Science and Research Committee on Nov. 14th, 2022

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

Thank you, Ms. Yeremian.

I'd like to thank both of our witnesses. We're really grateful you've come tonight. It's late at night, and we're looking forward to hearing more about your expertise.

We are now going to hear from our committee. It's the six-minute round. Tonight we begin with Mr. Mazier.

Welcome. The floor is yours.

[Dan Mazier, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB]

Thank you, Chair.

My questions are going to be for X-energy.

The United States is investing in nuclear energy as a clean source of energy. While our American neighbours understand the importance of technology over taxes, here in Canada the Liberals plan to triple, triple, triple a carbon tax on working Canadians.

The United States Department of Energy has announced millions of dollars in funding towards nuclear energy through their Advanced Research Projects Agency. They stated in a recent press release, “Nuclear power is one of the most reliable sources of energy in America, and the largest domestic source of clean energy—providing approximately 50% of the nation’s carbon-free electricity, and about a fifth of U.S. electricity overall.”

In 2018, Canada's environment minister tweeted that “it's time to close #Pickering Nuclear plant and go for #renewables.

What do you say to Canada's environment minister, who refuses to publicly support the development of clean, renewable nuclear energy?

[Rosemary Yeremian]

Thank you.

We're going to need everything. We're going to need every form of technology—renewables, non-renewables and anything that's not emitting. The beauty of advanced small modular reactors is that they can pair with renewables. They can load-follow up and down to meet fluctuating demand.

Renewables are an intermittent source of electricity. They only work when the sun is shining or the wind is blowing. That's okay, because advanced small modular reactors can fill the gap there. We've designed our SMRs to specifically pair with renewables and maximize the contribution from renewable energy.

[Dan Mazier, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB]

If I heard you correctly, though, we need all the government departments moving in the same direction.

[Rosemary Yeremian]

That's correct.

[Dan Mazier, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB]

Thank you.

The Americans appear to be embracing nuclear energy as a reliable and clean source of energy. To do so, countries around the world are also investing in nuclear energy. When I was on the environment committee, we consistently heard that the only way to meet our net-zero targets is through nuclear energy. Do you agree with this?

[Rosemary Yeremian]

Yes.

[Dan Mazier, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB]

Since we are studying international moon shot programs, do you think Canada should view the development of nuclear energy as a moon shot program to reduce global emissions?

[Rosemary Yeremian]

I do.

[Dan Mazier, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB]

Can you expand on that? What would be the difference in the type of approach of doing a moon shot program?

[Rosemary Yeremian]

Renewables can only get us part of the way there. They're really ideally suited for electricity generation. The beauty of advanced small modular reactors is that they can do more than just electricity generation. They can replace the steam generators in the oil sands. They can replace diesel generation up north. They can fill more gaps than what renewables can do alone.

As an example, Dow chemical, in the U.S., just bought one of our Xe-100 plants to provide both power and heat for their operations. There is an ability to sell power back to the grid when they're not using it, so this can actually be cost-competitive for large industrial users.

[Dan Mazier, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB]

If we took the moon shot type of approach, as in the United States, what difference would that mean in nuclear development in Canada? Would that be a good thing? How would we go about doing that?

[Rosemary Yeremian]

Right now, we're seeing a lot of developers building in the U.S. as opposed to Canada because of their recognition of nuclear energy as a clean energy option. If we were to develop a moon shot program around advanced small modular reactors, we would give public recognition to advanced small modular reactors.

Some of our legacy history is a social licence. While X-energy and many others have been doing a lot of consultations with indigenous groups and unions at the grassroots level, as a private sector company, we can only do so much. With a moon shot program, we would have both the government's backing for this technology as well as some incentives, hopefully, to help us make this a reality.

[Dan Mazier, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB]

Thank you.

I'm going to read some press releases that were issued by the Advanced Research Projects Agency for energy in the United States.

“U.S. Department of Energy Announces Up to $10 Million to Study Low-Energy Nuclear Reactions”.

“U.S. Department of Energy Announces $36 Million to Reduce Waste from Advanced Nuclear Reactors”.

“DOE Awards $38 Million For Projects Leading Used Nuclear Fuel Recycling Initiative”.

“DOE Announces $40 Million to Reduce Fuel Waste From Advanced Nuclear Reactors”.

The U.S. clearly sees the moon shot as an opportunity with nuclear energy. Do you think Canada should focus more on advancing nuclear energy?

[Rosemary Yeremian]

Yes.

[Dan Mazier, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB]

The floor is yours. Go ahead and add on to that.

[Rosemary Yeremian]

The U.S. is a great example of what can happen when a government stands behind their technology. For instance, X-energy was provided with $1.2 billion to develop and deploy our Xe-100. What I think makes the government backing of a technology successful is that it's more saleable to private sector companies and to other countries. This large investment encourages private sector companies to adopt this technology.

[Dan Mazier, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB]

Could I ask you to table some of the misinformation and misconceptions about nuclear energy to the committee for our study? That would be just fantastic.

[Rosemary Yeremian]

Would you like that in written form?

[Dan Mazier, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB]

Yes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

Thank you, Mr. Mazier.

Now we will go to Ms. Bradford for six minutes, please.

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

Thank you so much to both of our witnesses tonight, and congratulations on being our first witness panel on this exciting new study we're doing.

Mr. Bengio, you gave us a good overview in your initial opening comments about the two different streams, mission-oriented research as opposed to curiosity, sometimes referred to as high risk, high reward. Can you talk to the committee about the benefits and limitations of both mission-oriented research and curiosity-driven research? Is there one that is more useful than the other in a moon shot program?

[Yoshua Bengio]

Really, you need both, and they play different roles.

The initial phases of research cannot be completely directed, because it's not clear ahead of time where the moon shots are going to be. The curiosity-driven research helps us figure out what the moon shots are and what directions are worth having a significant investment.

Most of the curiosity-driven research is happening in academia, but there is also more applied research in academia. The more mission-oriented research is important, because it focuses the efforts in a particular direction; it doesn't explore very widely. Also, you have to realize that it's quite costly to do these things. There are more engineers than researchers, for example. You need both things.

One thing I would like to add here is that I don't think we currently have the right funding style and programs to do moon shot research right now in Canada. Even our funding of industry research tends to be all across the board and not very directed.

As I said, there are good reasons for that. It's not so easy to decide what the right orientations are. That's a place where people like academics, who do the kind of more basic research, can really be helpful and help governments both to identify moon shots and then to evaluate proposals and projects that may come from industry.

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

Thank you for that.

Building on that, how can the government best support a mix of both curiosity-based research and mission-oriented research? As you said, we need to do both.

[Yoshua Bengio]

Yes. One thing government already does in some of the programs that are funding academia is force the industry partners and academic partners to work together for the funding to happen. I think this is a good part of the recipe.

I would add something that is currently missing, especially in the funding that we do for the private sector like the superclusters and so on. It is that we're lacking the strings attached to these research contracts to really facilitate the sharing of the data and the knowledge that is generated.

I'll go back to my example of antimicrobial discovery and the discovery of new antibiotics and techniques to do that efficiently, such as AI. We need the knowledge and the data that are generated by the biological assays and the new algorithms to be shared across the ecosystem of companies and academics who will be developing this. This is not the usual way of doing things when most of the investment comes from industry, for reasons that have to do with how our economy works, which is reasonable, but when the money comes from government, it's a big waste of effort if the discoveries that are made by one organization cannot be used easily by other organizations.

I think there's an opportunity here to change the ways we're doing it to make it much efficient for our tax dollars to reach the moon shot goals.