Environment committee  Yes, unfortunately. The Seaborn panel...and our organization participated in it and recommended an independent body to manage nuclear waste. That did not transpire with the Nuclear Fuel Waste Act. What we have is an organization that is owned and operated by only the nuclear was

Environment committee  Yes. Mr. Van Wart mentioned that there's interest in extracting plutonium and that's what the Moltex proposal is. It creates huge concerns about nuclear weapons proliferation when plutonium is put into commerce. Several eminent scientists have written to the federal government to

Environment committee  The three members of the coalition that are operating all federal nuclear sites are Fluor, Jacobs and SNC-Lavalin. Fluor and Jacobs have both had to pay large sums of money for legal problems in the United States.

Environment committee  Yes. Thanks. You asked about climate change impacts. I think that's very important, and that's why the siting of nuclear waste facilities is so important. There is a lot of high-level waste right on the shores of Lake Ontario. We don't know what the lake levels will do in the fu

Environment committee  It is very challenging to actually measure many of the radionuclides in radioactive waste. It's difficult. It's easy to measure something like cobalt-60, which is a powerful gamma emitter, but for many of the beta and even alpha emitters, it takes pretty specialized equipment.

Environment committee  Yes, if I might...?

Environment committee  These reactors are mostly designs on paper. Earlier experiments in other countries have revealed some pretty significant problems with many of these designs. There have been attempts to make molten salt reactors and high-temperature gas-cooled reactors. I'm not the expert on thi

Environment committee  Yes, there is a definite conflict of interest in having the Minister of Natural Resources responsible for promoting nuclear energy under the Nuclear Energy Act, but also having Atomic Energy of Canada Limited and the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, the regulator, report to a

Environment committee  The new rules were developed by the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission. They are what the commission calls regulatory documents. They're not formal regulations. They are, in my view, watered-down versions of the IAEA safety standards, which do not necessarily have legal effect un

Environment committee  If I may use the example again of this proposed near-surface disposal facility at Chalk River, the proposal is for a 300-year institutional control period. In other words, there would have to be some kind of licence and regulatory oversight for 300 years. Unfortunately the packag

Environment committee  Thank you, Madame Pauzé. That's an important question. We need to be talking about nuclear waste, not nuclear energy. High-level spent fuel waste is only the tip of the iceberg. Federal nuclear research and development has generated a $16-billion waste and decommissioning liabi

Environment committee  It's a very important objection to bringing nuclear waste into Chalk River. That is in the resolution. We have no place at Chalk River. It is not a suitable place for the long-term storage or disposal of waste. We need a broader look at where nuclear waste could go. I'm pleased w

Environment committee  I was finishing up, saying it was an important request to the Minister of Environment to have a regional study. There are other nuclear waste facilities in the Ottawa Valley, but, unfortunately, that regional assessment did not go forward.

Environment committee  Yes, Canada currently lacks a national radioactive waste inventory with consistent classification standards that have data on individual radionuclides. We are not fulfilling our reporting obligations under the Joint Convention on the Safety of Spent Fuel Management and on the Saf

Environment committee  Thank you, Chair. Thanks to the committee for instituting this important study. I'll make eight points. Number one, permanent disposal facilities for nuclear reactor waste have never been approved in Canada. Such facilities will impact many future generations and we must get t