Science and Research Committee on June 16th, 2022

[Dazawray Landrie-Parker]

It's okay.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

It's the worst part of the day. It is.

We're now going to go to the five-minute round. We really appreciate all of you for being here.

We begin with Ms. Gladu.

[Marilyn Gladu, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Thank you, Chair, and thank you to the witnesses for appearing.

I want to start off by just talking a bit about some of the things that were said. I know there was a concern expressed by Dr. Charbonneau about radioactive waste and the dangers of that, and I want to be clear that we have 32 radioactive waste storage facilities in Ontario. Since their inception there has never been a single incident, so I think that is certainly not a fact-based observation.

The other thing I would like to say is that there was a comment that all of the SMRs are being exempted from environmental assessment. We have had testimony at this committee from people involved in the Westinghouse project and multiple SMR projects, complaining about the amount of time and the delay of three years that is being imposed on them by the environmental assessment process. I just wanted to provide that information.

I have a question for Dr. Ramana. If I look at competitive sources of energy, hydro is 6¢ to 8¢ a kilowatt hour. In solar and wind, unfortunately in Ontario contracts sold for 40¢ a kilowatt hour—very bad—and typically large nuclear is 8¢ a kilowatt hour but these SMRs are probably 15¢ a kilowatt hour. It looks to me like the niche for these is in places where you would avoid having to put infrastructure costs in in order to use this electricity.

In terms of the north, we see that in the Nunavut area we have mining initiatives that are going on and greenhouse initiatives for food security. Do you believe that these technologies have a place if we could prove the technology here in Canada that might boost this platform for use?

[Dr. M. V. Ramana]

I want to repeat what I mentioned earlier, which is that the total market from mines and remote communities is quite small in comparison with what would be required to manufacture the number of SMRs that would be required to justify building a factory.

The second point, which I didn't bring up earlier, is that if you look at mines and remote communities, they're all very different and they all have different levels of energy needs, so it's very unlikely that the same single nuclear reactor would actually service all of these.

If you're thinking about trying to build custom-built small modular reactors or microreactors for each of these communities, then the cost will go up even further.

The last point I want to say is that the 15¢ per kilowatt hour estimate, I think, is grossly underestimating what it's going to cost. If you were to think about the cost of one of these smaller reactors at a per-kilowatt scale, that can be much higher than for a large reactor, and the 8¢ per kilowatt hour is not the cost of a new large reactor; these are existing reactors where the construction costs have been amortized already.

For a new reactor.... This is why Ontario thought about building one at the end of the first decade of the century and then eventually abandoned it when it saw the incoming tender costs. I think that's something to remember.

[Marilyn Gladu, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Good.

If we look at the north.... I was in Nunavut. It's not very sunny there very often, and the wind is intermittent. In terms of power alternatives for diesel there, what are you thinking is a better recommendation?

[Dr. M. V. Ramana]

That, again, will very much depend on each place. There are areas where wind is strong. Even though it is not very sunny there, there are ways of trying to use solar energy in the winter. I am not an expert on that in colder places. There are also places where there are hydro resources.

I realize that no single one of them is going to fit all of these, and that, I think, is the beauty of renewable energy technologies. There is not one single solution that's going to work in any place. You'd have to look at what the local constraints are and what the local resources are, and tailor your thing.

The last thing I want to say is that technology is something that is evolving quickly in the renewable energy space, unlike in the nuclear space. What the situation will be in 10 or 20 years from now is not something we should be able to confidently predict at this point.

In terms of the total amount of emissions from these small remote communities, it's fairly small. I think we should first focus on developing these technologies for the grid in places where—

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

Dr. Ramana, I'm sorry to interrupt. You got up so early for all of us.

Thank you, Ms. Gladu.

We're going to go to Ms. Bradford now for five minutes.

[Valerie Bradford, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you to the witnesses for being here with us this evening—or early morning, as the case may be.

Dr. Ramana, in your 2021 paper, “Small Modular and Advanced Nuclear Reactors: A Reality Check”, you highlight many of the shortcomings surrounding the emerging technology.

What areas of research have to be focused on in order to improve the technology to make it as remarkable as advocates claim?

[Dr. M. V. Ramana]

There are a number of problems that, I think, are inherent to the technology. There's only so much you can do. One that Dr. Charbonneau mentioned as an example is the production of waste. Small modular reactors are going to produce more waste per kilowatt hour of electricity being generated, compared to a large reactor. That's not something that research is going to solve. That's a given fact. It's because when you go to smaller reactors, there will be more neutron leakage and various other sorts of inefficiencies that will creep in. I don't see this as a problem that research can necessarily fix.

The second point I want to mention is that even doing the R and D required to try to prove that one of these reactors is safe to build is a very expensive proposition. I go back to the example of the NuScale Reactor in the United States. They have spent over $1 billion U.S. at this point, and their reactor design is nowhere near actual completion or ready to be constructed. Most estimates are that they're going to go to about $1.5 billion or $2 billion U.S. This is all the expense that you have to incur in order to run the tests and do the calculations in a careful fashion to show that the reactor would operate in a safe manner under all possible circumstances, including, for example, if there's an earthquake or a fire, or if there's an operator error.

These are not cheap R and D projects. This is why many companies that start off often never move their reactor designs to completion. That's the other thing that I want to emphasize here. If you're going to try to move one of these products to a point where you can feel confident about them being constructed, somebody has to be willing to spend that $1 billion to $2 billion U.S. I don't see the market being willing to do that.

[Valerie Bradford, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

In the area of nuclear waste, are you aware of any promising research to address the problem?

[Dr. M. V. Ramana]

The problem of nuclear waste is twofold.

There's the technical problem with nuclear waste, in that some of these substances are going to be hazardous for hundreds of thousands of years. That's an inherent property of these materials. There's no amount of research that's going to change that property.

The second thing is that the way to try to deal with this problem has typically been to try to do what's called “reprocessing”. Sometimes, euphemistically, it's called “recycling”. The problem there is that you cannot get rid of the radioactivity, so what you're doing in reprocessing is moving the waste from one location in a solid form into multiple streams of radioactive waste. All of them have to then be dealt with, so it's actually making the problem more complicated.

I don't see any promising research as such. The only thing that most countries have decided to do is to say they're going to build deep geological repositories and bury the waste there. Most of the research there has to do with trying to understand how you can persuade a community to live with this hazardous product in their vicinity for millennia.

That's not an easy problem. Again, it's like many of the other things you said. Communities are very different, and each community has its own set of concerns that will have to be addressed.

Most of the research in nuclear waste that I see as promising goes in that direction—the social direction—rather than the technical direction.

[Valerie Bradford, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

I understand that you don't feel that there's a great future for SMRs or that they have a role to play, but supposing they did and that in the future they were effective and used, what challenges would the establishment of supply chains face in producing more SMRs, should the first ones ultimately prove to be successful?

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

Ms. Bradford, you have about 10 seconds. Would you like to ask Dr. Ramana for a written response?

[Valerie Bradford, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

If you could provide a written response to the committee on that, I'd be most appreciative.

Thank you so much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

Thank you so much, Ms. Bradford.

Now we will go to Monsieur Blanchette-Joncas for two and a half minutes, please.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Dr. Charbonneau, I'd like to hear your comments on the important issue of nuclear waste management.

Can you elaborate on this issue?

[Dr. Ginette Charbonneau]

One of the main problems with small modular reactors is that they generate reactive waste that is easily ignited. Canada has a long‑term project to create a deep geological storage site for waste, but we don't even know if we're going to be able to put the waste from small modular reactors there because it could ignite and set the deep landfill on fire.

No waste management strategy for small modular reactors emerged from the consultation conducted by the Nuclear Waste Management Organization, or NWMO. It's not possible, because the waste from small modular reactors is not well characterized. We don't know what it's going to be. We know that it will have a shorter lifespan and a lower intensity, but that it will be more complex in terms of intermediate and low‑level waste. So it's totally unknown, and we don't know what to do with it. There's no strategy.

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

Why do you think the government has chosen not to subject small modular reactor projects to environmental assessments?

[Dr. Ginette Charbonneau]

Humbly, I think it was because it wanted to encourage the deployment of small modular reactors and help the industry develop them.

It was to encourage the development of small modular reactors regardless of the disadvantages. It's like a fad. People want small modular reactors, and they think they will generate profits. However, it would be more prudent to consider all the problems that come with them, because it is likely to be a big disappointment.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

Thank you, Dr. Charbonneau and Mr. Blanchette‑Joncas.

The last two and a half minutes before we suspend go to Mr. Cannings, please.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Thank you.

I'll go back to Ms. Landrie-Parker just to talk about one of my favourite places again, and that's Old Crow. You mentioned that they had their own energy strategy or plan. That's something I'm not aware of, so I'm really interested to hear about what they have done and perhaps what other small remote communities could do based on what they've done.

[Dazawray Landrie-Parker]

Old Crow has a solar farm that they have created and implemented, and it has been quite successful. Again, there are challenges with it because of their climate and their location, but there are definitely some lessons there that can be learned by other communities—not necessarily just in solar but in any energy field—around local control and working with the utility in this case, and working with the government to recognize what is in those modern treaty agreements. That was really interesting.

Just to build on that, the other thing from the other northern communities is about some of the innovative ways they are looking at things like nuclear. Energy is an important part, but they've also looked at food security around the heat a reactor gives off and how they can use that to heat their greenhouses and increase their access to fresh fruits and vegetables, which we all know are hard to get in the north.

There is quite a bit of innovation happening in the north in the ways that they are thinking about energy, around both its use and its ownership and equity structures. I think there are a lot of lessons to be learned there.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Thank you.

I'll cede my remaining time.

Thank you all.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

Thank you, Mr. Cannings, for being so gracious.

To all our witnesses, we thank you for your time, for getting up in the wee hours of the morning, for being gracious and for sharing your expertise. We hope you've had a good experience. This is a new committee, and it's wonderful to see these conversations happening between research and members of Parliament. Thank you to all.

To our outstanding committee members, we're going to suspend.

[Proceedings continue in camera]