Thank you.
I'd like to bring up a topic that the minister mentioned in the previous hour in response to a question about SMRs and nuclear energy. He mentioned the molten salt reactor project in New Brunswick, where the federal government is giving $50 million to a British firm to develop an SMR that extracts plutonium from the used uranium fuel at the Point Lepreau reactor. This is somewhat Orwellianly called “recycling”, even though it's extracting only 1% of the nuclear fuel. It extracts plutonium and leaves a large, liquid and highly radioactive waste stream that's very difficult to deal with. Pierre Elliott Trudeau banned the extraction of plutonium from used uranium fuels because of this danger, and also because plutonium is used in nuclear weapons.
Canada has been advocating for a fissile materials cut-off treaty, yet here we are creating more fissile materials. What sort of plan does the government have for dealing with these materials? These are far more dangerous than the materials we are already having trouble finding a home for in the nuclear waste management space. I'm wondering what the government is planning to do and why it is even considering extracting plutonium from these materials.