nuclear-news

A sobering analysis of the Canadian plan for small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs) and their toxic waste problem

Nuclear Power and SMR Development

Story by The Canadian Press  • 11h (December 1, 2023) , Carol Baldwin, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Wakaw Recorder

In August it was announced that Ottawa had approved up to $74 million in federal funding for small modular reactor (SMR) development in the province. Jonathan Wilkinson, Federal Minister of Energy and Natural Resources, made the announcement at the Sylvia Fedoruk Canadian Centre for Nuclear Innovation at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon. The funding will support pre-engineering work and technical studies, environmental assessments, regulatory studies, and community and Indigenous engagement to help advance the SMR project, Natural Resources Canada said.

On November 20, Dustin Duncan, Saskatchewan’s minister responsible for SaskPower, was joined by Ontario Energy Minister Todd Smith as SaskPower announced it had signed a five-year master services agreement with Ontario Power Generation and its subsidiary Laurentis Energy Partners. Duncan said the deal will allow for the development of a Canadian fleet of SMRs.

“To have an agreement that allows us to tap into that expertise and knowledge from a jurisdiction and organizations that have a great deal of expertise and history in the nuclear sector is critically important for Saskatchewan to carry forward with,” he said. What he failed to acknowledge, however, is that Ontario’s expertise and knowledge is with the older and much larger CANDU reactor. SMR technology is a newly developed field and Ontario itself is still in the process of building its first SMR.

Nuclear power does have a long history in Canada, with the first plant, the Nuclear Power Demonstration Reactor in Rolphton, Ont., going online in the early 1960s. Today, larger nuclear-generating stations in Ontario and New Brunswick supply about 15 percent of Canada’s electricity. However, accidents like those at Chalk River, Three-Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima invariably bring up questions about safety and environmental impacts. President of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, Rumina Velshi, has said in promoting SMRs, that when it comes to new builds the technology has improved safety by incorporating a passive system that is supposed to shut the reactor down if ‘things go wrong.’

While the CANDU reactors in operation in Canada and around the world do have a good safety record, SMRs are recent technology and many in the public are skeptical of the ‘infallibility’ of new technology. That skepticism is perhaps, not misplaced, according to a study. A study published at the end of May 2022, in “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences” concluded that “most small modular reactor designs will actually increase the volume of nuclear waste in need of management and disposal,” said study lead author Lindsay Krall, a former MacArthur Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperations (CISAC). The study found that, because of their smaller size, small modular reactors will experience more neuron leakage than conventional reactors. This increased leakage affects the amount and composition of their waste streams.

“We found that small modular reactors will generate at least nine times more neutron-activated steel than conventional power plants. These radioactive materials have to be carefully managed prior to disposal, which will be expensive.” The study concluded that, overall, small modular designs were inferior to conventional reactors with respect to radioactive waste generation, management requirements, and disposal options. (https://news.stanford.edu/2022/05/30/small-modular-reactors-produce-high-levels-nuclear-waste/#) There are literally dozens of different models of SMRs and reports on this study did not identify which models it examined. SaskPower hosted an online and call-in event on October 5th, 2023, to engage the public with the development of a small modular reactor site in the province, but studies like this by an entity that seemingly has nothing to gain from a positive or negative study outcome, will not reassure people that the new build will be a safe neighbour in their community. 

A research paper compiled by Esam Hussein, Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Regina, agreed that some SMRs identified as integral reactors do have a higher leakage of neutrons and thermal energy due to a higher surface-to-volume ratio, but the boiling water reactors, such as the one chosen by SaskPower, do not experience the same leakage rate. At the end of his paper, he quotes a discussion paper of the CNSC which states that most “SMR concepts, although based on technological work and operating experience from past and existing plants, propose to employ several novel approaches. Novel approaches can affect the certainty of how the plant will perform under not only normal operation but also in accident conditions, in which predictability is paramount to safety.” In other words, SMRs are new and there is no guarantee about what hazards may or may not come into play.

Another concern that should be considered when advancing nuclear power generation, is that Canada does not have a permanent solution to deal with the radioactive waste that has already been produced and is sitting in temporary storage at the plants where it was produced. CNSC president Velshi has said work is being done to change that through a deep geological repository, but after ten years of work to locate and create one it still does not exist.

According to authors Kerrie Blaise and Shawn-Patrick Stensil, roughly 20 years ago it was recognized that for any type of revival and expansion of the nuclear industry, there needed to be a plan to manage the stockpiles of radioactive waste that had been accumulating since the 1960s. In 2002, the Nuclear Fuel Management Act was passed by the federal government, which then led to the creation of the Nuclear Waste Management Organization, whose mandate was to develop and implement a management plan. The fundamental assumption in all the management options considered was that ‘the volume of used nuclear fuel which needs to be managed was assumed to be limited to the projected inventory from the existing fleet of reactors’ (Nuclear Waste Management Organization 2004). 

 Put simply, when it came to planning for a repository for nuclear waste, the plan did not count on an increase in the number of nuclear plants and the resultant increase in the amount of nuclear waste. [Chapter 11, Small Modular Reactors in Canada: Eroding Public Oversight and Canada’s Transition to Sustainable Development, J.L. Black-Branch and D. Fleck (eds.), Nuclear Non-Proliferation in International Law-Volume V (chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://cela.ca/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Blaise-Stensil-Ch11-Small-Modular-Reactors.pdf)]

Government and industry proponents portray SMRs as a needed component in a low-carbon society and notably every press conference and news release is filled with assurances that the technology is safe. Nevertheless, recent events at federal and province levels of government involving interference, cover-up, and withholding of information have left a sense of distrust amongst many in the public. Trust once lost can be a difficult hurdle to overcome.

December 3, 2023 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Canada, Small Modular Nuclear Reactors