Science and Research Committee on June 2nd, 2022

[Francis Bradley, President and Chief Executive Officer, Electricity Canada]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I am happy to be here this evening for your study on opportunities related to small modular nuclear reactors in Canada.

I would like to begin by acknowledging that the land on which we gather is the traditional territory of many indigenous peoples. [Technical difficulty—Editor] today from the traditional lands of the Kanien’kehá:ka, or the Mohawk nation.

Electricity Canada is the national voice of electricity in Canada.

Our 42 members generate, transmit and distribute electricity to industrial, commercial and residential customers from coast to coast to coast.

Canada's energy future is electric.

Electricity is a key economic, environmental and social enabler essential to Canadian prosperity. By the government's estimate, Canada will need two to three times the amount of electricity it produces now to decarbonize the other sectors of the economy to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. To do this, the government has committed to a net-zero grid by the end of 2035.

Fortunately, we have a strong start. Canada's electricity grid is already one of the cleanest in the world. Our sector has reduced GHG emissions by nearly half since 2005. More than 80% of electricity produced in Canada is non-CO2 emitting, and 15 percentage points of that are from nuclear energy already.

Like earlier witnesses, we believe that Canada will need an “all of the above” approach to meet the energy needs of decarbonization. That means using a mix of every tool we have available to meet expected energy needs at an affordable cost.

SMRs will be an important option in provinces without substantial hydroelectricity resources as they build a net-zero grid. They also offer an additional option in areas that are experiencing substantial growth and demand. The SMRs' smaller size means they could replace fossil fuel plants. It also means they can be located closer to electricity demand and be right-sized for that use.

This also means advantages for use in remote locations and industrial uses. Right now, remote communities that aren't connected to the grid rely on expensive and dirty diesel generation. SMRs could offer a cleaner and more affordable alternative. For remote industrial uses, like mines or other projects, SMRs could be a reliable source of both electricity and heat.

SMRs offer electricity when you need it, regardless of the weather or the time of the day. This will be important to backstop and to balance the growth of variable renewables like wind and solar, and will make the system more efficient and reliable. After all, using an “all of the above” approach means making sure we use them together.

How do we ensure that the opportunity of SMRs turns firmly into reality?

First, we make sure that there are appropriate resources to facilitate the growth of the SMR ecosystem. Canada is a leader in SMRs. To support this, the federal government has launched an SMR action plan that has identified steps to facilitate the technology's deployment and growth, and Electricity Canada is happy to have joined. The federal government can support the success of this plan by providing appropriate funding to continue the technology's development. Funding programs should be sufficient and timely, so that proponents have access to funds when needed.

Second, we must think about the approval process associated with building an SMR. As you heard earlier this evening, Ontario Power Generation has begun work on an SMR at its Darlington facility and expects it to be in commercial service by the end of the decade. Demonstrator projects at other existing nuclear sites are going to follow. However, without an approved site, a potential proponent must spend substantial money and time to secure the licensing before even considering investing in an SMR itself. Announced federal support for preplanning studies could help address financial issues, but not time ones.

Third, we must be ready to answer Canadians' questions about what expanding nuclear power means for them. Nuclear energy is safe, cost-effective and essential to meeting net zero. Understandably, Canadians may still have some concerns, but if we're serious about meeting net zero, we need to work together to address these and ensure support among the public we serve.

SMRs will be an important piece of our clean, affordable and reliable electricity system for decades to come. To do so, industry and government must continue to work together. After all, 2035 is less than 13 years away. That's just 4,961 days to build a net-zero grid. That may sound like a lot, but tomorrow it's going to be 4,960 days.

Thank you very much. I look forward to the discussion.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

Thank you very much, Mr. Bradley. We appreciate your being here and your remarks.

We will now go to Global First Power, and Mr. Diening, for five minutes, please.

[Jos Diening, Managing Director, Global First Power]

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.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

Thank you very much, Mr. Diening.

Again, thank you to all our witnesses. We're grateful, and we have an eager committee that wants to ask you some questions.

This will be a six-minute round, and this time we begin with Mr. Tochor.

[Corey Tochor, Conservative, Saskatoon—University, SK]

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you to all our witnesses.

I have a question for Mr. King.

You mentioned economic reconciliation, which is very important to everyone on this committee. Can you unpack a little what SaskPower is doing on that front and how you plan to utilize SMR projects to help with economic reconciliation?

[Troy King]

I want to start by restating that SaskPower hasn't made any decisions yet. We are starting on that path of investigating SMRs as an option to provide a solution for non-emitting energy here in Saskatchewan.

A big part of the entire process of licensing and preparing to make a decision will be going through the duty to consult process, working with various first nations across the province. In particular, when we get to the point of identifying sites, we are going to want to look at those individual sites and the communities they impact.

We think there are opportunities for first nations involvement, whether it is through participation in the project itself.... We know that these projects can be very capital-intensive and require a lot of funding up front.

We're looking at ways to design the construction of it to allow potential for various partners to participate in the ownership of it. We're also looking for potential on the employment side and on the supply chain.

Again, we're at the very early stages of our SMR journey here in Saskatchewan.

[Corey Tochor, Conservative, Saskatoon—University, SK]

Mr. King, if you don't decide to go with SMRs, and you need between two and three times the baseload power to handle the needs of the EV and the other projects that we believe are going to come on stream, what is SaskPower probably going to use? Is it natural gas?

[Troy King]

That's about all that's commercially available to us.

SMRs, to us, provide the best option for moving forward. However, in the time frame for us to get our first SMR in place, we're looking at a target date of 2034, if everything goes well, and that would be around the 300 megawatts size.

To replace all of our current thermal generation.... We have about 3,600 or 3,700 megawatts of thermal generation today, and that's not including growth. SMRs look to be part of that solution, and ideally we could have up to four SMRs by the mid-2040s. However, as I think I noted in my earlier comments, in Saskatchewan, where we do not have access to hydro generation, we have very limited options in terms of providing baseload non-emitting power. We can certainly have access to wind and solar; however, that's intermittent energy, and SMRs are one of the two options that we believe are available to us to apply baseload power as we go forward.

[Corey Tochor, Conservative, Saskatoon—University, SK]

I just want to unpack a bit about the EV.

What's going to happen in five years' time, with vehicles that...? I'm not sure if it's going to be through regulation or the industry, or the product will get to a point where people will want to drive more EVs, but right now, seemingly, by far the biggest segment is people who are environmentally conscious and want to switch to EVs.

Most of that power is coming from natural gas, currently, in Saskatchewan, so they're making the switch from gasoline compression engines to EV, and then that power is ultimately coming from what right now?

[Troy King]

We are about 75% thermal based in our generation fleet.

[Corey Tochor, Conservative, Saskatoon—University, SK]

Okay. Thank you kindly.

Switching gears a little and going on to Francis, we were talking about the cost associated, and I quickly wrote down some of the dollar per cents that you have for the kilowatt cost.

Have we ever looked at the carbon footprint of all the other power sources, be it hydro, with all the carbon that is in the cement that is needed for that, or with the wind power, with the steel that needs to be smelted, usually, typically through coal in other countries?

Have you guys done an analysis on the carbon footprint per kilowatt per cents?

[Francis Bradley]

Madam Chair, it's a very interesting question. We do not have current studies on that. I know there have been studies that have been undertaken in the past. We can certainly get back to the committee with that information.

I would also note, for example, that you mentioned hydrogen, and there are carbon emissions. There are carbon emissions in any manufacturing facility, but there we're talking about, for example, facilities where you would spread the carbon emissions of building that facility over the life of the facility. These are facilities whose lives are not measured in years or decades. We have facilities that are more than a century old that are continuing to operate today. When you calculate what the carbon emissions are of rebar and concrete, for example, in a hydro facility, you then have to spread that out over the life of that facility, which is multi-generational.

[Corey Tochor, Conservative, Saskatoon—University, SK]

Thank you kindly. I believe I'm out of time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

You are, Mr. Tochor. Thank you so much for the questions.

We will now go to Ms. Diab for six minutes, please.

[Lena Metlege Diab, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

I welcome our witnesses to our historic parliamentary Standing Committee on Science and Research.

Let me just do my best here to ask a couple of questions in relation to science and research in this domain.

When we talk about SMRs, for you and the panels that came before, obviously, this is what you are into and what you do every day, but I would say that it's not a topic familiar to many people. In terms of research and science, what I'd like to know is....

To be fair, maybe I'll ask Global First Power and Mr. Diening to answer first, since he hasn't gotten a crack at the can yet. Then I'll follow with Electricity Canada and Mr. Bradley.

How do we train? Are we training enough people? Do we have enough labour? How is the research going in this sector? How does Canada compare to our international peers? Any suggestions, comments or feedback you can give on that, I would be interested to hear from you. I left it very broad deliberately, but I would love to get input from you. Do you work with our educational institutions or with our research companies? Is there any collaboration with those types of institutions?

[Jos Diening]

With Global First Power being a generation IV reactor, we do have innovations we're working on. Fuel is one of our major ones. As part of our project, we're building a fuel manufacturing facility at the Chalk River laboratories, managed by the Canadian Nuclear Laboratories. I think the support the Canadian government has been giving CNL to revitalize that nuclear research hub, which is internationally known, has been really beneficial in developing the key aspects of our fuel within that facility.

[Francis Bradley]

Madam Chair, the member has put her finger on an issue of very significant concern to the electricity sector overall: What are the skills and what are the skill sets that are going to be required for the future, particularly when we're talking about a requirement to double or triple over the next 30 years the amount of clean electricity that we produce?

You heard from one of the earlier speakers that currently they have the human resources they require, but that's becoming an increasing challenge. It will become an even greater challenge because of the very significant build-out that's going to have to occur in the future.

Yes, our individual members—and a number of them have been on the panel, including Mr. King, who is a member of Electricity Canada—work very closely with educational institutions. We also work very closely with an organization called Electricity Human Resources Canada to attempt to address precisely what we see in some areas as skills gaps today. There are clearly some challenges with respect to the human resource requirements we're going to have into the future.

[Lena Metlege Diab, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

How do you see government helping? How can we, as parliamentarians, help? Is it federal or provincial? Does it matter which level of government? What can we do to assist?

We had a previous witness who mentioned that younger researchers were exiting the work. I think he was referring to New Brunswick specifically. We just concluded a study on retention and attraction of top talent. I'm wondering what we can do and how we compare internationally.

I will ask you, Mr. Bradley, and then I'll ask Saskatchewan Power after that, since you referenced them.

[Francis Bradley]

In terms of what the Government of Canada can do, I talked earlier about supporting research development demonstration and assisting when it comes to trying to figure out how we're going to site these and move them through assessment processes.

From a human resources perspective, we have seen support from the Government of Canada to undertake labour force studies and to work with the sector to help develop what the skill sets and skill requirements are going to be for the future. Not only is this going to require an all of the above approach, but it's going to require all hands on deck. Federal, provincial and every single level of government and academia will need to get on board.

[Lena Metlege Diab, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Mr. King, please, what good work are you doing in Saskatchewan? What can you point us to in that direction?

[Troy King]

I echo the comments that Francis made.

In Saskatchewan, I think we definitely have a bigger lift to do, as we do not have a nuclear industry here in the province of Saskatchewan. We will likely be leveraging heavily on our partnerships with the other existing utilities that do have a nuclear industry—

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

Mr. King, I am so sorry to interrupt.

Perhaps Ms. Diab would like a written answer here.

[Lena Metlege Diab, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Certainly, Mr. King, if there's anything you can contribute to that, it would be great. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

Thank you, Ms. Diab and Mr. King.

Again, we are grateful to all of the witnesses for joining us.

We will go to Monsieur Blanchette-Joncas for six minutes.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

If I may, I would like to recognize and thank the witnesses who are joining us this evening.

My first question is for Mr. Bradley.

Mr. Bradley, I heard in your presentation that Electricity Canada would like to see investments being made in small modular nuclear reactors and in other technologies, so as to reduce the dependence on fossil fuels.

I understand it is important to support this technology. But I am trying to see how Canada can compete with large markets such as the Russian, U.S. and Chinese markets, which have more diplomatic force and more production force. We know that those markets' competitive advantages consist in them being able to ensure a high-volume standardized production of small modular nuclear reactors and achieve economies of scale.

So I would like to hear your thoughts on that. Do you have any data for us that would help us understand how we could compete with other international markets?