Science and Research Committee on June 9th, 2022

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

Good evening, everyone. I call this meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number 15 of the Standing Committee on Science and Research.

The Board of Internal Economy requires that committees adhere to the following health protocols which are in effect until June 23, 2022.

All individuals wishing to enter the parliamentary precinct must be fully vaccinated against COVID-19. All those attending the meeting in person must wear a mask, except for members who are at their place during proceedings. Please contact our clerk of the committee for further information on preventive measures for health and safety.

As the chair, I will enforce these measures, and as always, colleagues, I thank you for your co-operation.

I'd like to welcome all our witnesses. We are grateful to have you, your time and your expertise.

Today’s meeting is taking place in a hybrid format pursuant to the House order of November 25, 2021.

I'd like to outline a few rules to follow.

Interpretation services are available for this meeting. You may speak in the official language of your choice. At the bottom of your screen, for those who are online, you may choose to hear the floor audio, or English or French. The “raise hand” feature is on the main toolbar, should you wish to speak.

I remind you that all comments should be addressed through the chair.

When you are not speaking, your microphone should be muted.

The committee clerk and I will maintain a speaking list for all members.

To let our committee members know, Mr. Ken Hartwick of OPG has been invited back and will appear next meeting.

Tonight is our third meeting on small nuclear reactors.

We're pleased to welcome from Canadians for Nuclear Energy, Dr. Christopher Keefer, president. Welcome. From Canadian Nuclear Laboratories, we have Joseph McBrearty, president and chief executive officer; and Louis Riccoboni, vice-president, corporate affairs. Welcome to you both. From the Coalition for Responsible Energy Development in New Brunswick, we have Dr. Susan O'Donnell, adjunct research professor. Welcome.

Each group will have five minutes to speak. At the four and a half minute mark, I will hold up this yellow card to let you know there are 30 seconds left for your testimony.

With that, we will hand it over to Dr. Keefer.

The floor is yours.

[Dr. Christopher Keefer, President, Canadians for Nuclear Energy]

Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure to be here.

My name is Chris Keefer. I'm a Toronto-based emergency physician and the president of Canadians for Nuclear Energy. I'll be making three main points in my testimony today. First, nuclear energy is the keystone technology of our clean energy transition. Second, SMRs are worthy of exploration, but our CANDU reactor technology should remain central to our decarbonization efforts. Third, Canada possesses the vital preconditions to rapidly and successfully deploy nuclear energy thanks to our CANDU refurbishment program.

Why is nuclear power fundamental to the success of our energy transition? Our remaining hydroelectric and geothermal opportunities are limited, and the real-world evidence is in: Wind and solar are unable to deliver on deep decarbonization or energy security.

Germany offers us a cautionary tale. Because the sun often does not shine and the wind often does not blow, Germany, despite a 550-billion euro green energy transition, relied on coal as its number one source of electricity in 2021. In addition to coal, it remains critically dependent on Russian natural gas, which is bankrolling Putin's war of aggression in Ukraine.

Nuclear energy, in contrast, has a proven track record. Ontario, unlike Germany, was able to phase out coal entirely thanks to nuclear energy. This action still stands as North America's greatest greenhouse gas reduction, and has delivered most of our national progress on emissions since 2005.

The need to rapidly scale up our nuclear fleet should not be controversial. All four IPCC decarbonization pathways that limit global warming to 1.5 degrees required nuclear to increase by 100% to 500% by 2050. Is it possible for us to accomplish such a task? If so, what is our quickest route to meeting the goals that the IPCC has set out for us?

SMRs are a promising suite of technologies. There's certainly a need for smaller reactors like the BWRX-300 and others to fit the grids of our less populous provinces and to decarbonize remote northern communities' mining and industrial sites.

There's also significant interest in SMRs coming from our NATO partners in Europe. Canada, as a first mover in the west, has the opportunity to domesticate a large part of this future SMR supply chain and support our European allies in their transition away from Russian fossil fuels. However, SMRs should be thought of as a complement and not a replacement for CANDU in the pursuit of net zero and energy security.

Why does CANDU offer Canada such an important opportunity? In Canada we brought 23 large CANDU reactors online in just 22 years. Nationally, it is our second-largest and second-cheapest source of electricity after hydro. We know it can be done. Countries like South Korea and China continue to efficiently build new nuclear. However, recent construction experience in the west has not inspired confidence, with nuclear plants under construction in the U.S.A. and Europe blowing past their deadlines and budgets.

What went wrong? In short, it was a perfect storm. These countries, after decades of no new nuclear construction, pursued novel first-of-a-kind designs with atrophied nuclear supply chains and workforces. Furthermore, they often paid for it using expensive private capital because of a lack of commitment from their respective governments and utilities.

What makes Canada different? We have in the CANDU a standardized reactor design with a record of excellent operational performance, and we are running our CANDU fleet better than ever. In the words of former national resources minister Seamus O'Regan, CANDU is a “gold standard” reactor. Many believe that if it were on the drawing board today, CANDU would be considered an advanced nuclear design.

Our CANDU refurbishment program is proceeding on budget and on time, and is renewing most of our nuclear fleet for another 40 years of operation. We are building not only most of the reactor components, like steam generators and pressure tubes, but also the critical project management, manufacturing and installation experience we need to build the new fleet of CANDU reactors that will decarbonize Canada.

Finally, Canada can facilitate access to affordable capital by, for example, including nuclear in the green bond framework. Private capital is eager to invest in nuclear. Nuclear is the ultimate economic stimulus, with a $1.40 return to the Canadian economy for every dollar invested due to our 96% made-in-Canada supply chain.

I have some final recommendations. We must extend the refurbishment program to include all of Canada's CANDU fleet, including Pickering. We must build new CANDU as urgently as possible, starting with the remaining licensed sites at Darlington and new sites in our larger provinces. We should continue to support the construction of the west's first new SMRs at Darlington and Chalk River. Finally, nuclear must be included in federal financial mechanisms like the green bond framework.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

Thank you so much, Dr. Keefer. We appreciate your being here.

Now we will hear from Canadian Nuclear Laboratories for five minutes, and I think it will be the president, Mr. McBrearty.

[Joseph McBrearty, President and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Nuclear Laboratories]

Good evening, Madam Chair and committee members.

Thank you for the opportunity to appear before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Science and Research to discuss small modular reactors.

My name is Joe McBrearty, and I am the president and CEO at Canadian Nuclear Laboratories. Joining me today is Mr. Lou Riccoboni, our vice-president of corporate affairs and business development.

I wish to begin by acknowledging that CNL's operations across Canada occur on the unceded and unsurrendered traditional territories of numerous first nations. At CNL, we recognize the unique history, spiritual beliefs, cultural practices and languages of indigenous peoples in Canada, and we appreciate the responsibility they have as stewards of the environment. I also want to reaffirm CNL's commitment to being an active participant in Canada's journey towards healing and our journey towards reconciliation.

My remarks today seek to inform the committee's study of small modular reactors, or SMRs, and, in particular, our role at CNL in supporting their deployment.

CNL is Canada's national nuclear laboratory. As part of our clean energy program, we are working to help advance these technologies in order to accelerate the deployment of SMRs here in Canada. We are technology agnostic. Our role is to leverage our scientific capabilities to prove or disprove theories and to inform the regulatory process. In short, we are an incubator for the development of innovative clean-energy solutions.

Our Chalk River campus is the birthplace of CANDU reactor technology, and we have a long history in reactor development and design, which we are now applying to next-generation reactors, which include SMRs, advanced reactors and even fusion energy.

Advancing these technologies begins in the laboratory—to bring these concepts to life, to analyze their viability and to ensure that the safety cases are thoroughly studied and thoroughly understood. These are the principles of our small modular reactor siting program, which was launched in 2018. We have Canadian experts in thermal hydraulics, fuel development, reactor physics, cybersecurity and waste management.

Four companies are now participating in our siting process, and just last year the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission announced that the licence application for Global First Power to construct an SMR in Chalk River would move to a formal review.

In addition, we have launched what we call the “Canadian nuclear research initiative”, a cost-sharing program to leverage our extensive resources to make them more accessible to SMR vendors, including Terrestrial Energy, Kairos Power, Moltex and even General Fusion for fusion energy research.

SMRs have tremendous potential for Canada. They are smaller in size than traditional reactors, can be constructed efficiently in a modular way, produce less waste, and are expected to be much safer, more efficient and more cost-effective than current designs. They can be deployed both on grid and off grid in remote locations, but the benefits go beyond electricity. SMRs also produce heat that could be used to support agriculture—think greenhouses or ammonia production—heat buildings or produce hydrogen to power vehicles or to store excess energy. The system could even be used for desalinization, turning salt water on remote shores into fresh drinking water.

Canada is well positioned to serve as an international leader in this technology. We are a tier 1 nuclear nation, with a strong and independent regulator, a mature supply chain and an established workforce. More importantly, Canada needs it. Here in Canada, with large regions that are sparsely populated with limited infrastructure, these reactors really do make sense, and the time to act is now.

This is particularly true in the Arctic, where there is a growing concern about the need to exert Canada's sovereignty. Other nations are eyeing the Arctic for its vast natural resources and shorter trade routes. Ensuring that Canada maintains an effective presence to protect our beautiful country will be critical in the future. To support that presence, we must be able to supply reliable, independent, clean, autonomous and long-lasting energy, and SMRs are really the only technology that checks all those boxes.

CNL just completed a feasibility study that showed that an SMR could provide clean, economical and reliable energy to our next-door neighbour, Garrison Petawawa, helping to reduce that base's reliance on fossil fuels and to enable its own energy security.

It is my hope that your study will reach the same conclusions that other nations have come to, which is that next-generation nuclear energy has a lot to offer environmentally, economically and socially, and from a national security perspective.

Thank you, again, for the opportunity to appear before the committee.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

Thank you so very much, Mr. McBrearty.

Now we will go to Dr. O'Donnell for five minutes. The floor is yours.

[Dr. Susan O'Donnell, Adjunct Research Professor, Coalition for Responsible Energy Development in New Brunswick]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I come to you from the territory of the Wolastoqiyik, the people of the beautiful and bountiful river.

Thank you for inviting me.

I represent the Coalition for Responsible Energy Development in New Brunswick. I sit on the coalition for the RAVEN project at the University of New Brunswick, where I am an adjunct professor and social science researcher with expertise in technology adoption. Because I'm speaking about science and research, I'll mention that I am a retired senior research officer from the National Research Council of Canada, where I was vice-chair of the NRC research ethics board.

The climate crisis needs technologies to help us radically cut emissions by 2030. SMRs are in the design phase and can't do that.

Given that you are the science and research committee, I hope your report about how SMRs can contribute in the future will be based on science and peer-reviewed research and reports by experts, without a conflict of interest or profit motive.

You heard last week that nuclear proponents want to construct micro SMR units in modules in a factory, and roll them out to remote communities that are currently using diesel to generate electricity. However, peer-reviewed research shows that building a factory to manufacture micro SMRs cannot be justified. Why? Because the total energy needed to replace diesel in all the remote communities in Canada is so small that a factory would never pay for itself.

Peer-reviewed research shows that the types of nuclear reactors planned for New Brunswick have never been successfully commercialized. Why not? Because of technical problems unresolved after decades of trying. If SMRs are not commercialized, there will be no economic development. In the past two years, the government has given almost $100 million to three private nuclear companies for research to develop their SMR designs.

Experts not funded by the nuclear industry have identified many potential problems with SMRs. The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission has a pre-licensing vendor design review for SMRs—a VDR—but it's optional, not required. The CNSC is clear that a VDR is not a technical review.

What is the government's scientific review process for SMR funding? Is the process fair, transparent and based on independent, scientific review?

In 2021, the government gave more than $50 million to the Moltex company for SMR research to develop the technology to extract plutonium from spent CANDU fuel stored on the Bay of Fundy. The National Research Council of Canada conducted the technical review for the Moltex project. Despite the NRC and the serious concerns raised about the Moltex research, the government approved the project.

It is necessary to ask whether the government acted in accordance with the recommendations of the NRC scientific review? Your committee needs to insist that the NRC report be made available to you for your deliberations. Read the NRC report and ask yourselves why the Moltex project was approved.

I worked at the National Research Council during the war on science, when the government ignored or contradicted expert opinions by government scientists for political reasons. I have to ask, is another war on science happening now? Why would the government not consider expert advice from its own scientists before approving an SMR research project worth more than $50 million?

Your committee can recommend that all funding for SMR research and development should require a transparent, independent scientific review. I urge you to make this recommendation. Perhaps the whole funding envelope for net-zero technology research could be moved to the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. Why? Because then the public will be confident that SMR research and development will compete with other net-zero technologies in a fair competition to ensure that public funds are spent supporting scientific excellence.

If we're serious about climate action, we will need new technology supported by science.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

Thank you, Dr. O'Donnell.

Again, I'd like to thank all of our witnesses. We are grateful for your time and expertise.

We're now going to our members. We have a really good committee: Our members are interested in what you have to say.

We're going to start with our six-minute round, and tonight we begin with Mr. Williams. The floor is yours.

[Ryan Williams, Conservative, Bay of Quinte, ON]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair, and I will start with Dr. Keefer tonight.

Dr. Keefer, is there any realistic path to net-zero emissions without nuclear power?

[Dr. Christopher Keefer]

As I said in my opening remarks, Canada is blessed with hydroelectric resources. In four of our main provinces, we get more than 90% of our energy from hydro. Those provinces have clean grids, and that brings Canada's average emissions, when it comes to electricity, to a pretty competitive level—not to a deep decarbonization level but a pretty good level. We have outlying provinces that aren't as blessed with hydro resources. Those would be our prairie provinces like Alberta and Saskatchewan, and also Ontario. You wouldn't think so, because we have Niagara Falls, but we're a large economy and we have huge demand.

Ontario managed to achieve what is the gold standard of deep decarbonization, a grid of less than 50 grams of CO2 per kilowatt-hour. It did that with nuclear energy. Right now in this room, 61% of our power is coming from nuclear. We have other options, of course, as I mentioned in my opening remarks, wind, solar, and batteries. There are many modelling studies claiming that we'll be able to deliver a reliable decarbonized grid with these technologies.

I have to say that Germany, one of the richest and wealthiest countries, a real industrial hub, is nowhere close to leveraging these technologies after almost half a trillion euros spent, so Canada really needs to take a pause. We need to assess, in a technologically neutral manner, what is working and what has worked for Canada. We simply don't have enough rivers to dam. We need to double our electric grid, apparently, in order to achieve our net-zero goals. That's going to require the addition of something like 113 Site C dams or the equivalent of 96 large CANDU reactors.

We need to get building quickly. We need to do what works. We have a proven track record, and nuclear is that technology. There are other options, and other things that will complement that, but we're moving from a hydro phase toward a nuclear phase, if we are serious about achieving net zero.

[Ryan Williams, Conservative, Bay of Quinte, ON]

With electrical generation under provincial jurisdiction, in meeting that demand, what role does the federal government need to play, in your opinion?

[Dr. Christopher Keefer]

The federal government has been involved in issues of energy generation. Famously, the TMX pipeline was bought by this federal government. There's the share in the Hibernia oil field, and our hydroelectric projects at Muskrat Falls and Site C have been bailed out by the federal government.

Certainly, there is a role for the federal government to get involved. I was very involved in advocacy to include nuclear within the green bond framework. I'm glad to see that the government included nuclear within the mandate of the Canada Infrastructure Bank.

When we're dealing with a situation that is urgent, that is emergent, as the climate situation is, the government needs to get creative. Certainly, there's a role, I think, to partner with the provinces to find vehicles, financial mechanisms, and to support the spread of nuclear energy in this country.

It was done at Point Lepreau, for instance. The federal government came up with some of the funding, and each province, actually at that time, was offered a percentage of the funding for the first CANDU reactor that was built. Those mechanisms have existed, and we can put them into play in the future.

[Ryan Williams, Conservative, Bay of Quinte, ON]

You talked about nuclear being the second cheapest and the second largest. What makes nuclear cheaper than any other greener energies, besides hydro?

[Dr. Christopher Keefer]

Nuclear energy represents a large up-front cost in terms of the capital costs of getting a reactor built, but it delivers. Our CANDU reactors have been running for 40 years. They're at mid-life, the time when we refurbish them and give them another 40 years of operation.

That capital expense is averaged out over many, many years, and the evidence speaks for itself. Right here in Ontario, hydro is about 7¢ or 8¢ per kilowatt-hour. Nuclear is about 9¢, gas is about 14¢ or 15¢, and solar is 50¢s per kilowatt-hour. The facts speak for themselves. It is an up-front capital investment. It's like building a bridge; it's like building an airport. These things take some resources to get going, but nuclear pays itself back over many, many years.

[Ryan Williams, Conservative, Bay of Quinte, ON]

I was reading your testimony before the natural resources committee in April. You spoke a great deal on how we handle nuclear waste in the long-term. This is an issue that has also been raised by this committee.

Could you elaborate for the committee what is different about Canada's nuclear waste compared with other nations, and the safety of long-term storage of our nuclear waste?

[Dr. Christopher Keefer]

I found this pop can in the ice bin out there, and I brought it to sit with me, because this is the amount of nuclear waste that you would produce if, during your entire life as a member of an OECD country, all of your energy was produced by nuclear energy. We produce very little waste, and all of the waste that Canada's produced in the last 60 years could be stored in one hockey rink piled 32 feet high, or the height of one telephone pole. It's incredibly energy-dense and therefore produces very little waste, and we have a good, permanent solution for that, which is the deep geologic repository. There's one being built in Finland right now, and that can store waste on geologic time frames.

The challenge that anti-nuclear people have when it comes to nuclear waste is demonstrating a mechanism for it to get out and harm people. The geology that we are looking at contains water; water can only move one metre per million years through that rock, and that's the mechanism by which any of this waste could ever get out. We have excellent geology here; we have a proven way to deal with nuclear waste on a long-term basis.

Those were some of my comments at the NRC committee last month.

[Ryan Williams, Conservative, Bay of Quinte, ON]

Thank you.

I'll have you submit the answer to this last question in writing since I'm going to run out of time. Are there any credible concerns from the potential proliferation of uranium that will be used in Canadian SMRs and MMRs?

Thank you, Madam Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

Thank you, Mr. Williams.

Thank you for answering that last question in writing. We will of course follow up with you.

We will go to Ms. Diab for six minutes. The floor is yours.

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

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

Thank you to all of our witnesses for coming to our science and research committee.

I'm going to direct my first questions to Canadian Nuclear Laboratories. I was quite interested in your opening remarks, where you quite frankly said that research all begins in the laboratory. You have to study it, research it and, of course, this is part of what we are doing at our committee here. We want to hear from researchers, scientists and so on.

I have some questions for you. To what extent are Canadian universities or educational institutions involved in SMR development projects currently in Canada? What role do you see them playing in these projects?

[Joseph McBrearty]

I'm not sure I can authoritatively speak for all of the academic organizations involved, but many—I believe McMaster University, and probably McGill University—are involved in these studies. We, as a national nuclear laboratory, bridge the gap between the academic world and the industry, so we are able to take academic ideas and research and put them to the test in our laboratories to be able to prove that systems work, or do not work. I think the entire synergistic part of the academic world and universities with national laboratories, and the industry and the industry's own research all play a very valuable part in providing the necessary research and information to make decisions about this technology.

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

Do you see a role for the federal government to play here to make it easier for you to bridge the gap between academia and industry, and are we doing that?

[Joseph McBrearty]

I certainly think there is a role for the federal government with increased funding, increased attention to where these gaps exist, from the research, from test bed research, to demonstration reactors, to getting out to actual industrial production. One thing this industry is very accustomed to—very similar to the airline industry—is doing prototypes or demonstrations. You want to be able to take the theory that you have and put it into practice and test it. You could say that you kick the tires of these things and see how they work. We've shown this in multiple reactor technologies throughout the world, and much of the reactor technology that's been talked about for SMRs has been demonstrated throughout the world, whether through pressurized water reactors, boiling water reactors or high-temperature gas reactors. This information exists, but you also want to be able to have a test bed so you can ensure that your technology works.

Thank you.

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

Thanks for that.

I want to move to another topic, one that I'm very familiar with from my provincial roles.

We have a lot of labour challenges in the country on many fronts, but here we're talking about SMR developments in Canada. What are the labour challenges in regard to that?

Dr. Keefer, if that's something you can comment on, I would be interested in hearing about it. We had previous witnesses who have said that there are.... I think there was a witness who said that, no, we have enough. I want to get your opinion on that, because for this to move on, we certainly need to have enough researchers, scientists and people who are qualified and capable to carry on with this. What can you tell us on that front? What currently are the capabilities that we have within our labour force?

[Dr. Christopher Keefer]

I can speak more to the labour side. I would defer questions about scientists and academics to my colleagues at the CNL.

Canada is uniquely well positioned in the west. We have a vibrant supply chain, which is activated. We are building critical CANDU components as we speak right now and installing them and gaining the project manager experience, etc.

There are 76,000 men and women working in the sector right here in Canada, so we have a huge advantage when it comes to labour. Again, an investment in nuclear benefits our labour force hugely because these are well-paid union jobs. The nuclear sector has the highest union density of any sector across the country.

I'm going to defer the rest of your question over to my co-presenter here in regard to scientific and academic expertise.

[Joseph McBrearty]

Thanks, Dr. Keefer.

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

Anyone can take that.