Natural Resources committee  That's an exceptionally fine question—

Natural Resources committee  I would say this is a real matter of practicality. Ontario had in the range of 1,000 megawatts of wind that was installed, I think at the end of last year. That capacity generated around two terawatt hours of power. Quite frankly, if I had done that out of the 1,000 megawatts fro

Natural Resources committee  The point is that we need a diversity of supply, and the one thing about nuclear power is that it's there, it's reliable, and it's baseload.

Natural Resources committee  I don't know what you're speaking of. That sounds.... I don't know what you're talking about.

Natural Resources committee  Let me comment on that. I believe this is in reference to the INES scale, which is essentially drawn up by the IEA to assess and evaluate events in terms of their significance. If you look at the Canadian industry and its performance, it's exemplary in this manner. As has been

Natural Resources committee  Absolutely; we're all over it. And we get assessed to very high standards.

Natural Resources committee  I'm not certain. Certainly the 11 plants in northern Japan are shut down. I don't know about the rest of them. They have a variety of light-water reactors—boiling and pressurized light-water reactors. They have a major commitment to nuclear power, but I don't know the specific st

Natural Resources committee  What we generally do is provide technical guidance around the best design, if you will, or the adequacy of the design.

Natural Resources committee  We are certainly speaking about the same thing. We're talking about essentially what our analysis shows is in the long run competitive, based on the expected performance of the plant. I don't have the numbers; I'm not directly involved with the new build proposal. I think it's

Natural Resources committee  The environmental assessment has been submitted to the commission. The environmental assessment looks at a large array of potential impacts—economic, technical, environmental—and essentially the public consultation period began on March 21, and we are proceeding with that. The c

Natural Resources committee  I don't have those numbers, but certainly there were some questions about where the risk was going to be managed in the project.

Natural Resources committee  I'd have two specific things to say. Certainly there are hazards. No one would say that any technology is free of hazard, and we take great care with the fuel, which even after the reactor is shut down continues to generate heat and has fission products that we need to protect ou

Natural Resources committee  Mr. Hawthorne talked a little about what has been asked for, which is essentially a field walkdown, and a confirmation that the defences that are designed and built and available are in place and robust. Independent reviews are going on by the site officers themselves, who are wa

Natural Resources committee  As I recall, the specific event was on August 1, 2003, I believe. That was the blackout in the northeastern U.S.

Natural Resources committee  As we are a learning organization, that event led all of us to examine and assess our defences at that time. One of the modifications in design that occurred at Pickering, where there were some issues around re-establishing class IV power to the grid to the Pickering plant, was t