Thank you very much.
Good morning, Mr. Chairman and honourable members of the committee. Thank you for providing this opportunity for Terrestrial Energy to contribute to your important examination of the future of Canada's nuclear sector, with a view to considering its innovation, sustainable solutions, and economic opportunities.
I'm here today to make the case that Canada urgently needs to renew its commitment to nuclear innovation. To be clear, this is not simply about renewing our commitment to the conventional reactor systems of the last 50 years, although that is important too. I'm saying that the tapestry of nuclear technology is far richer, and that we can do so much better.
The case I make is to renew Canada's commitment to nuclear innovation and specifically its commitment to advanced reactors being developed here in Canada by the private sector today. Providing industry with a clean, sustainable, and cost-competitive energy substitute to fossil fuel combustion in the time frame that we have set ourselves, by 2050, is the great challenge and opportunity of the age. Advanced reactors are uniquely capable of meeting this great challenge.
While there are sound economic reasons to re-license and refurbish existing nuclear plants to extend their productive lives, the conventional reactor technologies these plants employ are not the future of nuclear energy. After 50 years of development, conventional reactors are still too expensive, whether used in a small modular reactor or new, large nuclear plower plants. Different technology choices are needed.
The future of nuclear, and in fact the future of industrial energy provision, belongs to advanced reactors, the products of true nuclear innovation. These reactors will be smaller, far less expensive, quicker and simpler to build, and have many more industrial uses. Advanced reactors promise to provide the pathways to increase industrial competitiveness and support economic growth around advanced technologies. They promise to make our 2050 climate goals feasible by filling the enormous gap that current renewable solutions cannot fill. Renewables such as wind and solar show little ability to develop the product needed to drive deep decarbonization—clean, cost-competitive, reliable, sustainable, scalable: heat.
Advanced reactors can deliver this heat because they embrace true innovation in an industry that has seen little fundamental change in 50 years. They can do this because they employ fundamentally different technology choices. As market, industrial, and national needs change, we should look with fresh eyes on old problems, specifically on the merits of different nuclear technologies and the benefits that private sector-led nuclear innovation can bring today.
This is what Terrestrial Energy has done, the company of which I am chief executive. Others have done this as well. Terrestrial Energy is a developer of an advanced reactor called the “integral molten salt reactor”, or IMSR. We are among the first advanced reactor vendors to be formally engaged in the regulatory process, in our case with the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission.
The IMSR employs molten salt technology. It uses a liquid fuel, a molten salt instead of a traditional solid fuel. This is a fundamentally different approach and typifies the true innovation of advanced reactors.
With the IMSR, we as a company are on track with our plans to license, construct, and commission the first commercial advanced nuclear power plant in the world. It will be here in Canada and it will be operating in the next decade.
I expect it will just take four years to build our next IMSR power plants. They will be cost-competitive with coal or natural gas plants, yet unlike coal or natural gas plants, ours will produce no greenhouse gases. The IMSR promises to give industry a better product, industrial heat that is not tethered to grid or pipeline. It is not simply about electricity. IMSR power plants can be used, for example, to fuel clean natural resource extraction, clean petrochemical and chemical production, desalination, or to back up wind and solar power in place of natural gas—all this in Canadian and international markets. These markets are currently served by fossil fuels and are valued in trillions of dollars per year today.
This is not pie in the sky. It is the proven product of national laboratory development programs undertaken principally in the United States during the sixties, seventies, and eighties. We as a company have successfully made the IMSR innovation case to many in the nuclear industry in Canada, and abroad as well, where the IMSR is receiving significant international attention. It has been made to Sustainable Technology Development Canada, and it is being made today to the U.S. Department of Energy. I have been invited to meetings at the White House on two occasions in the past year to provide briefings on the capability of IMSR technology. Our U.S. affiliate is right now moving forward with its application to the U.S. Department of Energy for a $1.2-billion to $1.5-billion loan guarantee to support the construction of the first United States IMSR power plant.
IMSR development is receiving interest from many large industrial companies. It is supported by peer engineers and executives in the international nuclear community. They too recognize that the future of the nuclear industry lies with true innovation driven by the needs of this age, and therefore with advanced reactors. I believe the IMSR promises to be truly transformative.
Internationally, the nuclear energy option is today firmly in public political discourse, particularly as it relates to industrial competitiveness and achieving the towering ambitions of COP 21 climate targets. In Canada, by contrast, we appear embarrassed to mention nuclear technology despite our great tradition. We are in danger of being out of sync with change at a pivotal time and watching a great opportunity pass by.
Canada has the opportunity today, but perhaps not tomorrow, to establish itself as a leading nation in the race to commercialize advanced reactors. Foreign companies today are coming to Canadian shores to develop their advanced reactors because they recognize Canada's historic capabilities and, importantly, the openness of our regulator, the CNSC, to new technologies. Canada must make them welcome and give them a home. If it does, it stands to recapture its leadership position in a technology critical to a clean, competitive, industrial future for all of us. It stands to reap enormous economic benefits from helping the world meet its future energy needs and to continue Canada's position as a G7 net energy exporter.
I make the case for Canada to commit urgently to the nuclear innovation led by the private sector today, and to ask respectfully that the members of this committee embrace this opportunity and kick-start a new conversation about nuclear energy, nuclear innovation, and advanced reactors in our country, a conversation based on optimism, opportunity, and the promise of a much better world. This is an opportunity that cannot be missed.
I would be very pleased now, Mr. Chairman, to respond to any questions from your colleagues.
Thank you.