Natural Resources Committee on Dec. 1st, 2016

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Good morning, everybody. Thanks for being here.

We have two sets of witnesses by videoconference. We're joined by Professor Mark Daymond and Professor Rick Holt.

Thank you, gentlemen, for joining us today.

We're also joined by Vince Robinson and John Robinson from Tyne Engineering.

Gentlemen, thank you for joining us.

Professors, we'll start with you. We're giving each group up to 10 minutes for a presentation, and then we'll follow that up with questions. You're more than welcome to answer in either official language.

Please go ahead.

[Dr. Mark Daymond, Professor, Mechanical and Materials Engineering, Queen's University]

My name is Mark Daymond. I'm a professor in mechanical and materials engineering here at Queen's. With me is Professor Rick Holt, who is an emeritus professor here at Queen's.

I have a few things to say to try to meet the list of questions that were given on what the committee is interested in.

First, I think the nuclear R and D at the universities in Canada is in very good shape. Largely that's as a result of the initiative that was taken by the industry, led in particular by Ontario Power Generation, to start the University Network of Excellence in Nuclear Engineering, or UNENE. I believe you've already had a witness from UNENE.

The nuclear materials program at Queen's is a good example. There was nothing here in 2001. It now comprises an emeritus professor; two professors, soon to be three, as we're advertising for a third; a research group of more than 20 graduate students and post-docs; and around $20 million of nuclear-focused research infrastructure—additional infrastructure that has come—and that includes a reactor materials research laboratory, which is an accelerator that we can use to explore aspects of radiation damage, simulating, if you like, the damage you would find in a nuclear reactor. There are other experimental facilities—at McMaster, at UOIT—all coupled with active undergraduate and graduate student programs.

In terms of the wider technology of CANDUs that are operating, I would say that the current technology to support operating CANDUs, to refurbish existing CANDUs, and to deliver new build in the short term, at least for medium-sized, moderate-sized, reactors in the next 10 or 15 years is in excellent shape. The expertise is held at the utilities, at support companies such as Amec and Kinectrics, and at Canadian Nuclear Laboratories, supported, as I've said, by the nuclear engineering university programs at Queen's, UOIT, McMaster, RMC, UNENE.

As we look to the next 20 years, I think the main challenge for the future of nuclear R and D in Canada is the loss of aging infrastructure. Most obviously that's the NRU reactor, though at the age of 60 years or so, it's probably reasonable that it was shut down. Certainly it was coming to the end of its life.

The main opportunity we have, perhaps, is to take advantage of the existing expertise we have in Canada within the nuclear regime, and there is a lot of expertise. I see a very significant potential demand for international build because of the unique characteristics of the CANDU design. On the other hand, if Canada doesn't do it, then India can. The design used in India is derivative of the Canadian design and very similar. Those unique characteristics of the CANDU design are available to the community in India. The opportunity at the moment is to integrate with PWR at-the-moment reactors—for instance in the U.S.—or fast breeder reactors, perhaps, in the future.

If we look at where successful nuclear construction has occurred internationally, primarily because of the upfront loading of costs, it's in places where governments have been able to give very strong support—the U.S., France, Japan, China, India. These are the countries where there has been strong government support and therefore a lot of successful build.

I should say that in the long run it can be cheaper economically to run a nuclear power plant than other sources, but it's because of the upfront costs that there are difficulties. Certainly, in terms of carbon dioxide, it makes a great deal of sense.

If we look at other opportunities rather than just going with the existing technology, the capability to supply larger-sized units for new build is somewhat shakier. By “larger” I'm thinking of things like the CANDU 9 design, which was abandoned about 10 years ago by AECL. That system was large enough to compete efficiently with the current PWR suppliers. That's because as you go to larger systems, there's a benefit of scale in terms of operating costs. Instead they went with the ACR, which is in many ways, I would say, impractical, and is also now being abandoned.

There would be an opportunity, I think, to revitalize the CANDU 9 design. The technology is very similar to that of the CANDU 6E, but it probably would require some federal government support to actually make that happen.

Then, as we go further into the future, the very long term, Canada has been participating in the generation IV forum. I think that effort needs to be supported and probably ramped up if Canada is going to continue as a nuclear power system supplier into the long term.

One of the other things that we were asked to comment on was what other opportunities exist. I think, for instance, nuclear power is potentially very powerful as a supply of heat. If you were to look at oil sands extraction, you could potentially significantly reduce the carbon footprint of the petroleum industry in western Canada by using a nuclear power station to supply that heat, perhaps even as waste heat after electricity generation. Of course, we do have significant energy resources in terms of the Canadian uranium reserves but also in terms of spent CANDU fuel. So the fuel that has already been used is actually still a significant energy resource. I'll come back to that.

The closure of NRU means that in the near term, any reactor-based research on fuel would have to be moved offshore until a new facility were to become available. I think that's certainly achievable and feasible. There are facilities that can do that, and you could support it with Canadian research, using accelerators.

Moving away from universities, the industry-sponsored R and D is mostly at places like Kinectrics, Amec, and CNL, Canadian Nuclear Laboratories. That is really, I would say, drawing on a somewhat diminishing pool of funds. At the moment, these organizations are a powerful resource, a very significant resource, for future development, but probably only if there's emphasis from the federal government, and perhaps the Ontario provincial government, on a long-term intent to pursue nuclear technology.

I see that CNL is at a somewhat critical juncture at the moment, with the situation it's in. It's difficult to see how nuclear R and D, in terms of build, can survive long term on the basis of R and D for profit as services to industry. I know that in many ways it was modelled on the United States' approach to large labs, but unlike the large nuclear labs in the U.S., at CNL we don't have a significant underpinning from DOE, Department of Energy, and the U.S. Department of Defense, because at those labs perhaps two-thirds of their R and D spend is that underpinning. Unless there's sort of a significant investment, you run the risk that CNL will devolve into a decommissioning organization. It won't happen any time soon, but this is looking down the way.

The final two comments are on waste disposal. The deep geological storage technology certainly seems technologically viable, and I think the NWMO has put in place all the appropriate financial provisions, it seems. The barriers to that are probably the siting process and perhaps skepticism from the public. Again, I want to emphasize that the spent CANDU fuel is a significant energy resource. Down the line we will want to access that as a country, so we shouldn't be disposing of that irretrievably. I think another avenue for nuclear R and D in Canada will be to address some of the technologies that could most successfully exploit that resource.

I think that's probably all I wanted to say.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Great. Thank you very much, Professor. I appreciate that.

Mr. Robinson, thank you for being here. I understand there was some confusion with the room. I apologize if you were sent in the wrong direction, but thank you for joining us.

I'll turn the floor over to you.

[Vince Robinson, President, Tyne Engineering]

Thank you.

John and I are from Tyne Engineering. We're a private company. We assume that we've been invited to give a perspective from small and medium industry on how the decisions made will affect a company such as ours. We've been in the nuclear industry through the successful periods, through the 1960s to the 1980s, with John having worked in the overseas markets with CANDU development. We also experienced a sort of moratorium on nuclear, so we can tell you how a company like ours was affected and how we see the new opportunities that are emerging now.

The CANDU industry, for us, is an industry that we're proud of. It creates high-tech jobs within our company and for our peers. We see the CANDU nuclear industry as a clean source of plentiful, safe, environmentally clean power that's independent of overseas markets.

In terms of opportunities, as we see it, one major challenge we've experienced with the CANDU technology is the tritium issue that occurs in heavy water reactors. A lot of our focus over the years, both internally and with the larger organizations that were mentioned by the university—Kinectrics, OPG, AECL, etc.—has been associated with the tritium issue in heavy water reactors. There's an opportunity to advance the development of tritium extraction technologies and the demonstration of those technologies, which will in turn improve the chance of sales of the CANDU overseas.

With regard to the state of the CANDU technology, we attend a lot of international conferences as a smaller private industry, particularly conferences associated with tritium and heavy water management. We can say that the Canadian technology is still very highly respected as a source of the best data on R and D programs. Other countries are seeking Canadian input. However, we can say that through recent years, particularly at the tritium conference in France in 2013 and at the 2016 conference in Charleston, South Carolina, the Canadian representation is falling fairly dramatically compared to that of other countries in terms of the size and support of the Canadian contingent. When we were in Charleston, there was one representative from CNL, one representative from Kinectrics, and John and I. This is in comparison with contingencies from China, France, Romania, and the United States, which had in excess of 15, 20, or more people representing them. We see that as a problem if we're to continue to compete.

In terms of benefits of the CANDU technologies to other natural resources, well, there are particular spinoff technologies in particular that we've been involved in. One is associated with hydrogen technologies and the development of electrolysis that's used in heavy water management, upgrading, and tritium extraction. Those technologies in electrolysis are transferable to hydrogen as a fuel source industry.

Obviously, as I've described, the tritium technologies have benefits in pharmaceutical and other monitoring industries. Radiation monitoring in general is a very strong focus of our company and the R and D that we do. Radiation monitoring is transferable to, for example, mining. Those skills seem to be transferable.

The last item is helium-3, a by-product of the decay of tritium. When tritium is removed, as it is at the Darlington reactor, and stored on metal hydride getter beds, over time the tritium will decay to helium-3. There's an opportunity for extracting that helium-3, not only to satisfy a need to release pressure from those getter beds but also to create spinoff industries. Helium-3 is a highly valuable gas that can be used to create the most sensitive neutron detectors, that can be used in homeland security applications as well as the highest-quality medical imaging equipment.

As to the future of R and D, with the shutdown of the NRU, our company has found that the strength in the Canadian nuclear industry over the years was primarily due to some focal points in R and D, such as the NRU reactor and the fusion industry. That's how our company was created. We've managed to commercialize those technologies, but it was due to the government focus on key specialized areas, such as the NRU, the CANDU fusion research...and a focus on transferring the R and D that's created on some of those larger organizations that were mentioned by the university. The key that we found is to transfer that to small and medium industries, because we are the ones that commercialize and create commercially viable products. We've done that with ionization chambers, radiation monitors, electrolysis systems, tritium extraction, etc. We've found that in areas of commercialization we've been able to do that more efficiently than a larger organization, but we need the government to focus on transferring those technologies to us rather than competing with us.

As to waste management, our company doesn't operate heavily in that realm. As a general comment, Canada is a very geographically large country, so clearly it has areas where the risk of doing that would be lower than in other countries. We see it as a good area for the government to focus on. It's large, and there are a lot of remote areas where waste could be stored in solid rock or salt formations. We have the strong regulatory standards and structure within which to do that.

On decommissioning, we have worked a lot with CNL and have people on our staff who have done a lot of work on the hot cells that are available at CNL. Clearly that is an area where there's a lot of expertise that could be further developed. We have some of the oldest reactors in the world that are being decommissioned, so there's an opportunity to be ahead of the game. Those situations will appear in our other markets down the road, and if we develop decommissioning technologies now, we'll reap economic benefits in the future.

That's our introduction for the committee.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Thank you.

Mr. Serré, I believe you're up first.

[Marc Serré, Liberal, Nickel Belt, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses for the presentations this morning.

My first question will be for the Queen's University professors.

You indicated during your presentation that the U.S., France, Japan, and India had strong government intervention. Perhaps in bullet-point form, in the short amount of time we have, could you expand on the recommendations you would have for the Government of Canada to support the nuclear industry the way other countries have done?

[Prof. Rick Holt, Professor Emeritus, Mechanical and Materials Engineering, Queen's University]

If the Canadian government has the will to continue as a nuclear supplier, then they have to focus on future technologies. The current system is pretty well commercially developed, and most of the services have been spun off into private companies. We're in a situation where if we want to advance our reactor systems beyond the current CANDU 6E, then we have to invest a fair bit of money into that. If the Government of Canada foresees having a long-term future in nuclear supply, then they're going to have to invest that money.

The emphasis should be on a future system, perhaps the synergy between CANDU and the generation IV-type reactor, particularly a fast breeder reactor, which would be able to recycle CANDU fuel and both extract that energy that's reserved in the fuel and greatly diminish these products that have to be disposed of.

The current situation seems to be that CRL is in a position where its site is being refurbished. It has a new management system, but it's not at all clear where and how [Technical difficulty--Editor] for them to carry on R and D [Technical difficulty--Editor]. We believe, here at Queen's, that unless there's a strong push from the Canadian government to want to advance and continue with nuclear technology, then what will happen is CRL will become a decommissioning site. That will then spin off to the rest of the country gradually. These programs [Technical difficulty--Editor] and so on will shut down if there's [Technical difficulty--Editor] industry.

We've built this up for the last 15 years, and now we're at a critical juncture as to where to go next [Technical difficulty--Editor].

[Marc Serré, Liberal, Nickel Belt, ON]

Thank you.

Mr. Robinson, when we look at exports, what can we do to support small and medium companies? We talk about clusters. We talk about the importance of having R and D, the commercialization, and the education part of that. What can we do to support small and medium businesses on the export side?

[Vince Robinson]

A lot of the projects in the nuclear industry have a lot of international participants from very large organizations. We bid on projects with Areva, Westinghouse, and those types of companies. Typically the dollars get into areas that are difficult for a smaller company to support, so certainly the Export Development corporation may be favourable support for nuclear exports through the EDC. It would allow us to qualify with the performance guarantees progress payment structures that are imposed upon us.

Second is the international representation at key trade shows and industry events. When we go to those events, our peers from other countries appear to have very strong government support to create the image and provide that momentum to compete, which is very helpful. It's expensive to do that for the smaller companies.

[Marc Serré, Liberal, Nickel Belt, ON]

Thank you.

With previous witnesses, we've talked about the R and D aspect when we look at water reactors, waste, or the small modular reactors. Some witnesses have said that we have to pick a lane and focus on being the best in the world in very specific areas. Others have said, and I'll use the term, that we have to “water many flowers”.

Can I have both of your opinions and recommendations along those lines?

[John Robinson, Chief Executive Officer, Tyne Engineering]

I can give you my thoughts on that.

I've been in nuclear power for many, many years, and I think for a county the size of Canada, it has to be able to focus. It has to focus on not everything but on something, do it very well, and support its own people in doing that.

CANDU, of course, is a very good example of this. What we find, and this partially ties into the comments that have just been made, is that the advantage that other countries have over Canada is localization. In other words, the Korean governments and some of these other governments that were discussed before will support their people very strongly, both financially and providing information for them, more so than we do.

In fact, we find as a small company that we're often in competition against our own government. I think that's totally wrong. In my belief, in some aspects the government's involvement is absolutely essential. That has to do particularly with pure research. People have to think of new ideas and they have to follow those ideas. Companies like ours can't afford that kind of research. Ours has to be very directed. It has to end up with a product, and that product has to end up with a sale, otherwise we can't do it. So that has to be left to somebody else. As far as I'm concerned, there's a tremendous opportunity for partnership between governments and smaller companies, and I'd like to emphasize the smaller companies rather than the larger companies. The smaller companies are the ones that want to grow or expand. They want a product that they can develop the company around. They're the ones really who need the support.

We have several products ourselves that we've been developing over the years. It's a very, very long-term proposition because of the cost. In many cases, as well, companies like ours will be short of not only the kind of expertise that might be available but also the testing equipment and the validation equipment that, let's say, governments have. We should have access to those. In fact, it should be more than access. There should be people from government looking after our shoulder, pushing the work that we do. I think that people, like at Chalk River, should be evaluated not on the work that they do, but on the achievements of the small companies that the government works with. I think that's what the objective should be.

The CANDU needs research, and I think that is the item that we should be pushing. I think it's about CANDU stations. The truth is that we haven't sold one in Canada for 20 years or so. There's not really very much effort to do that. We haven't developed CANDU 6, which has not been implemented, and the CANDU 9 as well. The advanced CANDU 9 is not implemented.

We talk about putting in—

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Mr. Robinson, I'm going to have to interrupt you and ask you to wrap up.

[John Robinson]

Sorry. I beg your pardon.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Thank you.

Ms. Gallant.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Your ears must have been burning, because at our last meeting your company name was raised, as was your passive autocatalytic recombining. With that technology, it's my understanding that you were actually situated right in CNL as that was being developed, and for the initial manufacturing. Can you describe how that worked?

[John Robinson]

That's not quite the way it was. We are interested in recombiners. We've done development work on some recombiners. This particular one, the “PAR” system, as it's referred to, was developed in order to remove the hydrogen from reactor buildings so that it would minimize the opportunities for explosion. We have always been interested in that, and we have the skills in our organization to be able to take those if they're given to us and shown to us by AECL. It was AECL who had created this in the first place. It's their discovery, not ours.

We have subsequently been able to build these. We make them very successfully, but we can't sell them. We have an arrangement with Candu Energy whereby they do the marketing for them. Frankly, I think the prices are too high, and we don't compete with the Koreans. Our personal prices are very low, but the prices that go to other countries I think have been too high, and we don't sell any. We can't market them. We're not allowed to market them, but we have the capability, and we've made the laboratories and equipment to do that. It has cost us money. We even set up a building at Chalk River, which now we're closing down simply because we can't market these or we can't sell them.

[Vince Robinson]

There's a lack of sales on the PARs. One market that we approach continuously is India, but it's still against Candu Energy's governance to offer any proposals to India on the PARs. The sales opportunities have diminished drastically for the PARs, and that's the reason we closed down our Deep River building. We are looking for other opportunities. We still have the building, and we can still build the PARs, but since the technology now.... The sales activity has been transferred from AECL fully to Candu Energy. We have to wait until they come up with the sales. We bring them ideas and opportunities in places like India, but so far the sales have been quite disappointing.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

It was mentioned that you found it beneficial to actually work in the government labs—for example, CNL. How important is it that a high-flux neutron source remain in place for your type of technology as well as for other industries that depend on nuclear research?

[John Robinson]

I don't know how you classify the importance of that, but certainly we were very interested in it. Vince was talking about helium-3. Helium-3 is used in neutron detectors, and you can develop, using helium-3, very high-quality neutron detectors, but to build those, to do that kind of work, we need access to neutron sources, which, by the way, we can get currently from CNL. There is the opportunity for doing that at a certain cost, and there's encouragement for doing that. There are some very good people there who can give us very good advice.

I think that should be enabled, although we see the current new development that's taking place at CNL to be contrary to what we would have hoped. It seems to me to be going in the wrong direction. It's so important for us that we have that kind of access. I think the NRU reactor, for instance, was a good focal point anyway for work within.... I'm wondering now, if they don't have reactors up there, what will focus their research work and so on. I think you need something like that, something like a Candu, an NRU, or an ITER, something to focus research attention.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

Your technology is based on hydrogen. There is a new hydrogen lab situated at CNL.

[John Robinson]

Yes, there is.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

Is that being utilized at all?

[John Robinson]

Yes, it is. In fact, we've made a lot of the products for that lab as well, and hopefully.... They intend to sell services to people through that lab. I don't know how they're going to do that, of course, as I'm not party to that.

We're very familiar with the laboratory and the equipment that we have. We've actually got a piece in our laboratory at the moment now, a glovebox of some magnitude, which could be used and is partially planned for use with these ITC containers that contain the tritium at OPG, as we were saying. It can handle those kinds of conditions. This is a sort of general purpose tritium-handling facility. It belongs to that hydrogen lab. They have some good facilities there.

[Vince Robinson]

The lab is a very impressive lab, but we don't see a lot of activities there in our recent visits. It has been used because of the new CNL governance to support some of our competitors in the United States, simply because the focus was on, for example, selling some catalyst that could be used in tritium extraction rather than promoting Canadian industry, which would have a lot of future benefit.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

The topic of next-generation reactors was mentioned, and we know that some of them require some enriched uranium. There is opposition to the transport of our HEU and repatriating it to the United States. If the opposition is so great that we're not able to carry through with that, we're left with reprocessing it ourselves. Right now, does it make sense to have that HEU repatriated process so that we can buy it back for the next-gen reactors? I'd like to hear your thoughts on that.