Natural Resources committee  First, we're very excited about the broad opportunities in New Brunswick. Second, New Brunswick is a province of Canada that does have its own indigenous nuclear expertise. It operates the Point Lepreau site and it has a nuclear engineering department in Fredericton at the University of New Brunswick, which has the capabilities that we seek for the components of our business plan.

Natural Resources committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. The SMR is a small modular reactor; it's a commercial formulation. If you have any reactor design, you can choose to make it small and modular; it's not an expression of the technology that's actually used within it. Our technology is a molten salt reactor technology.

Natural Resources committee  With respect to your question, I believe we could probably do more. Given where we are in our development program, we have just started siting studies. Those siting studies are with the actual owners of those sites. They are, I think, much more capable of the communication necessary with the first nations to address those points.

Natural Resources committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My first ask is a very simple ask. It is—when talking about the opportunities in the natural resource sector, the decolonization of the Canadian industrial economy, and the “80 by '50” paradigm that Louis described earlier—simply to include the opportunity for advanced nuclear in the public narrative.

Natural Resources committee  The power plant that we are engineering and seeking and developing is 190 megawatt electrical. I'm sure it would work for some communities in the north, but it would not be a substitute for diesel generation in all communities in the north, because diesel generation usually exists in a single megawatt level.

Natural Resources committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In terms of its applicability to the oil sands, this technology is potentially very applicable. The product is 600°C heat. You can create steam very efficiently with that. You can also potentially drive chemical synthesis for hydrogen production. The Canadian petrochemical industry has a tremendous hydrogen demand to upgrade its Alberta crudes.

Natural Resources committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. With respect to our co-operation with other vendors, we consider ourselves to be a vendor of an advanced reactor, just as much as Westinghouse or SNC considers itself to be a vendor of an advanced reactor. We're not co-operating with other vendors. We view our market ultimately as a competitive market.

Natural Resources committee  There has been a prototype built of this reactor. If you look at the advanced reactors, many prototypes have been built and operated. The interesting thing about this technology comes from asking why these technologies were never brought to market. There were some very good reasons when you look back 30, 40, or 25 years ago.

Natural Resources committee  Our key commercial claim is that we are looking to deploy our first systems in North America in the 2020s—so not the 2030s, the 2020s—and this technology is capable of delivering power to the grid at a levelized cost of 5¢ U.S. or 6.5¢ Canadian per kilowatt hour, about $65 Canadian per megawatt hour.

Natural Resources committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman and honourable members. Thank you for inviting me back before your committee as you continue your hearings into clean technology in Canada's natural resources sector. I'm delighted that you have included a representative of the nuclear sector in your deliberations, because it is all too rare for Canadians to remember that nuclear is a clean technology and one that has enormous potential to achieve our goal of deep decarbonization of our electric grid and industrial sectors.

Natural Resources committee  Certainly: now, a small modular reactor is only a commercial formulation. It says nothing about the technology that goes into it. That's just an expression. That's a commercial choice by vendors to make it small rather than a large grid-based one. I would caution the desire to pick a lane, at this point.

Natural Resources committee  I'm very happy to expand on that. First, in terms of feasibility, we can point to a prototype reactor that has been built and operated at national lab level before. We're taking the engineering step. We're in the middle of basic preliminary engineering, and we are in the second half of phase one of our vendor design review , the first step of the regulation process with the CNSC.

Natural Resources committee  It is an advanced reactor, absolutely.

Natural Resources committee  Sorry, I think we may be talking at cross-purposes. I was talking about the $2 billion to develop the advanced reactors, but it's those advanced reactors that have the capability of consuming the additional energy and the spent nuclear fuel. Those advanced reactors offer a paradigm, an opportunity for the civilian nuclear industry in the future to be leaving a waste footprint that's 5%, even 1%, of the waste footprint it leaves today.

Natural Resources committee  I'll comment on the question on the capital requirement to develop these technologies. On the advanced reactor technology, I think you have to appreciate that this exists in the new paradigm. The old paradigm of nuclear development was a state-led, enormous project. That is not the paradigm that we see today, which is private-sector-led.