80 CANADIAN ORGANIZATIONS CALL ON FEDERAL GOVERNMENT TO RESCIND APPOINTMENT OF NUCLEAR REGULATORY AGENCY PRESIDENT.
Ottawa, 17 July 2024 .- www.nuclearwastewatch.ca
Over 80 civil society organizations from across Canada are speaking out and calling on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Governor General Mary Simon to rescind their recent appointment of Mr. Pierre Tremblay, a long time senior nuclear industry executive, as President of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC).
In a joint letter citing conflict of interest and failure to adhere to International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) guidelines, the groups -a range of organizations that include in their ranks scientists and retired nuclear officials- also call on the Federal Government for an urgent reform of the CNSC and nuclear governance in Canada.
Mr. Tremblay has been a long-time senior business executive at Ontario Power Generation (Canada’s largest nuclear operator and contractor of nuclear businesses), reported co-owner of a private nuclear business involved in the Plutonium trade, and most recently president of AECOM Canada Nuclear Services -a key contractor for two questionable projects expected to report billions of dollars to the nuclear businesses involved, and impact populations for centuries: a nuclear waste dump (“Near Surface Disposal Facility”) by the Ottawa river and a project to abandon high-level nuclear waste underground in Northern Ontario, both of them expecting CNSC licenses.
The groups also call on the Federal Government to take the opportunity to initiate a long-needed reform of the CNSC, which has often been described by observers as an “industry-captured regulator”.
The request notes that the CNSC has a communications branch with 60-plus staff but no dedicated human health and environmental protection branch, and has not turned down a single nuclear industry application in more than a decade. It has also actively lobbied to weaken impact assessment legislation to exclude a range of nuclear reactors and processing facilities.
Mr. Tremblay’s appointment follows other appointments to the Commission of industry insiders, and two troubling assessments of the CNSC’s performance by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) -a June 2024 follow-up to an initial 2019 IAEA mission highlighted several problem areas; despite the CNSC’s positive spin on the IAEA missions, the findings are a cause of deep concern for independent observers and experts.
Given the CNSC’s often-stated priority and legal mandate to protect the environment and the health of Canadians, the groups are requesting the Federal Government consider recruiting CNSC senior ranks from within the health and environmental protection communities, including perhaps Environment and Climate Change Canada and the federal Health Portfolio.
The signatory organizations note that the appointment contravenes both IAEA guidelines and the Federal Government’s own guidance on the independence of regulatory bodies, and compromises the public’s expectation of neutrality, objectivity and independence of Canada’s nuclear regulatory body and reinforces the public perception of industry capture of that body. Rescinding the appointment would be a significant step towards a much-needed reform of the CNSC and towards restoring public trust in that critically important agency.
Quotes: The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission is supposed to be a neutral body, carefully safeguarding the health of the Canadian public and the environment from the risks associated with the use of nuclear energy. Senior executives from the nuclear industry should be disqualified from positions at the CNSC.” – Dr. Ole Hendrickson.
“Having a nuclear business executive whose companies have pushed for questionable projects placed in charge of the very agency that would now regulate and approve them, is an obvious conflict of interest” – J. P. Unger, science writer and policy analyst. “The Government should abandon any pretense of having a watchdog and true regulator for nuclear matters -or carry out its urgently needed reform.”
First Nation challenges nuclear waste decision in federal court
By Natasha Bulowski & Matteo Cimellaro | News, Urban Indigenous Communities in Ottawa | July 12th 2024Observer
A First Nation concerned about approval of a nuclear waste disposal facility near the Ottawa River was before federal court this week to challenge the decision.
The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission greenlit the project on Jan. 9 and less than one month later, Kebaowek First Nation filed for a judicial review.
Kebaowek’s legal challenge is centred on the United Nations Declaration Act (UNDA), which enshrined the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) into Canadian law. The declaration specifically references the need for free, prior and informed consent when hazardous waste will be stored in a nation’s territory.
Kebaowek argued in court that Canadian Nuclear Laboratories — the private consortium responsible for managing the Chalk River nuclear site — did not secure the First Nation’s free, prior and informed consent during the licensing process, as mandated under Canadian law, when it was looking to store the waste at a site about a kilometre from the Ottawa River. The Ottawa River (known as the Kichi Sibi in Algonquin) holds immense spiritual and cultural importance for the Algonquin people and is a source of drinking water for millions.
Canadian Nuclear Laboratories wants to permanently dispose of one million cubic metres of radioactive waste in a shallow mound as a solution to waste accumulated over the last seven decades of operations and into the future. The company said the containment mound will only hold low-level waste.
A former employee at Chalk River told Canada’s National Observer a portion of the waste destined for the mound is a “mishmash” of intermediate- and low-level radioactivity because prior to 2000 there were inadequate systems to properly label, characterize, store and track what was produced at Chalk River or shipped there from other labs. Intermediate-level waste remains radioactive for longer than low-level waste and requires disposal deeper underground.
“It’s such a huge project that I don’t think most people are aware of just how big this is,” Coun. Justin Roy of Kebaowek First Nation told Canada’s National Observer in an interview after a press conference in Ottawa on July 10.
“We’re not talking about a pipeline that might not be there in a couple dozen years, or a mine that’s going to be up and running and close in 20 years, or a bridge that might be torn down one of these days. We’re talking about a huge mound that has a life expectancy, expectancy upwards of 500 years,” Roy said.
The First Nation is asking the Federal Court of Appeals to reject the nuclear safety commission’s decision to greenlight the facility and declare that the commission breached its duty to consult Kebaowek.
Kebaowek was in federal court July 10 and 11 to make its case that the project approval should be set aside or reconsidered. The First Nation argued two main points: First, that the nuclear safety commission refused to take the Canadian UNDRIP act into consideration, and that means the consultation process was flawed from the outset.
Second, the nation argues the project will rely largely on a forest management plan that has yet to be created to mitigate environmental impacts, Coun. Justin Roy of Kebaowek First Nation told Canada’s National Observer in an interview.
Canadian Nuclear Laboratories’ lawyers argued the commitment to create a forest management plan and have it approved by the nuclear safety commission is appropriate, and disagreed with Kebawoek’s description of it as a “blank piece of paper,” saying it is intended to be a “living document” and respond to different situations yet to arise. The company’s testimony on July 11 also highlighted different instances — letters, phone calls, in-person meetings — where it engaged with Kebaowek First Nation.
Justice Julie Blackhawk will issue a decision at a later date.
A ‘litmus test’
When Parliament was in its consultation process regarding the United Nations Declaration Act, First Nation leadership across Canada spoke up because chiefs thought the legislation “needed to have teeth,” Lance Haymond, Chief of Kebaowek First Nation said in an interview. However, the legislation was never re-written to give it weight, leading to a “failure of implementation from the beginning,” he explained.
“Here we are stuck with a piece of legislation that could be stronger,” Haymond said of testing the United Nations Declaration Act (UNDA) in court over the nuclear waste facility. The success or failure of the judicial review will serve as a litmus test of how much sway the new Canadian law holds in the courts, Haymond said.
“Our case will hopefully demonstrate how it can be applied in a real world situation,” he added.
This judicial review is one of three legal challenges against the near surface disposal facility.
At a July 10 press conference, Sébastien Lemire, Bloc Québécois MP for Abitibi-Témiscamingue, emphasized his party’s support for the legal challenge. Lemire also promised continued support at future press conferences, in Question Period and in work at committees like the Standing Committee on Indigenous and Northern Affairs.
Canadian Nuclear Laboratories is run by a consortium of private companies (including AtkinsRéalis, formerly known as SNC-Lavalin) and is contracted by the federal government to operate its laboratories and deal with waste.
Over 75 years, Chalk River Laboratories developed CANDU reactors, did nuclear weapons research, supplied the United States’ nuclear weapons program with plutonium and uranium, and at one time was the world’s largest supplier of medical isotopes used to diagnose and treat cancers.
About 60 people attended a public rally in front of the Supreme Court on July 10 to support the First Nation, according to Vi Bui with the Council of Canadians.
It’s not the first time the public has given their support.
Kebaowek’s legal fund has been largely crowdfunded and supported by Raven Trust, a charity that raises legal funds for Indigenous nations, Haymond said.
If Kebaowek loses, it’s still unclear if they will appeal the decision, he added.
“Our ancestors would probably roll over in their graves if they were to hear that we would just allow a nuclear waste dump that’s going to hold one million cubic metres of waste adjacent to the Ottawa River,” Roy said. “We are people who have been here since time immemorial; this mound, if it proceeds, it can maybe outlast all of us here.”
First Nations and allies resist proposed radioactive waste repository
The site-selection process has been riddled with controversy. The nuclear industry funds the NWMO and appoints its board members. As a result, despite being structured as a not-for-profit corporation, the NWMO is effectively controlled by industry. In some cases, the large sums of money the NWMO has paid Indigenous and municipal governments as part of its site selection process have led to accusations of governments being bought off by the nuclear industry. Communities downstream from the repository site, as well as the many along the transportation route, are effectively excluded from the ‘willingness’ decision.
the process is unfolding in the context of ongoing poverty and economic deprivation in many Indigenous communities in Canada, making it incredibly difficult for many First Nations to say “no”
If Canada is to have a just transition away from fossil fuels, then it cannot be based on nuclear power
Canadian Dimension, Warren Bernauer, Laura Tanguay, Elysia Petrone, and Brennain Lloyd / June 28, 2024
On April 30, 2024, First Nations leaders organized a rally in Anemki Wequedong (Thunder Bay) to protest a proposed nuclear waste repository in northwestern Ontario between Ignace and Dryden. The speakers included representatives of Grassy Narrows First Nation, Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug, Ojibways of Onigaming First Nation, Gull Bay First Nation, and Fort William First Nation.
Michele Solomon, Chief of Fort William First Nation, welcomed all the participants to her traditional territory and stated that her community is “strongly opposed to the transportation of nuclear waste through our territory and we will stand by that, we will continue to stand by that, and we stand with all those who are also opposed.”
Another leader from the Robinson-Superior Treaty area, Chief Wilfred King of Gull Bay First Nation, told the crowd, “We fully support the First Nations that are against the burying of nuclear waste in our territories. …. we vehemently oppose the transportation of any nuclear waste through our territory.” According to King, his community’s position was grounded in concerns with potential accidents along the transportation route. “We have many rivers and tributaries that intersect the Trans Canada Highway and we feel that this will have a very serious impact to our resources and our territory should there be a spill.”
A similar position was expressed by Rudy Turtle, Chief of Grassy Narrows, whose traditional territories are situated in Treaty 3 and downstream from the proposed repository. “[A]s Grassy Narrows First Nation we are saying no to nuclear waste. We are saying no to any kind of dumping within our traditional territory.” Turtle continued, “I’m thinking ahead I’m thinking of two, three, four, generations ahead and I know I won’t be around, but I hope that one day one of my great-grandchildren will say great-grandpa stood up for us, great-grandpa stood up for us spoke up for us now we’re able to enjoy our Earth.”
Environmental injustice by design
The proposal for a repository in the Ignace area is being advanced by the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO), a not-for-profit corporation comprised of the nuclear power companies that generate and own the radioactive wastes. The 2002 Nuclear Fuel Waste Act required Canada’s nuclear power generation companies (Ontario Power Generation, New Brunswick Power Corporation and Hydro-Québec) to establish and fund the NWMO and tasked them with the long-term management of Canada’s used nuclear fuel. After an initial study, in 2005 the NWMO submitted a plan to the federal government to dispose of Canada’s used nuclear fuel in a deep geological repository (DGR). Two years later the federal government agreed.
The NWMO’s process to select a site for the DGR officially began in 2010, when it opened calls for “expressions of interest” from potential host communities. After initially examining over 20 communities, in 2020 the NWMO short-listed two Ontario municipalities as potential “hosts” for all of Canada’s high-level nuclear waste: Ignace and South Bruce. Both municipalities have signed hosting agreements with the NWMO, and have committed to deciding whether or not they are “willing hosts” by the end of 2024.
In both cases, the NWMO has indicated that the proposed DGR would only move forward with the support of adjacent Indigenous communities. South Bruce, neighbouring the Bruce Nuclear Generating Station, lies within the traditional territory of the Saugeen Ojibway Nation, which includes Saugeen First Nation and Chippewas of Nawash Unceded First Nation. Ignace, located on the Trans-Canada Highway, is a small community reliant on forestry and eco-tourism. It lies on the traditional territory of the Wabigoon Lake Ojibway Nation and the Ojibway Nation of Saugeen.
The site-selection process has been riddled with controversy. The nuclear industry funds the NWMO and appoints its board members. As a result, despite being structured as a not-for-profit corporation, the NWMO is effectively controlled by industry. In some cases, the large sums of money the NWMO has paid Indigenous and municipal governments as part of its site selection process have led to accusations of governments being bought off by the nuclear industry. Communities downstream from the repository site, as well as the many along the transportation route, are effectively excluded from the ‘willingness’ decision. In the case of the proposed DGR in northwestern Ontario, the NWMO’s “host” community of Ignace is 45 kilometres east of the proposed DGR site and is not just upstream but in a different watershed. There are smaller communities closer to the site who are not part of the NWMO’s “willingness process.” While the NWMO has stated that the DGR would not proceed without the support of Wabigoon Lake Ojibway Nation, other First Nations with historic and ongoing land use near or overlapping the project area are not being afforded the same respect.
The process is an example of structural injustice. By seeking ‘expressions of interest’ from individual communities, the industry made it inevitable that the poorest communities—including those with the fewest resources to represent their residents’ interests vis-à-vis the nuclear industry—would be the first to step forward. And the process is unfolding in the context of ongoing poverty and economic deprivation in many Indigenous communities in Canada, making it incredibly difficult for many First Nations to say “no” to most proposals for what is presented as development or the more benign sounding advance funding agreements to “learn more” about the project. The fact that a nuclear waste dump appears to be an opportunity to some people and municipalities in northwestern Ontario says more about the deplorable track record of capitalist development in the North than it says about the actual benefits associated with the NWMO’s proposal.
Environmental risk
One of the nuclear industry’s favourite promotional lines about deep geological repositories is that there is an “international consensus” about DGRs being the best option for containing nuclear fuel wastes. But it’s a consensus largely limited to the nuclear establishment, while the reality is that there is no approved and operating DGR for high level waste anywhere in the world, despite decades of effort and hundreds of millions of dollars spent in pursuit of an operating licence. These nuclear waste burial schemes create substantial risk—risk to the environment, and risk to human health—at each of the several steps between current storage and any eventual stashing of these hazardous materials deep underground.
Those risks will begin at the reactor site, when the waste must be transferred from the current storage systems into transportation casks. All of Canada’s commercial reactors are the CANDU design, where 18 months in the reactor core turns simple uranium into an extremely complex and highly radioactive mix of over 200 different radioactive ingredients. Twenty seconds exposure to a single fuel bundle would be lethal within 20 seconds. As a result, the fuel bundles are handled so there is no exposure to air. The bundles are moved underwater from the reactor core into the irradiated fuel bays. After a minimum of 10 years, dry storage containers are submerged for loading into that same pool that has been cooling and shielding the wastes until the temperature is low enough for transfer. The dry storage containers are then moved to on-site storage buildings.
However, the NWMO has been silent on how the transfers from the dry storage containers to the transportation containers (for shipment via road or rail) would be carried out, saying only that it’s up to the “waste owners.” Keep in mind that there has been no internal monitoring of the fuel bundles, and their condition after as long as several decades in dry storage is unknown. At this and later stages, defects in the fuel bundles is a significant concern, as the more damaged a fuel bundle is, the higher the radiation dose will be, potentially affecting both workers and the environment.
According to the NWMO’s conceptual transportation plans, the wastes will be shipped in two to three trucks per day for fifty years, in one of three potential containers. One, the “basket container” is still in the conceptual stage. The second potential container was designed for moving dry storage containers very short distances within the reactor stations. The third was designed by Ontario Hydro in the 1980s and subjected to limited and not wholly successful drop tests of a half-scale model before being certified by the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission. This third design has since been warehoused by Ontario Hydro (with its certification renewed by its replacement utility, Ontario Power Generation) before being taken over by the Nuclear Waste Management Organization. None of these transportation packages have been subject to full scale testing.
There are two sets of risks during transportation. During normal operations there will be low levels of radiation emanating from each shipment. The NWMO did calculations in 2012 and 2015 and concluded that the levels of radiation exposure will be “acceptable.” Yet radioactive exposure is a combination of dose, distance and duration, so if any of the variables are different than those NWMO plugged into their calculation, the risk factors change. The second set of risks during transportation are those that would result from an accident, particularly one where the container was breached.
When the waste arrives at the repository site it will again be transferred, this time from the transportation containers to the containers for underground placement. Those transfers will happen in a facility euphemistically named the “Used Fuel Packaging Plant,” employing a series of hot cells in which the waste bundles will be exposed to air for the first time since they were created in the reactor core. These transfers will be technically challenging and potentially highly contaminating.
During operations of the deep geological repository, water will become contaminated during the washing down of the nuclear waste transportation packages. Contaminated water will be pumped from the underground repository. Operations will also generate low and intermediate level wastes, both solid and liquid.
Once deposited underground, the nuclear waste itself will contaminate the deep groundwater in the near or long term and that contamination will eventually reach surface water in the vast watershed.
The NWMO’s candidate site in Northwestern Ontario is located half-way between Ignace and Dryden. Because it is at the height of land for the Wabigoon and the Turtle River systems, there are concerns about releases to the downstream communities, including Rainy River and Lake of the Woods. If and when the radioactive releases occur from the deep geological repository, there will be no means to reverse the impacts.
Decades of opposition
This is not the first nuclear waste repository proposed in Northwestern Ontario. In the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, Atomic Energy Canada Limited (AECL)—a federal Crown corporation focused on nuclear technology—was directed by the governments of Canada and Ontario to develop a repository for spent nuclear fuel. Northern Ontario, with its supposedly stable rock formations, was deemed ideal for a DGR.
However, public opposition repeatedly put a wrench into AECL’s plans. Many municipal and First Nations governments passed resolutions and issued statements opposing the disposal of nuclear waste in the region. In 1998 a federal environmental assessment panel concluded that AECL’s concept lacked public acceptance and had not been demonstrated “safe and acceptable.” The proposal was subsequently shelved, until the NWMO, which was established four years later, revived it, adopting an approach very similar to the previous AECL concept as the basis of its 2005 recommendation to the federal government.
The establishment of the NWMO did not quell Indigenous, municipal, and grassroots resistance to nuclear waste disposal…………………………………………………………………………………………………..
A number of grassroots groups opposed to the disposal of nuclear waste in Northern Ontario have emerged over the past decade, including No Nuclear Waste in Northwestern Ontario, the Sunset Country Spirit Alliance, and Nuclear Free Thunder Bay. These groups have united with other groups and individuals to form We The Nuclear Free North, an alliance of Indigenous and non-Indigenous people and groups dedicated to stopping the proposed DGR that includes the longstanding groups Environment North and Northwatch, who have decades of experience as critics of the nuclear industry’s various attempts to move radioactive wastes from southern to northern Ontario.
A new Indigenous-led anti nuclear group, called Niniibawtamin Anishinaabe Aki (“standing up for the land”), was established in 2023. With members from Treaty 3, Treaty 9, and Robinson Treaty territories, Niniibawtamin Anishinaabe Aki’s mission is to support grassroots Indigenous activists opposing the NWMO’s proposal.
Plebiscites and online polls
This groundswell of Indigenous and public opposition notwithstanding, the position of the municipalities and First Nations adjacent to the proposed DGR sites is less certain. Ignace and South Bruce have both signed hosting agreements with the NWMO, which commit both municipalities to decide whether or not they are “willing hosts” in the coming months. The City of Dryden has signed a series of “Significant Neighbouring” agreements with the NWMO that includes funding and confidentiality provisions, and is currently in the process of negotiating a Benefits Agreement.
In late April, Ignace held an online poll to gauge local support for the proposed DGR. South Bruce and Saugeen Ojibway Nation will hold formal plebiscites on the issue later this year.
The Municipality of Ignace’s approach to the proposed DGR has drawn significant criticism from some observers. n 2021 the Township Council passed a resolution that it would be Council who made the decision and there would not be a municipal referendum, such as South Bruce is holding. The online poll results (which have not been released to the public) are to be combined in a consultants’ report with findings from the consultants’ interviews, and will then be delivered to an “ad hoc willingness committee” appointed by the township council in February 2024. That committee will then make a recommendation to Council, and Council will make the decision. There’s a $500,000 signing bonus if they deliver a “willingness decision” by the end of June 2024. In contrast, the South Bruce referendum is not until October 28, 2024 and Saugeen Ojibway Nation leadership has recently been reported by the media as saying they are unlikely to make their decision before the end of the year.
Hosting agreements
In March 2024, the municipality of Ignace and the NWMO signed a controversial and divisive hosting agreement for the proposed DGR. If ratified through a declaration of willingness, the agreement would require the municipality to support the DGR in perpetuity. This includes supporting the NWMO’s proposal in all future regulatory processes, as well as attending meetings to speak in support of the proposal at the NWMO’s behest. Even if the scope and nature of the proposal changes significantly, the agreement would still require the municipality to support the DGR publicly and though all future regulatory processes.
The hosting agreement would also give the NWMO significant control over how the municipality communicates with its residents and participates in future regulatory processes regarding the DGR.
…………………………………….Ignace is thereby ceding an excessive degree of control to the NWMO for a rather paltry sum of money. The total payments to Ignace during the life of the project will amount to roughly $170 million…………………………………………
Towards a nuclear phase-out
The NWMO claims that it is solving Canada’s high-level nuclear waste problem by moving it into a DGR. Yet the most dangerous wastes—those that have been freshly removed from a reactor and are too hot to transport for at least a decade—will remain dispersed at reactor sites. What’s more, the nuclear industry hopes to expand rapidly by siting new small modular reactors across Canada, including in remote and rural regions, further dispersing nuclear waste.
The only way to truly solve Canada’s problem with radioactive waste, however, is to stop making more of it. In other words, we need to phase out nuclear power.
………………………………………………Indigenous communities have always been at the forefront of struggles against the nuclear industry on Turtle Island. The current battles against nuclear waste disposal in northwestern Ontario are no different. If Canada is to have a just transition away from fossil fuels, then it cannot be based on nuclear power.
Warren Bernauer is a non-Indigenous member of Niniibawtamin Anishinaabe Aki and research associate at the University of Manitoba where he conducts research into energy transitions and social justice in the North.
Laura Tanguay is a doctoral candidate at York University researching the politics of nuclear waste in Ontario
Brennain Lloyd is project coordinator for Northwatch and member of We The Nuclear Free North.
Elysia Petrone is a lawyer and activist from Fort William First Nation and a member of Niniibawtamin Anishinaabe Aki. https://canadiandimension.com/articles/view/nuclear-waste-in-northwestern-ontario
Point Lepreau nuclear power plant has a generator ‘issue,’ says NB Power. Utility doesn’t know how long it will take to fix.
Telegraph Journal, :Andrew Waugh, Jul 10, 2024
There’s a problem with the generator at the Point Lepreau nuclear power plant, and NB Power says it doesn’t know how long it will take to fix, or how much it will cost.
The aging facility provides about one third of New Brunswick’s electricity, but has been plagued with problems in the last few years.
“We are currently on day 94 of the planned 100-day outage at the Point Lepreau Nuclear Generating Station,” NB Power spokesperson Dominique Couture said in an email to Brunswick News.
“After successfully completing planned maintenance work for the spring 2024 outage, an issue was identified in the generator, which is on the conventional, non-nuclear side of the station, as it was being returned to service.
“The team, along with a number of industry equipment experts, are currently troubleshooting the problem. After investigation and troubleshooting is complete, we will have a better understanding of the impact on the outage schedule and budget………………………………………………………………….
News of the shutdown possibly needing to be extended comes as the New Brunswick Energy and Utilities Board considers NB Power’s request for the highest rate hikes for its customers in generations. It is seeking increases of 23 per cent for residential and big industrial customers over the next two years, slightly less for small and medium-sized businesses.
NB Power refurbished the nuclear side of the plant in 2012, at a cost of $2.5 billion, a project that was over budget by $1 billion and took 37 months longer to complete than expected. But NB Power didn’t do similar work to other important parts of the plant, leading to frequent breakdowns…………………… https://tj.news/new-brunswick/exclusive-point-lepreau-has-a-generator-issue-says-nb-power
New Brunswick’s nuclear-powered rate hikes
Commentary, by Janice Harvey, July 8, 2024, https://nbmediacoop.org/2024/07/08/new-brunswicks-nuclear-powered-rate-hikes/
The abject failure of this and previous governments’ energy policies is on full display these days. In the 1970s, New Brunswick was one of only three provinces that bought into the federal government’s agenda to build out a civilian nuclear power industry. Quebec has since shut its nuclear generators down, leaving only Ontario and New Brunswick as the nuclear flag-bearers. How has that worked out for us?
NB Power has come to the Energy and Utilities Board (EUB) with a request for the biggest rate hikes in the utility’s history. While the details are buried in thousands of pages of documents filed with the EUB, evidence from previous EUB hearings makes it crystal clear that the utility’s single greatest financial liability driving up power rates is the much-vaunted Point Lepreau Nuclear Generating Station.
Point Lepreau has been a financial white elephant since its construction ended up costing three times the original price tag. Its planned 30-year lifespan (over which all this extra cost was to be amortized) was cut short by premature aging of critical reactor components, prompting a decision to undergo an expensive refurbishment, which was to extend the life of the plant by a fantastical 40 years. At the time, the then-PUB determined based on the evidence that refurbishment was too big a financial risk for New Brunswickers to handle and recommended against it. The Lord government went ahead anyway.
Like the original construction, the refurbishment went way over the timeline and budget. The result has been very poor performance, a miserable 60 per cent in 2022 compared to the wildly optimistic 90 per cent capacity assumption that the EUB rejected. The costs of replacement power alone during these shutdowns have repeatedly sabotaged annual financial performance projections. Now, Point Lepreau is facing even more expensive upgrades to fix problems that were not dealt with during the refurbishment.
In short, Point Lepreau is the most unreliable and most expensive power generator on the grid, responsible for the lion’s share of NB Power’s debt. It is not going to get any better. Keeping it afloat until 2040, its new end-of-life target, is going to mean more of the same – throwing scarce money down a deep, black hole paid for by ever-rising power rates.
Despite the overwhelming evidence that New Brunswickers cannot afford nuclear power, the Higgs government has doubled down on nuclear, floating an equally fantastical proposition that the next generation of nukes – so-called small modular reactors – will quarterback New Brunswick’s climate change strategy, while an SMR export industry is expected to drive economic growth. To that end, New Brunswick taxpayers have already fronted a total of $35 million to two private nuclear upstarts, neither of which has designed or built a reactor. This is despite lots of reasons to put their rosy promises of “clean” nuclear-fueled prosperity in the same wishful thinking category as JOI Scientific’s power-from-water scheme that so beguiled NB Power executives.
Just as the EUB rate hearings got underway, an entirely predictable hitch in the Higgs’ nuclear dream occurred. It seems like the SMR upstart ARC Clean Energy is on its way down and out, taking $25 million provincial dollars and $7 million federal with it. If we’re lucky, Moltex Energy, propped up by $10 million in provincial and $50.5 million in federal tax dollars, will be close behind, and we can breathe a sigh of financial relief. The longer this nonsense persists, the more of our tax dollars will go into the nuclear black hole, and the greater the delay in meeting our climate change pollution targets.
Even if Moltex hangs on, or some other SMR promoter replaces them, any electricity that might eventually flow from an SMR will be, like Point Lepreau, the most expensive power on the grid – entirely unaffordable and unnecessary. The Higgs government knows this, passing legislation this spring requiring NB Power to buy electricity from the planned privately-owned SMRs regardless of price, a silent admission that electricity from SMRs, should they ever see the light of day, will be more expensive than any alternative. In other words, SMRs will drive up your power bill.
Meanwhile, the June 22nd issue of The Economist features the exponential growth of solar energy worldwide, the cost of which – even with storage – is falling exponentially. Other than home retrofits, this is the cheapest new power on offer.
The nuclear cost numbers are there for all to see. For elected representatives to support this industry, knowing people cannot tolerate higher power rates, is grossly irresponsible and a betrayal of trust. Renewables naysayers are depriving New Brunswickers of the benefits of this global energy transition. This – and our nuclear-powered rate hikes – need to be on the ballot on October 21.
Janice Harvey is the chair of the Environment and Society program at St. Thomas Universit
Ignace, Ontario, betrayed by Council, on nuclear waste decision
Ignace has voted in favour of continuing in the Nuclear Waste Management Organization’s siting process, which brings Northwestern Ontario one step closer to being put on the receiving end of all of Canada’s high-level nuclear waste.
The NWMO has said it will select a single site by the end of 2024 for a deep geological repository for Canada’s existing stockpiles and future inventory of high-level nuclear fuel waste. The project will include transportation of the waste in 2-3 trucks per day for over 50 years, then processing at the site in a still-to-be-designed waste transfer facility, and finally placement deep underground in a series of tunnels and vaults so radioactive no workers can be present during the emplacement process.
An “ad hoc willingness committee”, appointed by the Township in February, delivered its recommendation in a special meeting of Council this afternoon. Immediately after the presentation by Committee co-chair Roger Dufault, Council voted to continue in the Nuclear Waste Management Organization’s site selection process.
The NWMO has been studying the Revell Site, between Ignace and Dryden, since 2010. In 2020 the NWMO narrowed its list of candidate sites to just two: the Revell Site in Northwestern Ontario and the Teeswater site in the Municipality of South Bruce in Southwestern Ontario. The Revell Site is 45 kilometres outside the Township of Ignace and is in a different watershed.
“We feel betrayed”, said Ignace resident Sheila Krahn.
“For the last ten years we’ve been bombarded with promotional messages from the NWMO, and when it was finally time for a decision, we didn’t even get a vote. I don’t believe that the majority of people in Ignace support this project, but so many people didn’t trust the so-called “willingness process” and didn’t participate.”
Instead of a referendum such as the one scheduled for South Bruce on October 28th, Ignace hired a consultant to conduct interviews and run an online poll. The online registration required scans of government ID and asked residents if they supported continuing in the NWMO siting process, rather than asking a more direct question about whether they agreed with the NWMO’s project.
“The NWMO siting process is all about getting to “yes”, so they can claim some semblance of public support”, explained Northwatch spokesperson Brennain Lloyd.
“They missed the mark with this one. They’ve spent an estimated $10 million of electricity ratepayers’ money trying to convince Ignace to support their nuclear waste project, but at the end of the day what they bought was a questionable outcome from a largely unelected council of a community that has no authority and is not even in the same watershed as the NWMO’s candidate site.
The NWMO has deemed Ignace to be the “host community”, despite Ignace’s distance from the site, lack of jurisdiction, and the presence of other communities closer to the site and downstream. In 2020 the Township of Ignace passed a resolution that the Township itself would make the decision on behalf of the people of Ignace, rather than holding a referendum, as the Municipality of South Bruce will carry out on October 28, 2024. In 2023 the Township hired the consulting firm With Chela Inc., which conducted a number of interviews and held an online poll. The consultant’s report was presented in-camera to Ignace’s “Ad Hoc Willingness Committee”, which had been selected and appointed by the Council in February. This “ad hoc” committee recommendation to Council, presented today, is to stay in the NWMO siting process. Minutes later Council voted to accept the recommendation, committing the current and future councils to adhering to the terms and conditions of a “hosting agreement” signed by the Township of Ignace and the NWMO in March 2024.
“At minimum this should be a regional decision, not the decision of one small upstream council”, added Wendy O’Connor, a volunteer with the northern Ontario alliance We the Nuclear Free North.
“There is a growing list of municipalities and First Nations passing resolutions against the NWMO using northern Ontario as the dumping ground for high-level nuclear waste. It will be astounding to see the NWMO select the Revell site, despite the poor decision made by the Ignace Township Council today”.
There is broad opposition to the NWMO project from individuals, community and citizens’ groups, municipalities, and First Nations. In addition to criticism of the project itself due to the negative impacts on the environment and human health during transportation and operation and after radioactive waste abandonment, the NWMO siting process and the Township of Ignace’s approach have also been soundly criticized for being secretive, undemocratic, and lacking scientific and technical rigour.
With global race to decarbonize electricity sector, demand for skilled nuclear workers heats up.
COMMENT. Most (or all?) of the funds available to these companies to hire “skilled workers” is coming directly from the public (taxpayers) through direct subsidies, contracts or tax refunds. For example, the story mentions that AtkinsRéalis is one of the top hiring firms. A few weeks back was another story stating that the AtkinsRéalis nuclear division got a $750M contract for work on a CANDU reactor in Romania. A few months before that was another story that Canada had signed a $3 BILLION “export development deal” with Romania (i.e. a gift) to build its CANDU reactor, and that most of the funds would be spent on Canadian jobs. This all comes back to the nuclear industry’s current core problem: its products (new nuclear reactors) are hulking dinosaurs that suck up funds at an alarming rate and no private investor doing due diligence wants to be part of this costly scheme.
Globe and Mail, MATTHEW MCCLEARN, 8 July 24
Last month, U.S.-based nuclear reactor vendor Westinghouse opened a 13,000-square-foot engineering office in Kitchener, Ont. The company wants to sell its products, including its flagship AP1000 reactor, in Canada while also serving international customers.
Having hired most of its 250 Canadian staff in the last three years, it now seeks to hire 100 more engineers. It’s recruiting at a moment when, after a decades-long lull, skilled nuclear workers find themselves in high demand.
China and Russia have long dominated construction activity, while Western countries stagnated; Canada’s newest power reactor was completed in the early 1990s. But efforts to decarbonize the electricity sector have coalesced into support for designing and building new reactors, even as aging facilities are overhauled – leading to a proliferation of announced nuclear projects.
Whether there’s enough engineering talent to execute them all, however, is a question vigorously debated within the nuclear industry, here and abroad.
According to a survey the Canadian Nuclear Association conducted five years ago, the industry directly employs 33,000 people – up from 30,000 in 2012. Large employers include Ontario Power Generation and Bruce Power, which operate large nuclear plants, as well as uranium mining giant Cameco Corp. and Canadian Nuclear Laboratories, which operates the Chalk River research facility.
That survey is now being updated, and while results have not been finalized, employment appears to have grown another 10 to 15 per cent during the past five years. But the sheer volume of announced projects implies more rapid growth.
OPG recently began early work to refurbish four reactors at its Pickering station. The eight-reactor Bruce station, already one of the world’s largest, is in the early stages of a planned expansion that could add four new large reactors.
AtkinsRéalis, steward of Canada’s homegrown Candu technology, is racing to develop a modernized 1,000-megawatt reactor it calls the Monark. It’s among the most active hirers on Nuclear Jobs Canada, an industry job board.
Canadian Nuclear Laboratories is hiring at its Chalk River facilities, a Second World War-era facility that has been extensively modernized in recent years. It’s looking to populate its new laboratories and replace retiring workers.
“Nuclear was a little bit quiet for a while, and now it’s coming back,” said Janet Tosh, CNL’s vice-president of human resources.
“So we are having to build up that talent pipeline. But it’s not just science and technology people we’re looking for. We’re looking for technicians, machinists, certified trade workers.”
And then there’s relative newcomers to Canada, such as Westinghouse. Another U.S.-based reactor vendor, GE-Hitachi Nuclear Energy, has partnered with OPG to build up to four small modular reactors at Darlington station.
The picture is similar in other Western countries, including the U.S. and Britain, both of which have seen limited reactor construction for decades. Reports abound that nuclear employers, desperate for talent, have lured long-retired professionals back into the work force.
Last year, the U.S. National Academy of Engineering published a 250-page report examining the potential barriers to a major build-out of new “advanced” reactors. It identifies labour availability as a key constraint.
“Utilities have generally not retained the talent on their staff to execute these large projects given the limited deployment of nuclear technology in the past 30 years in the United States,” the report says.
“This shortfall in talent could become equally limiting across the supply chain, operations, and regulatory organizations that must support any large-scale growth in nuclear deployment.”
Akira Tokuhiro, a professor at Ontario Tech University, which has one of the largest nuclear engineering programs in North America, has noticed major nuclear employers pledging to hire hundreds of workers apiece on LinkedIn.
“And I thought, how can that be?” he recalled during an interview. “Because we’re producing 50 graduates a year.”
Prof. Tokuhiro added up the output from other programs across the continent, and determined that fewer than 1,000 people graduate with a degree in radiation science or nuclear engineering in North America. (He figures that for every such graduate, nuclear employers hire 10 times as many mechanical, chemical and other engineers who’ve not studied nuclear directly.)
He compares that against likely retirement rates for workers at major nuclear employers, as well as the many announced nuclear projects.
“We don’t have enough new graduates,” Prof. Tokuhiro concluded. “There’s a disconnect between what the industry needs, and what the universities are producing.”
Luca Oriani, Westinghouse’s global chief engineering services officer, disagrees. The reactor vendor almost exclusively hires graduates with little or no industry experience, he said, and then trains and retains them as long as possible, typically decades. The company has found the supply of engineering talent abundant, in Canada and elsewhere.
That’s not to say competition isn’t fierce. Westinghouse used to visit campuses a week ahead of job fairs for coming graduates to recruit before they met with competitors; now it’s offering them jobs as early as a year before graduation.
“I have over 2,000 engineers working for me,” Mr. Oriani said. “I still spend at least a week month just going to different universities and discussing with students, and trying to see how do we get them to come to us before they go somewhere else.”
In an interview earlier this year, OPG chief executive officer Ken Hartwick divided the industry’s labour into two groups: engineering and project management on one side; and trades, such as boilermakers and electricians, on the other. Availability of the first group, he said, has not been a problem, an aging work force notwithstanding.
“I’m less worried about the older person losing some of the experience, because the younger people coming through our universities are brilliant,” Mr. Hartwick said.
Tradespeople were another matter. OPG competes for them not just with other nuclear utilities such as Bruce Power, but with many other construction projects, including hospitals and roads.
“Can we ramp up our trades programs fast enough? That’s the biggest challenge.”
Some in Canada’s nuclear industry say talent isn’t as scarce here as it is in the U.S. and Britain, thanks to major multi-reactor reactor refurbishments at Ontario’s Darlington and Bruce stations over the past decade. They’re major capital projects in their own right, requiring significant manpower to execute.
That’s kept a lot of building trades very engaged, and it’s kept the regular work force [of utilities] engaged,” said Bob Walker, national director of the Canadian Nuclear Workers’ Council, an umbrella organization of nuclear sector unions.
He confirmed that retirees are re-entering the work force, but added that most nuclear employers offer generous pension plans, allowing workers to retire relatively early.
“That’s been a running joke for as long as I can remember: No one ever retires, they just change positions,” Mr. Walker said. “The industry plans on people coming back, and people plan on retiring and coming back.”……………….. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-after-decades-of-dormancy-competition-for-nuclear-engineering-talent/
Second review of ARC’s Small Modular Nuclear Reactor not complete, despite layoffs
That’s after ARC Clean Technology Canada said it downsized with that review now over
Telegraph Journal, Adam Huras, Jul 04, 2024
A second design review of a New Brunswick-based company’s proposed small modular nuclear reactor is not yet complete, according to the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission.
That’s after ARC Clean Technology Canada said it downsized with that review now over.
Brunswick News reported last month that ARC, one of two companies pursuing SMR technology in the province, had handed out layoff notices to some of its employees, citing its latest design phase coming to an end.
That’s as its CEO also departed.
But the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission says it’s “months” away from completing its review, and may need more information from the company.
“We have received all of ARC’s major submissions as part of the vendor design review process and our experts are carefully reviewing them,” commission spokesperson Braeson Holland told Brunswick News.
“It is possible that staff will have additional questions for the vendor. In that case, additional information may be requested, and the company will be expected to provide it for the vendor design review to proceed.
“Provided that any additional information requested is submitted in a timely manner and that the company remains in compliance with its service agreement with the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, we anticipate that the review will be complete within several months.”
A vendor design review is an optional service that the commission provides for the assessment of a vendor’s reactor design.
The objective is to verify, at a high level, that Canadian nuclear regulatory requirements and expectations, as well as Canadian codes and standards, will be met.
The company did complete a Phase 1 review of its ARC-100 sodium-cooled fast reactor in October 2019.
An executive summary of that review, made public by the commission, noted that there were requests for additional information, as well as technical discussions through letters, emails, meetings and teleconferences, after an initial submission.
The result of that first review found that “additional work is required by ARC” to address findings raised in the review, specifically around the reactor’s management system.
It then lists a series of technical concerns, but concludes that “these issues are foreseen to be resolvable.”
A Phase 2 design review, which ARC is undergoing right now, goes into further detail, and focuses on identifying fundamental barriers to licensing for a new design in Canada, according to the commission.
That review started in February 2022, and was expected to be completed in January of this year.
It’s unclear why it has yet to be completed.
At a New Brunswick Energy and Utilities Board hearing last month into a recent power rate hike, NB Power vice president Brad Coady testified he doesn’t expect SMRs will be ready by an original target date of 2030.
The utility now believes they’ll be ready by 2032 or 2033……………….
https://tj.news/new-brunswick/second-review-of-arcs-smr-not-complete-despite-layoffs
Former New Brunswick energy minister joins nuclear industry after resigning in June
Mike Holland will be joining AtkinsRéalis, formerly SNC-Lavalin
CBC News · Jul 05, 2024
A former New Brunswick cabinet minister who resigned in June is joining AtkinsRéalis, a Montreal-based company previously known as SNC-Lavalin Group.
Mike Holland, who was natural resources and energy development minister and MLA for the riding of Albert, announced at the end of June that he was quitting to pursue a job in the private sector.
Holland will be joining the AtkinsRéalis team as the director of business development for North America.
The company told Radio-Canada the reason it recruited the former minister was to help increase sales of its nuclear reactor models and invest in the development of small modular reactors.
In a statement, the company said it’s “working to accelerate” sales of its Candu reactors in Canada and internationally.
…………………….When Holland announced his resignation from the New Brunswick government, he said the company he accepted an offer from is not a company he dealt with in his role as a minister, nor as an MLA.
However, AtkinsRéalis, then known as SNC-Lavalin, announced a partnership with Moltex Energy Canada in 2022 and Holland was quoted in the news release at the time.
“This agreement contributes not only to the growth of long-term, high-quality jobs in New Brunswick’s energy sector, it also recognizes the leadership role of both Moltex and the province in advancing the next generation of nuclear technology,” he said in the 2022 release.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/energy-minister-nuclear-resignation-1.7255601
Unable to effectively operate its lone existing nuclear reactor, New Brunswick is betting on advanced options.
The International Panel found that sodium-cooled reactors proved expensive to build, complex to operate, prone to malfunctions, and difficult and expensive to repair. Sodium reacts violently with water and burns if exposed to air. Major sodium fires have occurred in previous reactors, often leading to lengthy shutdowns.
If NB Power needs outside assistance with a conventional reactor it has owned and operated for more than 40 years, one might question the wisdom of building two more featuring untested designs. Mr. Holland’s replacement as energy minister, Hugh Flemming, must now decide how comfortable he is with the province’s SMR ambitions.
Perhaps the most fundamental risk to New Brunswick’s SMR push is that the province can’t afford it.
MATTHEW MCCLEARN, JULY 2, 2024 https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-new-brunswick-nuclear-reactor-technology-arc-clean-moltex-energy/
Mike Holland was among Canada’s leading evangelists for small modular nuclear reactors. During his tenure as New Brunswick’s energy minister, from 2018 to when he stepped down on June 20, he vigorously supported plans by the province’s Crown utility, NB Power, to construct two different small reactor designs from startup companies: U.S.-based ARC Clean Technology and Britain’s Moltex Energy. This represents Canada’s most ambitious – and perhaps riskiest – foray into bleeding-edge nuclear technology.
In an interview shortly before he resigned to pursue an opportunity in the private sector, Mr. Holland recalled how SMRs arrived on his agenda soon after he assumed office. He began exploring what advanced reactors could mean for decarbonizing the province’s electricity sector and growing its economy, and concluded New Brunswick could become a hub for nuclear design and manufacturing, and export reactors around the world.
“I saw the opportunity for New Brunswick to not just participate, but be a leader in this,” he said. “I am someone that loves to be on the cutting edge.”
His enthusiasm and risk tolerance proved a boon for ARC and Moltex, two tiny startups that have neither licensed nor constructed a commercial reactor. Under Mr. Holland’s leadership, New Brunswick became an incubator and helped the companies attract government funds to continue their work.
But NB Power is already struggling with persistent problems at its lone existing reactor at Point Lepreau Nuclear Generating Station. It has been negotiating a partnership with Ontario Power Generation that could see the latter assume partial ownership and help fix the ailing plant.
If NB Power needs outside assistance with a conventional reactor it has owned and operated for more than 40 years, one might question the wisdom of building two more featuring untested designs. Mr. Holland’s replacement as energy minister, Hugh Flemming, must now decide how comfortable he is with the province’s SMR ambitions.
Unconventional thinking
Nearly all of the more than 400 nuclear reactors operating today use water to cool their highly radioactive cores. Water also acts as a “moderator,” slowing down the high-energy neutrons produced by nuclear fission. Though water-cooled reactors have dominated for decades, they cost huge sums to build and produce waste that remains hazardous for countless human lifetimes. They’re vulnerable to severe (albeit rare) accidents that can render surrounding areas uninhabitable.
Virtually every SMR is marketed as addressing these and other shortcomings – and most have ditched water as coolant and moderator.
According to documents released by New Brunswick’s energy ministry through the province’s freedom of information legislation to researcher Susan O’Donnell, and provided to The Globe and Mail, in 2017 NB Power reviewed dozens of SMRs it read about in nuclear industry publications. It came up with a short list of five, which it later narrowed to ARC and Moltex, and enticed both companies to set up headquarters in Saint John.
ARC and Moltex are pursuing what the industry calls “fast” neutron reactors, so named because they lack a moderator. The ARC-100 reactor would be cooled using liquid sodium metal and consume enriched uranium metal fuel. Moltex’s Stable Salt Reactor-Wasteburner (SSR-W), meanwhile, would use molten salt fuel placed in fuel assemblies similar to those in conventional reactors.
The SSR-W would require its own fuel reprocessing plant called WATSS (short for Waste to Stable Salt), which would convert Point Lepreau’s spent fuel into new fuel. For NB Power, that’s a major attraction: As of last summer, Point Lepreau had more than 170,000 Candu spent fuel bundles. Moltex says that’s enough to power its reactor for 60 years.
In May, 2019, NB Power sent a letter to Mr. Holland and Premier Blaine Higgs urging them to support fast reactors. The utility told its government masters that there was enough room at Point Lepreau for both reactors and that they could be up and running by 2030.
“These two technologies have different market applications and there is no downside to letting both of them work through the process,” the letter stated.
New Brunswick’s latest energy plan suggests electricity consumption will nearly double in the next few decades. NB Power’s challenge is to satisfy that demand while simultaneously reducing greenhouse gas emissions; Lori Clark, its chief executive, has cast SMRs as playing an important role in the utility’s efforts to reach net zero by 2035.
What New Brunswick covets most, however, is a shot of economic adrenalin.
Even optimists expect that SMR demonstration units will be too expensive to be economically attractive. Multiple units must be built to exploit economies of scale and reduce costs.
NB Power is counting on that. According to documents released under the federal Access to Information Act, the utility expects the first ARC-100 would be followed by 11 more units by mid-century. By then, up to 24 would be built in Canada, and the same number in other countries. And the first SSR-W would lead to 11 more built across Canada and two dozen more in the United States, Britain and Eastern Europe. If that happened, they’d be among the most successful models in history.
NB Power thought more than half of the components would be manufactured in New Brunswick. It also enthused about royalty payments on reactor sales, “potentially worth billions of dollars.”
Technical risks
But to realize any of that, New Brunswick’s SMR program must overcome technical challenges that have plagued the nuclear industry from its earliest days.
Edwin Lyman, a physicist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, has warned policy makers about the pitfalls of betting on “advanced” reactor designs, which he has studied over many years. “Developing new designs that are clearly superior to light water reactors overall is a formidable challenge, as improvements in one respect can create or exacerbate problems in another,” he wrote in a 2021 report.
Fast reactors, which originated in the earliest years of the nuclear age, bear this out. The U.S., Britain, the Soviet Union, France, Germany, Japan and India all pursued so-called “fast breeder” reactors that could produce more plutonium fuel than they consumed. A report that examined the history of those reactors, produced in 2010 by the International Panel on Fissile Materials, a group of arms control and non-proliferation experts, found member countries of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development collectively invested about US$50-billion researching breeder reactors. Outside the OECD, Russia and India also spent heavily.
They didn’t have much to show for it. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, there are only two fast reactors currently generating electricity – both in Russia. The International Panel found that sodium-cooled reactors proved expensive to build, complex to operate, prone to malfunctions, and difficult and expensive to repair. Sodium reacts violently with water and burns if exposed to air. Major sodium fires have occurred in previous reactors, often leading to lengthy shutdowns.
As for molten salt reactors, there have only been two experimental exemplars, the most recent of which operated in the 1960s. Mr. Lyman’s 2021 report said molten salts were highly corrosive to many materials typically used in reactor construction. Moreover, “liquid nuclear fuels introduce numerous additional safety, environmental and proliferation risks.” Molten salt reactors likely couldn’t be built before the 2040s at the earliest, he concluded.
In addition to confronting such technical challenges, New Brunswick’s strategy also presupposes that reprocessing of spent fuel will be permitted and affordable. But a report published last year by the Nuclear Waste Management Organization, the industry-controlled organization tasked with disposing of Canada’s reactor waste, was skeptical on both counts.
NB Power is also counting on circumstances that are beyond its control. According to a letter signed by former CEO Keith Cronkhite in 2020 and released under the Access to Information Act, New Brunswick’s plan hinges on Ontario and other provinces building multiple BWRX-300s. (The letter was sent to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.) If they do not, “SMR companies based in New Brunswick will not be able to attract private investment necessary to ever deploy a new reactor,” Mr. Cronkhite’s letter predicted.
The SMR plan is already falling behind schedule. At a rate hearing in June before the New Brunswick Energy and Utilities Board, Brad Coady, vice-president of strategic partnerships and business development, said NB Power believes it is no longer possible to have SMRs operating by 2030; the earliest date for the first unit has been pushed back to 2032 or 2033.
Delays will have consequences, because NB Power needs options to replace its coal-fired generation while at the same time satisfying growing demand for electricity. The utility, he said, has been studying alternative scenarios “if we don’t have them in time.”
Paying for it
Perhaps the most fundamental risk to New Brunswick’s SMR push is that the province can’t afford it.
Last year, ARC and Moltex each estimated that developing their reactors would cost around $500-million per company. NB Power is Canada’s most heavily indebted utility, and its budgets must be approved by the province’s Energy and Utilities Board. It has limited ability to pay for crucial early steps such as studies necessary to establish what the environmental consequences of the SMRs might be. In published reports, NB Power has acknowledged that its research and development efforts might have to be sacrificed to meet debt-reduction targets.
David Coon, leader of New Brunswick’s Green Party, said NB Power faces huge capital spending to retire its Belledune coal-fired generating plant and refurbish its Mactaquac hydroelectric dam and transmission lines.
“That is why they’re really not putting much into this,” he said. “Their approach has been, well, if we get a new nuclear plant out of this that that doesn’t really cost us much of anything, then bonus!”
ARC and Moltex also don’t have the money. In late June, ARC parted ways with CEO William Labbe and laid off an undisclosed number of staff – a move some observers said was likely due to a shortage of funds. Mr. Chronkite’s 2020 letter warned that the two SMR developers were small startups that couldn’t afford to do work using their own resources, and were at immediate risk of insolvency.
“Without federal support this year to the SMR developers in New Brunswick, one or both companies are expected to close their offices in the next year,” Mr. Cronkhite’s letter stated.
Indeed, New Brunswick officials have counted on continuing and generous support from Canadian taxpayers. In his letter, Mr. Cronkhite called on the federal government to provide $70.5-million that year to ARC and Moltex – and more than $100-million the following year – to “keep the SMR development option in New Brunswick viable.” In 2022, the two companies would need another $91-million.
Ottawa obliged, but only partly. It gave Moltex $50.5-million in 2021. The federal government also provided ARC $7-million last year. The lobbying efforts continue: When NB Power board vice-chair Andrew MacGillivray received his mandate letter in May, 2023, it instructed him to “support efforts to acquire federal funding” for the SMRs.
New Brunswick’s own history suggests the risks inherent in counting on boundless federal support.
Andrew Secord, an economics professor at St. Thomas University in Fredericton, has studied decision-making in the 1970s that led to the construction of the original Point Lepreau reactor. In a 2020 paper, he detailed how Point Lepreau arose in part from an export-led strategy under which multiple large reactors would be built and their electricity exported to New England. NB Power (then known as the New Brunswick Electric Power Commission, or NBEPC) first focused on building interconnections with New England and then pivoted to building reactors.
This strategy failed by 1972, but by that point NBEPC was unwilling to change course. Over the next three years, it assumed ever greater risks as potential partners failed to materialize.
“NBEPC managers continued along the nuclear path, exhibiting higher risk behaviour in the process,” Mr. Secord wrote. “As NBEPC executives spent more time and resources on the nuclear option, their personal attachment and the associated institutional commitment increased.”
Mr. Coon said New Brunswick’s SMR plan so far has cost the provincial and federal governments only around $100-million. But it could start costing taxpayers and ratepayers “much more money” if things progress further.
“It seems like we haven’t learned our lesson in New Brunswick,” he said.
Do the research and end the nuclear hype in New Brunswick
by Susan O’Donnell, June 29, 2024, https://nbmediacoop.org/2024/06/29/do-the-research-and-end-the-nuclear-hype-in-new-brunswick/
New Brunswick’s ARC nuclear project is in trouble. This situation highlights the lack of critical knowledge about nuclear reactor designs within NB Power and the New Brunswick government.
The ARC project goal is to design and build a nuclear reactor cooled with liquid sodium metal at the Point Lepreau site on the Bay of Fundy. NB Power also plans a second reactor at the site, the Moltex reactor design cooled with molten salt.
The proposed nuclear reactor designs lack commercial viability
If NB Power and the provincial government reviewed available research, they would learn that both sodium-cooled and molten salt reactors have never operated successfully on a commercial electricity grid.
An expert report from the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine stated that inherent problems with sodium-cooled and molten salt reactors means new builds will have difficulty reaching commercial viability by the year 2050, far later than the federal 2035 deadline for utilities to transition to a net-zero electricity grid.
For sodium-cooled reactors like the ARC design, tens of billions of dollars have been spent over decades trying to make them work in a commercial setting, by companies in other countries with considerable experience building nuclear reactors. The failures are well-documented.
Liquid sodium metal is reactive and burns when exposed to air or water. The first commercial sodium-cooled reactor in the U.S. had a partial meltdown and was quickly scrapped.
In other countries, sodium fires and unpredictable performances led to sodium-cooled reactors being abandoned in France (the Superphénix), Japan (the Monju breeder), Germany (the Kalkar plant), and Scotland (the Dounreay reactor).
All these shut-down sodium-cooled reactors cost far more to decommission than they did to build, partly due to the expense of removing the sodium from the reactors’ radioactive waste material so it could be safely disposed without causing underground explosions due to sodium-water reactions, as happened for Scotland’s Dounreay reactor.
The proposed reactor designs lack financing
The ARC sodium-cooled design is in its preliminary stage. Bill Labbe, the ARC CEO who suddenly left the company recently, said in 2023 that $500 million is needed to develop the ARC reactor design, and a further $600 million in power purchase agreements to move the project forward. The money raised to date for the ARC project is only a tiny fraction of that.
Since 2018 the provincial government has handed $25 million to ARC and $10 million to Moltex, as ‘seed’ funding to attract private investment. The federal government gave Moltex $50.5 million in 2021 and ARC $7 million in 2023.
However, six years of trying to entice private investors to the ARC and Moltex projects has not yielded results. Globally, private investment in the energy sector is going into renewable – not nuclear – energy.
Misplaced government hype
Despite the ARC company’s financial difficulties, according to news reports both NB Power and the New Brunswick government continue to support the ARC project.
Since the two start-up companies arrived in Canada and landed in Saint John in 2018, the government’s hype around the ARC and Moltex projects at times has been intense, surprisingly so, given that neither company has ever built a nuclear reactor.
In the past, Energy Minister Mike Holland has been the biggest booster of the ARC and Moltex “advanced” reactor designs.
However, in a curious coincidence, Holland quit the cabinet and gave up his MLA seat just days before the troubles at the ARC company hit the news, after previously announcing he would not stand in the upcoming election.
New Brunswick’s money-losing Point Lepreau nuclear plant
NB Power wants to build the ARC reactor near its existing Point Lepreau nuclear reactor, a consistent money loser for the utility.
According to the NB Auditor General, about three-quarters of NB Power’s $5 billion debt is from cost over-runs on the original CANDU reactor build 40 years ago and the re-build more than a dozen years ago.
At the recent Energy and Utility Board hearings, it was clear that the ongoing poor performance of the Lepreau plant is contributing to the utility’s financial difficulties and its request for an unprecedented rate hike.
Nuclear: the most expensive option for generating electricity
New Brunswick’s abysmal prior experience with nuclear reactors raises an obvious question: why is the province intent on trying to develop experimental nuclear reactors as part of its energy transition plans?
Nuclear power is a more expensive way to generate electricity than renewable energy with storage. Nuclear plants take much longer to build than solar or wind farms. These facts are well-known.
Even the right-wing magazine The Economist recognizes the global trend toward renewables and away from nuclear energy, stating in its most recent issue that: “the next ten-fold increase (in solar energy) will be equivalent to multiplying the world’s entire fleet of nuclear reactors by eight, in less than the time it typically takes to build one of them.”
New Brunswick: clinging to an outdated vision of electricity production
The challenge for New Brunswick is that our public utility NB Power is stuck, along with Ontario Power Generation, in the Jurassic era, feeding their nuclear dinosaurs while the rest of the utility world is getting on with their renewables and storage rollouts.
Across the globe, countries are focused on technological revolutions in energy efficiency and productivity, building smart grids with demand management and response and distributed renewable energy and storage resources. These offer lower-cost, lower-risk, faster and more flexible pathways for decarbonized electricity grids without large centralized nuclear systems.
Building more nuclear reactors and increasing power rates is not compatible with what many commentators in the province want in our shared economic, social and cultural future. It’s time for New Brunswick to end the nuclear hype.
Susan O’Donnell is the principal investigator with teammates of the CEDAR project, St. Thomas University in Fredericton.
Complete BS from the IAEA about the non-existent “global consensus” on nuclear power.
The latest (today) International Atomic Energy Agency newsletter includes this BS info about a fantasy “global consensus” on nuclear power.
The World Bank and other MDBs currently do not contribute financing to nuclear power new build projects, although some MDBs have provided lending for upgrades to existing nuclear power reactors or their decommissioning. Mr Grossi said that financing nuclear power would better align MDBs with the “new global consensus” forged at last year at COP28 in Dubai, where the world called for accelerating the deployment of nuclear power along with other zero emission energy technologies to achieve deep and rapid decarbonization.
Dozens of countries have also signed on to a pledge made at COP28 to work towards tripling global nuclear power capacity to achieve net zero by 2050. The pledge also called on the World Bank, regional development banks and international financial institutions to include nuclear in their lending. That call was echoed by scores of countries at the first-ever Nuclear Energy Summit organized by the IAEA and Government of Belgium in March.
**
The statement supporting nuclear power was made at a private media event at COP 28 and was not part of the official COP proceedings. Canada’s nuclear industry booster NRCan has it on its website but it is not on the site of Environment Canada, which is responsible for COP declarations.
There is no “global consensus” on nuclear energy. Here’s the full IAEA statement:
How I read this: the nuclear industry is desperate. If you read the full item above, you will see a desperate plea for the World Bank and others that do not currently fund nuclear projects to begin doing it. What’s not here is why the private sector is not funding nuclear projects but rather putting their money into solar and wind development, which is that nuclear is a terrible investment and renewables are a good investment.
CEO, staff suddenly depart New Brunswick reactor developer ARC Clean Technology
“reactor developers would not normally terminate staff after hitting a regulatory milestone.
“If they were going to move forward, basically, they would be hiring people,”
MATTHEW MCCLEARN 26 June 24, https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-ceo-staff-depart-new-brunswick-reactor-developer-arc-clean-technology/
ARC Clean Technology Canada, a developer of small modular reactors in New Brunswick, has revealed the sudden departure of its Canadian chief executive, raising questions about its future.
Alongside Tuesday’s announcement of CEO William Labbe’s exit, other ARC employees also received layoff notices, according to a report from the Telegraph Journal, a Saint John, N.B., newspaper. The company did not respond to questions from The Globe about those reported departures, or how many staffers remain with the company.
In a statement, ARC spokesperson Sandra Donnelly said the company had nearly completed a phase of a pre-licensing process with the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, and was “realigning personnel and resources to strengthen our strategic partnerships and rationalize operations to best prepare for the next phase of our deployment.”
Ms. Donnelly said ARC Canada will be led by Bob Braun, chief operating officer of its Washington-based parent ARC Clean Technology Inc., and two vice presidents, Lance Clarke and Jill Doucet.
The company’s staff changes follow the resignation of New Brunswick energy minister Mike Holland, announced June 20. Mr. Holland had been an advocate for the province’s SMR program, but had previously announced he would not stand for re-election.
ARC set up offices in Saint John several years ago, as part of an initiative to build SMRs at the province’s only nuclear power plant, Point Lepreau Nuclear Generating Station. The plant’s owner, NB Power, has promoted plans for demonstration units of two different reactors built there by 2030. The second reactor would be designed by another startup, Moltex Energy, which would include a nuclear fuel reprocessing plant.
ARC is one of several vendors jockeying to sell SMRs to Canadian utilities. All existing commercial power reactors in Canada – including the existing one at Point Lepreau – are of the homegrown Candu design. (The newest, at Ontario’s Darlington Nuclear Generating Station, was completed in the early 1990s.)
The company is in the early stages of designing a reactor known as the ARC-100, a next-generation reactor that would use sodium as coolant – a striking departure from Candus and nearly all other commercial power reactors used today, which are water-cooled. The ARC-100 is also marketed as having the ability to consume reprocessed spent fuel, something that has not been done historically in Canada.
As ARC rationalizes its work force, some of its better-established competitors are staffing up. U.S.-based GE-Hitachi and Ontario Power Generation are preparing a site at Darlington for potential construction of a BWRX-300 small modular reactor. Westinghouse, which is marketing several reactors including its AP-1000 large reactor and eVinci microreactor, announced a new 13,000-square-foot office in Kitchener, Ont., this month along with plans to hire 100 engineers to staff it by next year.
Last year, Mr. Labbe said developing the ARC-100 would cost around $500-million. But so far, the company has raised only a small fraction of that. In 2022, it announced it had raised $30-million from the provincial government and the private sector. In October, the federal government awarded it another $7-million. Its partner, NB Power, has not contributed any funding.
ARC submitted an application to the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission in 2023 for a license to prepare a site at Point Lepreau for its demonstration unit. At an industry conference in April, Mr. Labbe said ARC was also preparing to apply for a license to construct the reactor, which it planned to issue within the next year.
“We’ve been at this for about seven years,” he told the audience. “And we really have another six, seven years until we get that commercial deployment.”
Mr. Labbe became ARC Canada’s CEO in May, 2021. His predecessor, Norm Sawyer, is now president of ION Nuclear Consulting Ltd., an adviser to investors, energy companies and First Nations. Mr. Sawyer said that, while he had no inside information on the company, reactor developers would not normally terminate staff after hitting a regulatory milestone.
“If they were going to move forward, basically, they would be hiring people,” he said.
“If you’re on hold and you’re thinking that you’re going to move forward in a short time period, you maintain your staffing levels.”
Susan O’Donnell, a researcher at St. Thomas University who studies energy technologies, said that, while ARC has managed to attract some private funding, it has remained almost wholly dependent on government money. She added that the federal government is unlikely to provide the billions of dollars required to build new reactors at Point Lepreau.
“I just don’t see how this is going to work, where the money’s going to come from,” she said. “And I think this is why we’re seeing this with ARC today.
“They can’t afford to have that number of staff.”
As recently as November, NB Power chief executive officer Lori Clark had said SMRs were “a key part” of the utility’s plans to phase out coal by 2030. On Tuesday, NB Power said it will continue to provide technical expertise to ARC and Moltex, and that it regards SMRs as a “potential option” to achieve net zero emissions electricity production by 2035.
“We continue to work toward the goal of having an SMR on the grid by the early 2030s,” spokesperson Dominique Couture wrote in an e-mail.
With a report from Emma Graney
Tensions with First Nations threaten to delay nuclear waste facility
MATTHEW MCCLEARN, 16 June 24 https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-tensions-with-first-nations-threaten-to-delay-nuclear-waste-facility/#:~:text=Prof.%20Leiss%20said%20even%20if,this%20issue%2C%E2%80%9D%20he%20said.
The eight-reactor Bruce Nuclear Generating Station, on the eastern shore of Lake Huron, ranks among the world’s largest nuclear power plants. With four more in the early planning stages, it might become larger still. But for the Saugeen Ojibway Nation (SON), behind its engineering grandeur lies a painful history – which it has described as one “of exclusion.”
Its people were not consulted before the plant’s construction during the 1970s and 80s, which resulted in quantities of radioactive waste stored within what they regard as their traditional territory. Nor did they see many of the economic benefits that flowed to neighbours.
These unresolved tensions threaten to derail – or at least significantly delay – efforts to find a permanent solution for Canada’s nuclear waste, which dates back to the 1970s. As of June, 2023, Canada had accumulated approximately 3.3 million used fuel bundles that were stored temporarily at operating or retired nuclear power plants in Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick. But there’s nowhere to send them for permanent disposal – a potential stumbling block as the nuclear industry seeks public acceptance for a proposed major expansion.
The Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO), an industry-controlled organization to which the federal government delegated responsibility for nuclear waste management, wants to select a site this year for a proposed, $26-billion underground nuclear waste disposal facility, known as a deep geological repository. The two remaining candidates are the Municipality of South Bruce (about 45 kilometres southeast of Bruce station, and also within SON’s traditional territory) and a site more than 40 kilometres from Ignace, a town of 1,200 northwest of Thunder Bay.
One of the NWMO’s guiding principles is that the repository’s host “must be informed and willing to accept the project.” Ignace’s council will decide that through a resolution; it has agreed to notify the NWMO of its decision by July 30. (It hired a consultant, With Chela Inc., to engage with residents and maintains its decision will be based on public input.) In South Bruce, citizens will vote in a by-election in late October. Both signed hosting agreements with the NWMO this year, under which South Bruce would receive $418-million over nearly a century and a half; Ignace would get $170-million.
Yet all that might well prove a sideshow. The NWMO also seeks consent from Indigenous peoples: Wabigoon Lake Ojibway Nation, in the case of Ignace. SON, which is composed of the Chippewas of Nawash First Nation and Chippewas of Saugeen First Nation, will decide regarding the South Bruce site. NWMO spokesperson Fred Kuntz said the organization is negotiating hosting agreements with both First Nations.
Success is far from assured.
SON’s grievances with the nuclear industry date back to the 1960s, when Ontario Hydro (the predecessor of Ontario Power Generation) began constructing Canada’s first commercial nuclear power plant. For SON, the commissioning of the Douglas Point Nuclear Generating Station marked the beginning of “the nuclear industrialization” of its territory. Douglas Point was followed by the much-larger Bruce station, built immediately next door.
SON ruefully watched its neighbours benefit as tax revenues rolled into local municipalities, while its members were largely shut out. In 2013 SON secured an undertaking from Ontario Power Generation that the utility wouldn’t establish an intermediate-level waste repository (proposed for construction at Bruce station) on its territory without its consent.
That undertaking had far-reaching consequences. It led to a 2020 plebiscite in which SON’s membership overwhelmingly rejected that repository. And it set an important precedent: In 2016, the NWMO granted SON the same ability to veto the South Bruce repository. SON plans to hold a referendum of its members, once it has received all the information it seeks from the NWMO.
“I’d say we’re at least halfway halfway home to having our questions satisfied,” said Gregory Nadjiwon, chief of the Chippewas of Nawash Unceded First Nation, one of SON’s two member nations.
But reaching an agreement this year – or at all – could prove challenging. The NWMO has accepted responsibility for disposing of all Canadian spent fuel, whether from the Point Lepreau station in New Brunswick, or from long-defunct research reactors at Chalk River, or even wastes from reactors yet to be constructed. SON’s leadership, though, is focused on the wastes in its own territory.
“If the [repository] is going to be in the SON territory, why should we be accepting waste that comes from Pickering, Darlington, Chalk River or Point Lepreau?” Chief Nadjiwon said.
“I mean, that’s ludicrous.”
As part of any agreement with NWMO, SON’s leadership seeks resolution to its long-standing concerns, such as the fact that wastes have been stored in its territory for decades without compensation.
“When I go in my truck to a garage in Toronto, I’m charged a cost” to park it, he said. “It’s no different than when you park waste in an Indigenous territory or homeland. We expect an agreement for the cost of doing business.”
William Leiss, an emeritus professor at Queen’s University’s School of Policy Studies, worked as a paid consultant for the NWMO between 2002 and 2011. He wrote a book, Deep Disposal, about the site selection process; the book is scheduled for publication in September. Prof. Leiss said SON’s opposition is so firm that it’s hard to fathom why South Bruce is still in the running.
“Its negatives are so pronounced that one wonders if it is being kept alive solely as a negotiating card so that Ignace does not regard itself as the only viable option,” he wrote.
“It has all the markings of an elaborate charade.”
But Prof. Leiss said the Ignace site is a long shot, too.
The Wabigoon Lake Ojibway Nation has roughly 1,000 members, 200 of which live on a reserve 20 kilometres from the Ignace area site. Its chief, Clayton Wetelainen, said the community has been negotiating a hosting agreement with the NWMO for roughly eight months.
The community has had far less interaction with the nuclear industry than SON has, so its historical baggage is perhaps lighter. Whereas the Ignace and South Bruce agreements would prevent future councils from backing out of the project, Wabigoon Lake’s leadership does not regard the agreement it’s negotiating as irrevocable – in part because there’s insufficient information available on many aspects of the project.
“The current vote that we’re talking about is just to go down to one site,” Chief Wetelainen said.
“This has to go through regulatory approvals, and our own approval, when we get more information about the detailed site.”
Some, he added, have misconstrued the vote as final and binding, “but that’s not the case.”
Prof. Leiss said even if Wabigoon Lake voted in favour of the project, other First Nations throughout the region might launch lawsuits to block the project. “There’s intense fighting among the First Nations in the Treaty 3 area over this issue,” he said.
Chief Wetelainen said his goal is to set a date in the fall for his 1,000 members to vote. Some community members began informing themselves about the project a decade ago, but others are only now beginning to ask the same questions. Getting all members up to speed is proving a challenge, he said – and as with SON, his community does not regard itself as bound by the NWMO’s timetable.
This position is admired by some of the repository’s non-Indigenous opponents. Bill Noll is vice-president of Protect Our Waterways, an opposition group in South Bruce. He said municipal officials have followed the NWMO’s timeline “blindly,” whereas SON is on its own schedule.
“They have a veto capability for the project, which is really an important dimension,” Mr. Noll said.
Prof. Leiss said Ontario is the only logical province for the repository – that’s where the bulk of Canada’s nuclear waste is already stored temporarily. But it’s home to 133 First Nations, whose often-overlapping traditional territories span nearly the entire province. It’s “entirely possible” that no First Nation will agree to accept a repository, he said.
But there’s another wrinkle: The NWMO’s willingness principle is not a legal requirement. OPG’s earlier proposed repository received regulatory approval of its environmental assessment without one. The NWMO’s promise to First Nations, he said, is “not worth the paper it’s written on.”
Prof. Leiss said the NWMO from the outset should have focused on First Nations, which he regards as the repository’s true hosts.
He wrote: “A sardonic take on this siting strategy might go something like this: entice a municipality with a dream of economic riches beyond its wildest imaginings, give it a phone book and tell it to place some calls to the nearest Indigenous communities, and then hope for the best.”
Two small communities are competing to receive Canada’s inventory of nuclear waste. They can’t be sure what they’ll get
“They’re basically surrendering any kind of fundamental right of public dissent on the part of the mayor and town council,”
“We’re talking about binding future generations.”
The Globe and Mail, MATTHEW MCCLEARN, JUNE 10, 2024
Two Ontario municipalities are vying to become hosts for an underground disposal facility for Canada’s nuclear waste. Both must formally announce in the coming months whether they’ll accept the facility – but they cannot know exactly what wastes they’d be agreeing to receive.
The Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) designed its $26-billion facility, known as a deep geological repository, to receive spent fuel from Candu reactors located in Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick. This year, it plans to choose between the last two sites still in the running: the Municipality of South Bruce, Ont., located more than 120 kilometres north of London; or near Ignace, Ont., a town of 1,200 more than 200 kilometres northwest of Thunder Bay.
But since the project was conceived, two of NWMO’s three members (Ontario Power Generation and New Brunswick Power) proposed to build new reactors that would burn different fuels and produce novel wastes. The organization guarantees reactor developers that it will dispose of these wastes, even though their nature might not be understood for decades. And in the past few months, both candidate municipalities signed agreements that spell out how the project could be modified to receive such wastes, while limiting their ability to refuse.
These provisions help reduce uncertainty for the nuclear industry. A roadmap produced last year by the Nuclear Energy Institute, a U.S. lobby group, noted that because most small modular reactors (SMRs)being developed would burn different fuels from those of existing reactors, “technology neutral” criteria for accepting spent fuel into repositories was needed as soon as this year in both Canada and the United States.
But the provisions could make it harder to find willing hosts.
Ignace will decide through a council resolution whether it will accept the repository by July 30. South Bruce will hold a by-election in late October.
Consent from First Nations is also required. NWMO spokesperson Fred Kuntz said the organization is negotiating hosting agreements with both Wabigoon Lake Ojibway Nation for the Ignace project and Saugeen Ojibway Nation for the one in South Bruce. Both are in a position to effectively halt the project, and both have indicated they are not open to accepting SMR wastes at this time.
Mark Winfield, a professor of environmental and urban change at York University, said the NWMO’s decision to accept responsibility for non-Candu wastes means the host communities can’t know the nature of some of the waste they’ll receive, nor the quantity.
“They really are being asked for a blank cheque.”
Canada’s waste inventory includes 3.3 million Candu fuel bundles as of last year, and grows by about 90,000 annually. Each is about the size of a firelog and weighs slightly less than 20 kilograms. They’re highly radioactive upon removal from a reactor, and must be stored in pools of water for about a decade before they can be moved to storage containers. Utilities have considerable experience handling the bundles, and the industry has developed copper-clad containers to place them in, which in turn would be encased in bentonite clay in underground chambers.
The municipalities also agreed to accept fuel owned by Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd., a Crown corporation that operated several research reactors. There are dozens of types of wastes from these reactors, in far smaller amounts.
The hosting agreements detail what the NWMO is offering in return. South Bruce says it’s expecting $418-million over nearly a century and a half. Ignace anticipates $170-million. Jake Pastore, a spokesperson for Ignace, said its lower amount in part reflects the fact that the repository’s site is more than 30 kilometres west of the town, whereas the South Bruce site is on farmland within its boundaries and subject to local taxes.
And the agreements clarify what the repository won’t be receiving: Both agreements explicitly prohibit storing liquid nuclear waste. Waste originating from another country is similarly verboten.
Beyond these provisions, however, the agreements afford the industry considerable flexibility.
Ignace has agreed that the repository could accept spent fuel from SMRs and other non-Candu sources, provided a licence application has been filed with the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission. The commission is considering three SMR-related applications.
The agreement also lays out a process by which the repository’s scope can be changed to accept other forms of spent fuel. Mr. Pastore said the NWMO would have to complete an “intense” regulatory review before introducing non-approved wastes. The organization has provided assurances, he added, that it would not bring such wastes unless there was “full agreement on moving forward.”
Both agreements contain dispute-resolution mechanisms, but the municipalities have agreed to support the NWMO in any regulatory process, including proposals to modify the project’s scope. Ignace has agreed not to support any resident or other municipality that opposes a regulatory approval sought by the organization.
“They’re basically surrendering any kind of fundamental right of public dissent on the part of the mayor and town council,” said Gordon Edwards, a consultant who runs a non-profit organization called the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility.
“We’re talking about binding future generations.”
South Bruce’s agreement is less permissive than Ignace’s. It doesn’t make direct references to accepting SMR wastes. And it stipulates that before making a regulatory application to modify the repository’s scope, the NWMO must notify the municipality at least three years in advance. ……………………………………………………..
The types of waste produced in Canada could change significantly if the nuclear industry’s plans come to fruition.
Candus consume natural uranium with minuscule concentrations of the more fissile uranium-235. But most reactors in the U.S., Europe and elsewhere use “enriched” fuel containing higher quantities of U-235. Virtually all SMRs would use enriched fuels. And some would use exotic fuels for which there is limited international experience.
For example, New Brunswick Power proposes to build an ARC-100 reactor at its Point Lepreau plant, which would use a metallic uranium alloy fuel. The vendor, ARC Clean Technologies, said its reactor will need to be refuelled only every 20 years, and wastes from the proposed facility “will be fully characterized” and placed in appropriately sized and approved on-site storage containers while awaiting final disposal.
New Brunswick Power also seeks to build a molten salt reactor called the Stable Salt Reactor-Wasteburner. A 2021 study of reactor technologies by the Union of Concerned Scientists warned that all molten salt reactors it reviewed lacked “a well-formulated plan for management and disposal” of spent fuel.
“There’s so many different SMR designs, and I don’t think we can predict, in 2024, if many or any of them are ever going to go into production,” said Brennain Lloyd, a project co-ordinator with the environmental group Northwatch, which opposes the Ignace repository.
“But there’s potential that we could have a number of different designs, and all of them might behave differently. That’s a dog’s breakfast of additional risk.”………………………………………………………………………………
The Saugeen Ojibway Nation,from whom the industry seeks consent, has objected in writing to receiving SMR waste in its territory, adding that this “fundamental change in circumstances” means its discussions with the NWMO must be “reset.” It said its concerns about these wastes have not been addressed, and it’s not satisfied with the information it provided. “The ground is shifting beneath us, and the original project description no longer reflects the reality,” it declared in a regulatory submission in November.
In an interview, Chief Gregory Nadjiwon of the Chippewas of Nawash Unceded First Nation – one of the two member nations of Saugeen Ojibway Nation – said his organization is looking for resolution to wastes that have long been in its territory at the Bruce Nuclear Generating Station. It’s disinclined to receive wastes from other Candu stations outside its territory, let alone from SMRs.
“If you have a complex issue that hasn’t been resolved, why would you add another layer to it?”
………………………………………………………………. More controversial still is the possibility that the repository might accept wastes from reprocessing – which means applying physical and chemical processes to spent fuel to recover fissionable products, which could be used for new reactor fuel.
……………………………………… Mr. Edwards said that when a Candu fuel bundle is demolished for reprocessing, all of the radioactive materials contained within are released into a solid or liquid form. “You no longer have these nicely packaged fuel bun
Mr. Edwards said that reprocessing is the dirtiest segment of nuclear fuel chains. Sites where it has taken place, such as Hanford, Wash., in the U.S., Sellafield in Britain, and La Hague in France, are heavily contaminated and could cost hundreds of billions of dollars to clean up. The two candidate municipalities should have obtained legally binding vetoes against receiving reprocessing wastes, he said.
“Otherwise, they’re being led by the nose, assuming that one thing is going to happen when instead, something very different may end up happening – something that’s much more threatening to the community.”dles, you have something that’s much more complex and more difficult to manage.”
Documents released by New Brunswick Power under the province’s freedom of information legislation, and supplied to The Globe and Mail by nuclear issues researcher and activist Susan O’Donnell, show the corporation regarded long-term storage of reprocessing wastes as critical for attracting investors for its next-generation reactor projects. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-two-small-communities-are-competing-to-receive-canadas-inventory-of/—
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