Setting those requirements early, whether it be for the operational, as you say, for remote operation, or for the expectations for local habitation around a reactor, will enable the designers to get on with the job of finalizing it.

Those are just two ways to address it.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

To get back to you, Mr. Harvel, you talked about focus and about choosing between a supercritical water reactor or SMRs. From your comments, I got the impression you would favour SMRs. You said there were 30 kinds. From your own personal view, is there one that we should be concentrating on?

[Prof. Glenn Harvel]

They're all fascinating from a professor's point of view, which is “fund them all, please”, but that's impractical.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Prof. Glenn Harvel]

The SCWR technology can probably go to a low funding level because it is still a technology that is going to be 15 or 20 years away with what's happening there. There's still a lot of debate about how exactly you make that device work.

In the SMRs at the moment, I would either concentrate on Terrestrial Energy's technology, because it's going to be strongly Canadian and very interesting and unique, or collaborate with one of the integral PWRs like NuScale, or something along those lines, and concentrate just there.

The advantage of the NuScale type is going to be that it has a lot of basis from the submarine technologies, so we know that scale is very likely to work. Molten salt is a little riskier, but then there's a lot more potential for Canadian intellectual property in that reactor.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

On the other areas of focus, you were talking about improving on the CANDU model and making it safer, faster, and cheaper. We talked a bit about how to reduce costs. Can both of you perhaps comment on how we can make them safer and faster?

[Prof. Glenn Harvel]

It's all about the day-to-day work we have to do. If we have to sit there and change a seal on a pump, etc., or we have to change a pressure tube or some other component.... It's the maintenance work. A lot of that maintenance work is still done in a very time-consuming manner. Doing the development so that we can do that work faster, with machines, turning it more into an nth-of-a-kind approach so that it's being repeated constantly, and shortening the amount of time it takes people to [Technical difficulty—Editor].

All of those aspects would be important to this.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Thanks.

I'm still trying to figure out what the heck happened with our sound there.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Perhaps I could get, with whatever time is left....

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, John Barlow]

I'll give you a little extra. You have two minutes.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Perhaps both of you could comment on the waste management aspects of nuclear energy and where we are in Canada, how we compare with the rest of the world, and how much that is going to cost us.

[Jerry Hopwood]

I'll make a few comments to kick it off.

I think Canada has had a decades-long program looking into the management of the most serious nuclear waste—that is the used nuclear fuel—and has been managing its nuclear waste all this time.

Canada, like some of the other early nuclear countries, started in the 1940s, in wartime, so we have a legacy of waste that was not particularly well documented and disposed of in the early days. That's been a difficult and troublesome topic in terms of cleanup of places like Chalk River.

As far as the nuclear fuel is concerned, I think that engineers would believe that it's quite understandable and feasible that we know how to store the waste underground in deep geological repositories. From a technical point of view, we look at the numbers and we would say that the risks to our lives are extremely low from those kinds of depositories and we know how to do it. The key is the social licence, because only when people will accept a waste depository in their neighbourhood can it go ahead. It seems to me that the NWMO is pursuing that in a very careful and well-thought-out way and is engaging with people in a way that I hope will succeed in building and creating that social licence, so I think that's actually the key.

The cost of waste management and treatment as a portion of the cost of electricity from nuclear power is very tiny. It's an extremely small fraction of the total cost of the electricity that's being produced, so I don't feel concerned over the total cost as it will arise over the years, knowing that the nuclear utilities are supposed to put money into a waste fund that will fund that work.

I think the key is the social licence.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, John Barlow]

Thank you, Mr. Hopwood.

Thank you, Mr. Cannings.

Now we go to Ms. O'Connell for seven minutes.

Go ahead, please.

[Jennifer O'Connell, Liberal, Pickering—Uxbridge, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, both, for being here.

By way of background, since I'm a visitor to this committee, I represent Pickering—Uxbridge, and previously I was on council for 10 years as city councillor, regional councillor, and then deputy mayor. Given that I represented Durham region, and we host Darlington and Pickering, obviously I find this very important.

Mr. Hopwood, you touched on something, but unfortunately I feel that we really need to discuss this more given Pickering's situation, and that is decommissioning. Are we prepared with the engineers and the people to actually go through this process of decommissioning for Pickering, which will take place soon?

[Jerry Hopwood]

It is coming up and it's going to happen, so we should be prepared for it.

I will make two comments. One is that OPG is already engaged, as it happens, with UNENE in researching techniques to dismantle and decommission the Pickering unit, so it is taking action and it's being proactive about it.

I would also comment that Canada has a fantastic opportunity, because Canada has a series of prototype reactors that were shut down, some many years ago. NPD, which is up in Rolphton in the Ottawa Valley, and Douglas Point, which is at Bruce, and Gentilly-1, which is near Trois-Rivières, all operated as prototypes. They have been shut down for some years, which has allowed time for the decay of some of the radioactivity that might be in existence. As prototypes—and I believe they're owned by Canada—these are test beds that should be used as a way of gaining experience so that the decommissioning of Pickering can gain from knowledge arising from the decommissioning and the dismantling of those units. I believe NPD will be dismantled as part of the mandate of the new company operating Chalk River.

[Jennifer O'Connell, Liberal, Pickering—Uxbridge, ON]

Thank you. I would think that if you're going to sell CANDU around the world, you have to sell how you're going to decommission as well, and Pickering is a perfect example. We're one of the oldest in the world, including Canada obviously.

I'm glad you both raised social licence. I've lived in Pickering my entire life. I know what it's like to live in a nuclear community. But I also know the changes that have happened over the years. When I was in elementary school, we had emergency drills for a nuclear accident—in elementary school, not in high school, because I guess you're on your own in high school. KI pills were recently distributed, but that was as a result of a regional motion that we actually moved when I was still on council. They don't do emergency drills in schools anymore.

OPG recently did a study in Pickering, asking people if they were prepared; what would you do in the event of a nuclear accident? It was terrifyingly low. People had no idea where to pick their kids up, where to go, what to do, how much time you have, what routes to take, all of that.

What role do you think your institutions—I know you focus on engineering and science, but part of the social licence, I think, is that everything is done in these silos. You talk about the science, but then it's somebody else's responsibility to do the emergency planning and then somebody else's responsibility for land-use planning in and around nuclear sites.

What roles do you think you have, in terms of building up that social licence? They're actually talking about it. I feel like sometimes people don't want to talk about emergency plans because it makes people think, why do we need an emergency plan? But not having that conversation, perhaps, leads to what you both talked about in terms of not understanding.

[Prof. Glenn Harvel]

At the university we've already started to try to work toward dealing with this. We started off in an easy way. We deal with the students first. We have forums and debates to get them introduced and excited about it. We've created a new course on nuclear security, and we have plans to bring emergency planning courses into the programs for the graduate-level students. That's one aspect that we're able to do.

The other aspect that the university is quite willing to do is to act as a host for any type of forum or meeting for discussions that the OPG, the CNSC, or the government wishes to have. We've already done that, where the CNSC has come in and opened up what they call a “regulator 101” type of meeting. We're already doing that part of it now.

What we need to do is get back to engaging the public directly at the university level, and start to engage them more with the teachers getting back into the classrooms and local community groups. That's the role that I believe the university can play.

[Jennifer O'Connell, Liberal, Pickering—Uxbridge, ON]

Thank you.

I touched on this a little bit in my statements in the last question: land-use planning. I find this is an interesting one that is not really touched upon, so I'm wondering if you could talk about this at all.

Again in Pickering, not only do we host the nuclear facility but we were selected by the province as one of their places to grow, which meant intensifying our downtown, increasing our population. Our nuclear facility is extremely close to our downtown and the rationale, when residents raised concerns about intensification in this area, was, “Well, it's decommissioning”. Then the province talks about extending the licence, and we say, “But what about that land-use planning rationale?”

Again, it's these silos, right? When you're talking about social licence and talking about getting the public involved, I was on council for 10 years, as I said, and we didn't have the universities, we didn't have the scientists, necessarily, at the table. Is there an opportunity, when you look at planning, because you really can't build nuclear facilities without truly understanding what that neighbourhood's going to look like in 10, 15, 20, or 30 years?

[Prof. Glenn Harvel]

I agree. Just invite us and we'll come. We talk about that in my class when we're talking about the design of a nuclear power plant and understanding how to site a plant, where to site it, and everything.

One of the interesting questions I raise, if you look at Pickering specifically, was that when they first started building the plant there, there was no city.

[Jennifer O'Connell, Liberal, Pickering—Uxbridge, ON]

Right.

[Prof. Glenn Harvel]

It was the countryside. Now a city has developed around it and that's changed the whole nature of the relationship between the plant and the city.

[Jennifer O'Connell, Liberal, Pickering—Uxbridge, ON]

Absolutely.

[Prof. Glenn Harvel]

This is something we are teaching the students, that when they're doing the design work they have to think about this and they have to plan for this. It's not necessarily a site for 150 years if this is going to change the community.

We will gladly come to any council or committee. We've done a few. It's been getting better in the past few years, but it has only been in the past five or six years that the university has been invited.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, John Barlow]

Thank you, Ms. O'Connell.

Thanks, Mr. Harvel.

We have just under 10 minutes left. We don't have quite enough time to go through a second round, but if everybody wants, we could maybe have two or three minutes as a round, if everyone is fine with that.

Ms. Stubbs for a couple of minutes, then.