Good evening, members of the Standing Committee on Science and Research.
My name is Jos Diening, and I am the managing director of Global First Power.
Before I begin, I'd like to acknowledge that the project I will be discussing tonight is located in the unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinabe, which is also covered by the Williams Treaties. As I am joining virtually, I'd like to acknowledge the land from which I am calling, which is the Williams Treaties First Nations Mississaugi territory.
On behalf of the Global First Power team, I'd like to thank you for this opportunity to speak about small modular reactors, our company and our first micro modular reactor project.
Global First Power is a joint venture between Ontario Power Generation and Ultra Safe Nuclear Corporation.
We are proud of Global First Power's vision, which is to use small modular reactors to play a key role in achieving Canada's climate goals and enabling energy security in the areas we support.
SMRs are inherently safe, low-carbon and cost-effective generation options to provide the energy people need, regardless of location. We see micro SMRs as a solution for remote communities, mines or heavy industries that currently depend on diesel for energy needs. This diesel is expensive at times, is difficult to transport to remote locations, and has emissions that impact the environment. We offer a reliable, clean, cost-competitive alternative to this. We want to bring micro SMRs to these locations to provide reliable power and energy security.
In addition, we have a lot to be excited about. We're proud that we are on track to build Canada's first micro modular reactor at Chalk River Laboratories, a site owned by Atomic Energy of Canada Limited and managed by Canadian Nuclear Laboratories. We are still in the designing and planning phases of this project, but we expect that the plant will be in commercial operation by the late 2020s.
We're proud that we're targeting to complete our environmental impact statement and submit it, as part of our licence to prepare the site, to the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission by the end of this year. This is an exciting time for Global First Power and the nuclear industry.
Our project is a commercial demonstration that aims to showcase the technology and the benefits of SMRs as an energy solution. Our proposed micro SMR is an Ultra Safe Nuclear Corporation-designed micro modular reactor. It is a generation IV reactor that has inherently safe characteristics, and each unit can provide up to five megawatts of electrical power once installed. That power runs 24 hours a day, seven days a week for 20 years.
This is approximately enough electricity to power 5,000 homes or the life of an average mine. Multiple units can be deployed to meet the specific energy needs of remote mines and communities, offering an abundance of energy that can be leveraged not only to power homes and industries, but also to enhance infrastructure such as water treatment, communications and our greenhouse food production.
SMRs are small, and ours is very small. Our micro modular reactor, when built, together with an adjacent power generation facility, will have a footprint the size of an Olympic running track. In addition, due to their modular design, the construction period is short, approximately one year. This is achieved by the modularization of our plant, with the bulk of the manufacturing being completed off-site.
As mentioned at the beginning of my remarks, the primary market for Global First Power plants is off-grid applications in mining camps or remote communities that have traditionally been dependent on diesel power. Our reactors can provide an abundance of reliable, non-carbon emitting power to those communities. One micro modular reactor, over its 20-year lifespan, provides energy equivalent to up to 200 million litres of diesel fuel.
In addition to our mission of a cleaner energy solution, we also believe that engaging with the communities in which we plan to build our power plants is extremely important. We have done and plan to continue to do extensive outreach. We succeeded in achieving five capacity and relationship agreements with indigenous communities and organizations. These agreements have varying levels of engagement, with four communities providing traditional and cultural knowledge that we will use as part of our environmental impact submission.
We will continue this dialogue with communities as we progress through the next steps of our Chalk River project, and we hope and expect to collaborate with even more indigenous communities in the future, when we deploy SMRs to other sites after our commercial demonstration is successful.
We believe that small nuclear needs to be part of Canada's climate change plan, and that small nuclear enables other renewable energy sources by providing stable baseload power that can be relied on when intermittent renewables such as solar and wind are not generating. By enabling renewables and getting communities and industries off diesel, SMRs can be a central part of not just Canada's fight against climate change, but the world's.
Thank you for this opportunity, and I'm happy to take questions.