Big doubts on small nuclear reactors – on economics, on waste problems
Former U.S. regulator questions small nuclear reactor technology, Business case for small reactors ‘doesn’t fly,’ says expert on nuclear waste, Jacques Poitras · CBC News Jan 15, 2021 A former head of the United States’ nuclear regulator is raising questions about the molten-salt technology that would be used in one model of proposed New Brunswick-made nuclear reactors.
The technology pitched by Saint John’s Moltex Energy is key to its business case because, the company argues, it would reuse some of the nuclear waste from Point Lepreau and lower the long-term cost and radioactivity of storing the remainder.
But Allison Macfarlane, the former chairperson of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and a specialist in the storage of nuclear waste, said no one has yet proven that it’s possible or viable to reprocess nuclear waste and lower the cost and risks of storage.
“Nobody knows what the numbers are, and anybody who gives you numbers is selling you a bridge to nowhere because they don’t know,” said Macfarlane, now the director of the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs at the University of British Columbia.
“Nobody’s really doing this right now. … Nobody has ever set up a molten salt reactor and used it to produce electricity.”
Macfarlane said she couldn’t comment specifically on Moltex, calling information about the company’s technology “very vague.”
But she said the general selling point for molten-salt technology is dubious.
“Nobody’s been able to answer my questions yet on what all these wastes are and how much of them there are, and how heat-producing they are and what their compositions are,” she said.
“My sense is that all of these reactor folks have not really paid a lot of attention to the back end of these fuel cycles,” she said, referring to the long-term risks and costs of securely storing nuclear waste.
Moltex is one of two Saint John-based companies pitching small nuclear reactors as the next step for nuclear power in the province and as a non-carbon-dioxide emitting alternative to fossil fuel electricity generation.
Moltex North America CEO Rory O’Sullivan said the company’s technology will allow it to affordably extract the most radioactive parts of the existing nuclear waste from the Point Lepreau Generating Station.
The waste is now stored in pellet form in silos near the plant and is inspected regularly.
The process would remove less than one per cent of the material to fuel the Moltex reactor and O’Sullivan said that would make the remainder less radioactive for a much shorter amount of time.
Existing plans for nuclear waste in Canada are to store it in an eventual permanent repository deep underground, where it would be secure for the hundreds of thousands of years it remained radioactive………..
Shorter-term radioactivity complicates storage
Macfarlane said a shorter-term radioactivity life for waste would actually complicate its storage underground because it might lead to a facility that has to be funded and secured rather than sealed up and abandoned.
“That means that you believe that the institutions that exist to keep monitoring that … will exist for hundreds of years, and I think that is a ridiculous assumption,” she said.
“I’m looking at the United States, I’m seeing institutions crumbling in a matter of a few years. I have no faith that institutions can last that long and that there will be streams of money to maintain the safety and security of these facilities. That’s why you will need a deep geologic repository for this material.”
And she said that’s assuming the technology will successfully extract all of the most radioactive material.
“They are assuming that they remove one hundred per cent of the difficult, radionuclides, the difficult isotopes, that complicate the waste,” she said.
“My response is: prove it. Because if you leave five per cent, you have high-level waste that you’re going to be dealing with. If you leave one per cent, you’re going to have high-level waste that you’re going to be dealing with. So sorry, that one doesn’t fly with me.”
Macfarlane, a geologist by training, raised doubts about molten-salt technology and waste issues in a 2018 paper she co-authored for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists………. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/nuclear-waste-reactors-new-brunswick-allison-macfarlane-moltex-arc-1.5873542
Small modular reactor plan bolsters nuclear industry’s future, but renewables could address energy issues now,
Small modular reactor plan bolsters nuclear industry’s future, but renewables could address energy issues now, https://www.cbc.ca/news/opinion/opinion-small-modular-reactor-strategy-1.5869623
While SMRs are hailed as start of a nuclear renaissance, there are big questions about costs and timeframe, Eva Schacherl · CBC News Jan 15 In late December, as many Canadians were easing into a low-key holiday break, Minister of Natural Resources Seamus O’Regan pulled out a bag of goodies for the nuclear industry. It was the much-hyped Small Modular Reactor Action Plan for Canada.
Small modular reactors (SMRs) are experimental nuclear technologies that are still on the drawing board. They are the nuclear power industry’s hope for overcoming the problems that have plagued it: high costs, radioactive waste, and risks of accidents.
Public interest groups across the country, however, argue that SMRs won’t solve these issues.
The dozen SMR vendors backing the technology include GE-Hitachi, Westinghouse, and SNC-Lavalin (which, along with two U.S. corporations, already holds a multibillion-dollar contract with the federal government to run Canadian Nuclear Laboratories at Chalk River, Ont.). O’Regan’s plan did nothing to clarify the price tag of a nuclear renaissance, but it says the federal government expects to share the cost and risks of SMR projects with the private sector.
Proponents say that SMRs will cost less than conventional nuclear and be flexible enough to serve remote communities reliant on costly and polluting diesel. O’Regan has also said that SMRs are necessary to fight climate change: in short, a utopia of “clean, affordable, safe and reliable power,” as he told a nuclear conference last year.
But is this any more than a dream? The enthusiasm for SMRs sometimes sounds like a New Age cult — let’s examine the claims.
First, must we have a new generation of nuclear reactors to get to the promised land of net-zero emissions?
Many studies show a path to net-zero without nuclear energy. Energy scientists who modelled a 100 per cent renewable energy system for North America, for example, concluded that nuclear energy “cannot play an important role in the future” because of its high cost and safety issues. Closer to home, it has been shown how Ontario can meet its electricity demand without nuclear, using renewables, hydro and storage.
Meanwhile, a new study in Nature Energy uses data from 123 nations to show that countries focused on renewables do much better at reducing emissions.
Can SMRs one day be cost-competitive with renewable energy?
Right now, the cost difference between nuclear power and other low-carbon alternatives is growing because renewables and energy storage keep getting cheaper.
Meanwhile, the estimated cost of the most advanced SMR project, in Idaho, has increased from $4.2 billion to $6.1 billion before shovels are even in the ground. That’s nearly $12,000 per kilowatt of generation capacity.
an small reactors wean off-grid communities and mines from diesel fuel?
Finally, nuclear energy is neither green nor clean. All reactors produce radioactive waste that will need to be kept out of the biosphere for hundreds of thousands of years.
The proposal that some SMR models would reuse highly radioactive CANDU fuel and plutonium will only create worse problems in the form of radioactive wastes that are even more dangerous to manage.
For a livable future, Canada has pledged to get to net-zero emissions by 2050. Will we get a bigger bang for our buck from reactors that are still just design concepts? Or by retrofitting buildings, improving energy efficiency, and building solar, wind, geothermal and tidal power with existing technology?
Clearly, the latter. And it needs to be done now.
Creating jobs and community opportunities -Pickering City Council wants immediate dismantling of nuclear station
Clean Air Alliance (accessed) 8th Jan 2021, Ontario’s new Minister of Finance, Peter Bethlenfalvy, can create 16,000 person-years of employment in Pickering by directing Ontario Power Generation (OPG) to immediately dismantle the Pickering Nuclear Station after its operating licence expires in December 2024.
According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, immediate dismantling is “the
preferred decommissioning strategy” for nuclear plants. In fact, dismantling is the one area of employment growth in the nuclear industry.
Immediate dismantling will permit most of the 600-acre site to be returned to the local community by 2034 for parkland, recreational facilities, dining, entertainment, housing and other employment uses. That is among the reasons why Pickering City Council unanimously supports having the plant dismantled as “expeditiously as possible” after it is shut down.
Unfortunately, OPG wants to delay dismantling until 2054 to put off its
dismantling costs for 30 years despite the fact that it already has more
than $7.5 billion in its decommissioning and dismantling fund.
Canada shows how nuclear reactors are not needed for production of technetium-99m
these cyclotrons can be used to reliably create technetium-99m regionally and without the need for reactor-based materials.
Cyclotron-produced technetium-99m approved by Health Canada, TRIUMF,
Now, a new cyclotron-based approach to producing this critical diagnostic tool has received Health Canada approval, greenlighting the made-in-Canada technology for national implementation and opening the door to a greener, more reliable way to make technetium-99m.
The approval represents a critical milestone for the TRIUMF-led Cyclomed99 consortium, which spearheaded the innovative research effort. The consortium, including partners BC Cancer, the University of British Columbia (UBC), the Lawson Health Research Institute, and the Centre for Probe Development and Commercialization, is the first in the world to obtain full regulatory approval for cyclotron-based production.
It also a turning point for the consortium‘s licensee ARTMS Inc., the TRIUMF spin-off company bringing this technology to market. ARTMS’ technology makes technetium-99m production possible on many of the world’s most common medical cyclotrons, enabling regional production of this critical isotope within local communities.
“Medical isotopes help so many people every day. It’s critical to have a stable, multi-faceted supply chain to avoid unexpected disruptions to their availability,” said Paul Schaffer, Associate Laboratory Director, Life Sciences at TRIUMF and Associate Professor at UBC’s Faculty of Medicine. “The approval of cyclotron-produced technetium-99m by Health Canada is an important milestone for this Canadian innovation that will ultimately deliver direct benefit for Canadian patients.”
While the Health Canada approval brings new promise for patients and researchers, it also highlights an important chapter in Canadian innovation, one which saw a focused national research effort produce an effective solution to a global problem.
The path towards cyclotron-produced technetium-99m ……
In 2009, following unplanned disruptions at NRU (which historically provided up to half of the world’s technetium-99m via molybdenum-99 generators), the Government of Canada initiated the Non-reactor-based Isotope Supply Contribution Program (NISP) which challenged researchers to find a new way to produce critical medical isotopes—in particular, technetium-99m.
Led by Schaffer and TRIUMF‘s Dr. Tom Ruth, scientists and engineers from TRIUMF joined partners at BC Cancer, the Centre for Probe Development Commercialization (CPDC), the Lawson Health Research Institute, and the University of British Columbia to launch a national collaboration to answer the NISP call: the ‘CycloMed99‘ consortium.‘
A new way to produce technetium-99m
The consortium’s proposal detailed a new and innovative technology to enable the production of technetium-99m using medical cyclotrons. These compact particle accelerators already operate in regional healthcare centres worldwide, producing isotopes by bombarding a target material with a proton beam and extracting the desired species. The process is safe and precise, employing stable targets and producing little to no long-lived radioactive waste. And, with the right target and extraction systems, these cyclotrons can be used to reliably create technetium-99m regionally and without the need for reactor-based materials.
“Cyclotron centres across Canada can produce these isotopes locally and on-demand, and we have shown the path that can be used to achieve regulatory approval,” said Francois Bénard, senior executive director of research at BC Cancer, professor of radiology and associate dean of research at UBC’s faculty of medicine. “The same approach can be followed at other sites in Canada and internationally. This has been a shared vision of many researchers across the country, and we have to recognize the many collaborators who worked for years to make this announcement possible.”
This bright future will first take shape at TRIUMF‘s Institute for Advanced Medical Isotopes (IAMI), where a state-of-the-art TR-24 medical cyclotron will offer production capacity for the Lower Mainland‘s technetium-99 needs. In addition, IAMI will serve as a hub for radiopharmaceutical research, providing access to leading-edge facilities and expertise in accelerator technology and isotope science. The Institute will further catalyze the Vancouver region’s diverse nuclear medicine sector by convening researchers, students, academic collaborators, not-for-profits, government, and industry partners.
“With support from the Canadian government and our partners, we have developed an effective solution to the medical isotope crisis, one that will improve health outcomes and reaffirm Canada’s role as a global leader in isotope production and research. … …https://www.triumf.ca/headlines/cyclotron-produced-technetium-99m-approved-health-canada?fbclid=IwAR1d-vA4gmCfoY1HWJqwPBs_KkmGHMfwxGKVK41bnPNeD2I7Yr-vHkaVf4o
Canada vocal about nuclear disarmament, but silent about the Treaty for Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons
 Canada reaffirms support to advance nuclear disarmament Mirage News, 5 Jan 21, On behalf of the Honourable François-Philippe Champagne, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Rob Oliphant, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, today reaffirmed Canada’s unwavering support for advancing nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament during the third meeting of foreign ministers of the Stockholm Initiative for Nuclear Disarmament.
Co-hosted by Jordan, Germany and Sweden, the meeting brought together international partners advocating for action-oriented steps on nuclear disarmament. Participants called on all nuclear weapon states to show leadership in advancing nuclear disarmament and to take meaningful steps to implement all commitments under the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). ………https://www.miragenews.com/canada-reaffirms-support-to-advance-nuclear-disarmament/
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This is the sort of letter that citizens need to be writing – in support of the nuclear weapons ban
Sudbury letter: Council should support banning of nuclear weapons, https://www.thesudburystar.com/opinion/letters/sudbury-letter-council-should-support-banning-of-nuclear-weaponsAuthor of the article:
The United Nations has passed the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and it will become international law on Jan. 22, 2021. Some 86 countries have signed this agreement. Unfortunately, Canada is not one of them.
As it is cities that will be targeted by nuclear weapons, Sudbury, a producer of nickel, would likely be a target. The International Campaign Against Nuclear Weapons (ICANw) is asking cities to support the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons by passing the following motion (many Canadian cities have already passed this motion including Toronto, Halifax, Vancouver and Victoria):
“Our city of Sudbury, Ont., is deeply concerned about the grave threat that nuclear weapons pose to communities throughout the world. We firmly believe that our residents have a right to live in a world free from this threat. Any use of nuclear weapons, whether deliberate or accidental, would have catastrophic, far-reaching and long-lasting consequences for people and the environment. Therefore, we support the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and call on our governments to sign and ratify it.”
The world has about 14,000 nuclear weapons with about 1,500 on hair-trigger alert. The firing of these weapons could happen by accident, miscalculation, terrorism or an unstable government. The catastrophe would be immediate.
I would urge Sudbury city council to pass the motion and support the United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
Richard Denton
Sudbury
Small modular reactor plan – a dangerous distraction from climate change action
Feds’ Small Modular Reactor Action Plan is a dangerous distraction from climate change mitigation, Corporate Knights BY RICK CHEESEMAN, December 29, 2020
Canada can be a world leader in this promising, innovative, zero-emissions energy technology, and this is our plan to position ourselves in an emerging global market,” Natural Resources Minister Seamus O’Regan said in a statement.
The governments of New Brunswick, Ontario, Saskatchewan and Alberta, together with the federal government, advocate that small modular reactors (SMRs) are essential if Canada is to achieve a net-zero economy by 2050. According to the feds’ 2018 Call to Action report on the mini nuclear reactors, “SMRs are a reliable, clean, non-emitting source of energy, with costs that are predictable and competitive with other alternatives.”
The first problem with these claims is that SMRs don’t yet exist and aren’t expected to exist for a decade, making these claims dubious. It’s not the only questionable claim made by proponents.
Are SMRs a clean, zero-emission source of power?
Nuclear reactors emit much lower concentrations of carbon than fossil fuels, so one could claim they are zero-emission. But they have their own, uniquely harmful, emissions. From thousands of tonnes of spent fuel to hundreds of thousands of tonnes of mine tailings, nuclear power leaves a radioactive trail that is an immediate threat to waterways and water tables and is lethal for hundreds of thousands of years. SMRs will only add to that.
In 2010, Ad Standards Canada ruled that an ad claiming CANDU reactors were emission-free was “inaccurate and unsupported.” The Power Workers’ Union was expected to remove all ads containing the “emission-free” statement and to qualify any future claims. ……
After 70 years, the nuclear industry still hasn’t found a way to keep habitable environments safe from spent fuel for anything close to the time frames required for it to be harmless. There have been many plans in the past and there are current plans but all have one thing in common: they are unfit for purpose.
Some SMR technologies promise to use CANDU spent fuel in the SMR, claiming this will reduce both the radioactivity and quantity of the spent fuel. This claim is theoretical, based on proprietary data, and a report published by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists said doing so would be “playing with fire,” noting that the process, called pyroprocessing, will exacerbate the spent fuel storage and disposal challenges, not mitigate them.
Will SMRs be safe?
A range of power-generation and storage technologies that are clean, emissions-free, safe and low cost, is imminent. Within 10 years, these technologies will be widespread, fully incorporated into all levels of society, and deployed to all regions – all before the first SMR comes online. In all likelihood, by the time an SMR comes to market, there will be a more economical and environmentally responsible alternative in place.
While the rhetoric is persuasive, the case for SMRs doesn’t stand up to objective scrutiny. Allocating climate-change funds to them is a travesty.
Small Nuclear Reactor unicorns for Canada
Canada’s SMR ‘Action Plan’ banks on private sector nuclear pipe dreams, Burgess Langshaw-Power / December 21, 2020 For many kids who grew up in the 1980s and 1990s, Star Trek was a big part of our childhoods. The series is filled with strange new worlds, futurist politics, and advanced technology that is almost indistinguishable from magic. Yet even as a child I knew the show was a work of science fiction. Warp speed, transporters and phasers were all gadgets I could comprehend, but in my rational mind I knew they would never exist within my lifetime.
Unfortunately, recent announcements by Canada’s Natural Resources Minister Seamus O’Regan—a self-professed fan of science fiction—demonstrate that the government has yet to arrive at the same conclusion I did as a kid watching Star Trek.
On December 18, the Trudeau government launched Canada’s Small Modular Reactor (SMR) Action Plan, to great fanfare. This new action plan builds on the 2018 SMR Roadmap, which made the promise that, “SMRs are a re-scaling and repurposing of nuclear technology for wider markets. They represent a paradigm shift for nuclear reactor technology—analogous to the shift of steam engines from mineshafts into ships and vehicles, or the movement of computers from mainframe to desktop and then to laptop.”
This idea of a paradigm shift channels Star Trek-level aspirations, yet the new Action Plan is significantly more hesitant: “Small modular reactors (SMRs) could be a source of clean, safe and affordable energy, opening opportunities for a resilient, low-carbon future and capturing benefits for Canada and Canadians while supporting reconciliation with Indigenous peoples as essential enabling partners.”
In just two years, from the launch of the Roadmap to the announcement of the Action Plan, the government has gone from a paradigm shift to the possibility that SMRs could be a source of clean energy. It’s as though there is something else about SMRs that the government doesn’t want us to consider in more depth.
Before we go any further, what are SMRs, anyway? Well, it turns out that’s a very good question. In fact, the Globe and Mail notes that “SMR lacks a universally agreed definition, and the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission regards it as a marketing rather than a technical term.” In other words, SMRs are a group of many different technologies, none of which have actually been proven or tested, with only one project proposed and no timeframe for its realization. None of the technologies currently under consideration have solved any major issues with nuclear energy, including the problem of high-level radioactive waste management, however some are less likely to have meltdown-like events and cannot produce isotopes for creating weapons.
The Statement of Principles section of the Action Plan notes that, “Markets around the globe are signalling a need for smaller, simpler, and cheaper nuclear energy.” However, there is simply no evidence to support this claim. In fact, the polar opposite is true, with many major governments and large corporations exiting the nuclear sector entirely. Meanwhile, German experts have stated that, “SMRs are always going to be more expensive than bigger reactors due to lower power output at constant fixed costs, as safety measures and staffing requirements do not vary greatly compared to conventional reactors.”
The British press is even more blunt about the prospects of a more ‘tactile’ nuclear future: “There is no commercial case for giant new reactors in any developed country. They cannot meet post-Chernobyl and post-Fukushima safety demands at viable cost and have been priced out of the global energy market. Precipitous falls in renewable costs over the last five years have rendered the technology effectively obsolete in the West.”
This doesn’t sound like a bold future to me………..
The theory is that SMRs will be cheaper and safer than conventional nuclear reactors. Again, German experts disagree on the cost front. In terms of levelized energy costs, says Nicolas Wendler of industry association Nuclear Technology Germany (KernD), SMRs will always be more expensive than big plants. Moreover, he says, “nuclear power plant owners have repeatedly rejected the idea that the nuclear exit be reversed, arguing the technology is no longer economically viable anyway.”
In the United States, some nuclear plants are being decommissioned early, while other projects are being cancelled at a huge financial loss. Why? They aren’t competitive. This does not even account for the fact that we have yet to successfully build even a single SMR. Yet, if we were to, how much would they cost? The record for delays and cost overruns in Canada is not positive, and nuclear facilities have an unusually poor record in this regard. After 1970, the average nuclear facility saw cost overruns exceed 241 percent (not including the added burden of construction delays).
This does not even begin to address the costs and hazards associated with cleaning up nuclear sites, such as expensive remediation projects now underway in the US and the UK. Perhaps unsurprisingly, these failures and cost overruns sound a lot like the last major federal investment in the energy sector—the Trans Mountain pipeline fiasco.
There is no doubt Canada will need new energy sources for our clean energy transition to address the climate crisis. The Government of Canada claims, “At the same time, international experts are telling us that new nuclear energy, together with the full range of low-carbon technologies, are needed to combat global climate change and meet federal, provincial and territorial emissions targets for 2030 and 2050.”
However, international examples do not inspire confidence that nuclear needs to be a part of this solution. Germany is close to achieving half its energy supply from renewables excluding nuclear. In the UK, some estimates show that not including nuclear energy in the mix will save hundreds of millions of pounds and that the only justification for pursuing nuclear energy in the UK or France is to support a nuclear military strategy (which Canada obviously does not have).
At least the UK is putting its money where its mouth is, with over half a billion pounds invested into nuclear, while Canada’s new SMR Action plan includes precisely $0 of investment, as opposed to our new federal hydrogen strategy, which received $1.5 billion.
Why would we choose nuclear over other cheaper and readily available renewable technologies? It is true that there are still major flaws with renewables, but given that most SMRs are a decade away (at least), and the cost of solar has already dropped 89 percent in the last decade, it seems unlikely that SMRs—whenever they are ready—will be competitive.
One of the theoretical selling points is the deployment of SMRs in rural and remote communities to replace diesel. Yet, many Indigenous and northern communities have expressed trepidation towards SMRs dotting their territory, and are building solar arrays instead. Another argument is that SMRs could be used for industrial facilities such as those in the mining sector, or the Alberta oil sands (this was a terrible idea in the past, and its terrible idea now). However, others suggest that SMRs are only capable of, “ticking off the Financial and Consumer Services Commission’s checklist on how to spot a scam.”
Canada’s SMR Action Plan is nothing more than science fiction: idle dreams of an indefinite group of technologies which may be ready in a decade, with no financial support or investment by the government. In the meantime, renewable energy continues to leap ahead, mostly without any federal support.
One can only imagine how government investment, if effectively pursued, could push our renewable energy potential by the time the first SMRs are ready for deployment. Given these considerations, perhaps the reason this “Action Plan” is so empty, is that the federal government is in fact aware of how little potential SMRs hold. Like nuclear fusion, maybe SMRs will always be just around the corner. In which case, why bother launching this plan at all? Let’s save our time and investment for renewable energy projects that have viability today, not somewhere down the road.
Burgess Langshaw-Power is a former policy analyst currently completing his PhD in Global Governance at the Balsillie School, University of Waterloo. His policy expertise includes energy technologies, regulatory approvals, climate change, and energy infrastructure. Views expressed here are his own and not necessarily those of his employer. https://canadiandimension.com/articles/view/canadas-smr-action-plan-banks-on-private-sector-nuclear-pipe-dreams
“Mutual admiration society” -between civilian and military nuclear experts
Civilian nuclear and military nuclear members of a “mutual admiration society” ~ 
Dr. Gordon Edwards, https://concernedcitizens.net/2020/12/19/civilian-nuclear-and-military-nuclear-members-of-a-mutual-admiration-society/ Dr. Gordon Edwards, President of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility, December 19, 2020
Civilian nuclear and military nuclear have always been friendly room-mates, members of a “mutual admiration” society. In today’s announcement of an SMR Action Plan, Natural Resources Minister Seamus O’Regan said that nuclear power in Canada is a “home-grown” technology and referred to C. D. Howe’s role in this connection. In fact C.D. Howe arranged for all Canadian uranium extracted from Canadian mines to be sold to the US military for use in tens of thousands of nuclear weapons from 1945 to 1965. C D Howe was also on the Committee that met in Washington DC in 1944 to approve the first nuclear reactors to be built in Canada (at Chalk River) as part of the ongoing effort to produce plutonium for use as a nuclear explosive. Mr. Howe approved of the policy of selling plutonium produced at Chalk River to the US military for weapons use, a practice that continued until 1975 and beyond. Plutonium from Chalk River was sent to Britain (it was the first sample of plutonium that Britain had ever obtained) just a few months before Britain detonated its first A-Bomb in the Monte Bello Islands off Australia.
To the best of my knowledge, no civilian nuclear power agency – not the Canadian Nuclear Association, nor the Canadian Nuclear Society, nor the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, nor Atomic Energy of Canada Limited, nor Canadian Nuclear Laboratories, NOBODY – has ever issued a clear statement denouncing nuclear weapons or even calling for a nuclear weapons free world. Most nuclear scientists and engineers feel a strong kinship and camaraderie with those who are in the nuclear weapons business. The same goes for those in the nuclear division of Natural Resources Canada. I remember on one occasion (prior to the exchange of nuclear tests between India and Pakistan) I expressed alarm at the fact that both neighbours are developing a nuclear war-fighting capability and a couple of senior civil servants said “Would that be so bad? Maybe that’s just what the world needs. More deterrence. Creates stability”
Despite regular denials from our puppet masters that civilian nuclear has nothing to do with military nuclear, it is clear that civilian nuclear (including the frankly discriminatory provisions of the NPT) has adopted an appeasement policy that will never succeed in bringing about a nuclear weapons free world. Why does Canada continue to sell uranium to countries that are in the process of investing hundreds of billions to improve and modernize the nuclear arsenals in utter defiance of the NPT, knowing that the vast bulk of Canadian uranium that is rejected from enrichment plants as DU end up as the raw material for producing plutonium for Bombs, and that the lion’s share of the explosive power – and the overwhelming share of the radioactive fallout – of every H-bomb comes from the fissioning of DU atoms that are freely accessed by the military even if they are the leftovers of “peaceful” fuel production for nuclear power plants?
“See ‘The Nuclear Fudge’ at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lK65S5eHRQ&feature=youtu.be“. This 16-minute W5 segment from the Regan era is very informative.
Many Canadian organisations dispute the government’s plan for small nuclear reactors
 Feds throw support behind development of mini nuclear reactors; action plan released, Saskatoon / 650 CKOMThe Canadian PressDec 18, 2020 “……. Among steps in the plan is developing prototypes and demonstration models.,,,,,
Dozens of groups, including opposition parties, some Indigenous organizations and environmentalists, want the government to fight climate change by investing more in renewable energy and energy efficiency rather than in the new reactors. They argue nuclear energy costs far too much money and is far from clean given the growing mound of radioactive waste it generates. O’Regan said the government is actively trying to figure out what do with the dangerous material….. The federal government estimates the global market for SMRs will be worth between $150 billion and $300 billion a year by 2040 but critics question the validity of the estimate. They also wonder who exactly might want one. …https://www.ckom.com/2020/12/18/feds-throw-support-behind-development-of-mini-nuclear-reactors/ |
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NuScale exultant that their scam small nuclear reactors have conned the Canadian government
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NuScale Power Commends Government of Canada on Release of SMR Action Plan, December 18, 2020,PORTLAND, Ore.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–NuScale Power commends the Government of Canada and the Department of Natural Resources (NRCan) for the release of its Small Modular Reactor (SMR) Action Plan, which acknowledges the role that SMR technologies can play in achieving the country’s clean energy goals and sets forth a pathway to advancing nuclear technology in Canada. We are excited about the launch of Canada’s SMR Action Plan and applaud the Canadian government for taking this significant step towards seeing SMR technologies actualized as a key part of its energy sector,” said NuScale Power Chairman and Chief Executive Officer John Hopkins. “NuScale will support this action plan with our proven, reliable, and scalable technology that is suited to meet the specific power needs of regions across Canada.” ….. “NuScale is eager to play a part in helping Canada become a world leader in SMR development,” added Hopkins. “We have strong partnerships in the Canadian energy sector that augment our technology’s alignment with Canadian needs and look forward to strengthening them as the SMR Action Plan is implemented. This includes supply chain partnerships across Canada that we are prepared to leverage for projects in Canada, and around the world.” NuScale has signed Memoranda of Understandings with Ontario Power Generation and Bruce Power…… https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20201218005700/en/NuScale-Power-Commends-Government-of-Canada-on-Release-of-SMR-Action-Plan |
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Growing political opposition in Canada to Small Nuclear Reactors
 Hill Times -Political opposition growing to new nuclear reactors, https://wordpress.com/read/feeds/74740422/posts/3066856410By EVA SCHACHERL DECEMBER 9, 2020 The nuclear industry and Liberals have not only been laying the groundwork for government funding. It appears they have been ensuring that the framework for nuclear energy in Canada gets even more accommodating. Natural Resources Minister Seamus O’Regan has been hyping so-called next-generation reactors for months, portraying the industry as a future utopia.
Many Canadians are anxious to see what our energy future will be. Politically, it’s a question that stirs passions from Alberta’s oil patch to Ontario’s cancelled wind farms. But political debate is picking up around our nuclear energy future. And with good reason. Government-funded expansion of the nuclear industry, and a simultaneous watering-down of regulations, could be the Liberal government’s toxic legacy.
Natural Resources Minister Seamus O’Regan has been hyping so-called next-generation reactors for months. A recent nuclear industry summit—hosted with federal funding—portrayed nuclear energy expansion in Canada as a future utopia. The Green Party caucus, the NDP’s natural resources critic Richard Cannings, and the Bloc Québécois’s environment critic Monique Pauzé have all slammed O’Regan’s expected small modular reactor (SMR) “action plan.” They say it does not belong in a plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Energy efficiency, wind, solar, and storage technologies are ready to build, and much cheaper, according to Lazard, a financial advisory and asset management firm. The prototype reactors will take years, if not decades, to develop, and could absorb hundreds of millions, even billions, in taxpayer subsidies, according to Greenpeace Canada.
That would mean opportunities lost for those dollars to build many times the amount of zero-emission energy with renewables and energy-efficiency projects. The latter would not create toxic radioactive waste for future generations to contend with. Independent research says that a nuclear solution for remote communities (as proposed by the government) is likely to cost 10 times more to build and operate than the alternatives. It seems inevitable that the Liberal action plan will soon be launched with generous handouts for the nuclear industry, whose aspiring players in Canada today include SNC-Lavalin and U.S. corporations like Westinghouse and GE-Hitachi Nuclear Energy. Few Canadians are aware that “Canadian” Nuclear Laboratories (CNL) is owned by a consortium of SNC-Lavalin and two U.S. firms, Fluor and Jacobs.
In recent years, the nuclear industry and Liberals have not only been laying the groundwork for government funding. It appears they’ve also been ensuring that the framework for nuclear energy in Canada gets even more accommodating. The biggest step was exempting most new reactors from the Impact Assessment Act, which, in 2019, replaced the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act. This was deemed so important to the nuclear industry’s future that the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) lobbied the Liberal government to exempt small reactors—and won. So much for the CNSC, the regulator that’s supposed to oversee the industry, being seen as objective and “world class.”
The Impact Assessment Act was intended to create “greater public trust in impact assessment and decision-making.” But there will be no federal assessment of nuclear reactors up to 200 thermal MW in size, nor of new reactors built at existing nuclear plants (up to 900 MWth). Yet new tidal power projects, as well as offshore wind farms with 10 or more turbines, need an assessment under the regulations, as do many new fossil fuel projects.
Also exempted from federal assessment is the “on-site storage of irradiated nuclear fuel or nuclear waste” associated with small modular reactors. This will make it easier for SMRs’ radioactive waste to be potentially left in the northern, remote, and First Nations communities, where they are proposed to be built. The nuclear regulator has also been responsible for introducing a suite of “regulatory documents” on reactor decommissioning and radioactive waste that environmental groups have called “sham regulation.”
Meanwhile, the bureaucrats at the CNSC have been busy signing a memorandum of cooperation with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Small Modular Reactors. This agreement means that Canada can recognize U.S. reviews of reactor designs in order to “streamline the review process.” CNSC has also outlined its plan in a document called Strategy for Readiness to Regulate Advanced Reactor Technologies. In a nutshell, the document says that regulations for new reactor designs will have to be flexible. It notes that CNSC regulated the earlier generation of water-cooled reactors (such as CANDUs) at first based on “objectives” in the 1950s and ‘60s. Then, as experience with these reactors evolved, regulations became more detailed and prescriptive. It says the same may have to happen with the new next-gen reactor designs.
In the 1950s, there were indeed few “prescriptive requirements” for the newfangled reactors. In 1952, the NRX reactor at Chalk River, Ont., had a meltdown. It was the first large-scale nuclear reactor accident in the world and took two years to clean up—which, by 1950s standards, included pumping 10,000 curies of long-lived fission products into a nearby sandy area. Then in 1958, the NRU reactor at Chalk River—a test bed for developing fuels and materials for the CANDU reactor—had a major accident, a fuel-rod fire that contaminated the building and areas downwind. It took 600 workers and military personnel to do the top-secret clean-up. Let’s hope today’s regulators and lawmakers can learn from history. Does Canada really need or want to be the “leading-edge” testing ground for new experimental nuclear reactors? Canadians should have their say in a referendum—or at the ballot box. |
With Small Nuclear Reactors (SMRs) Canada is back in the nuclear weapons business
Canada re-engages in the Nuclear Weapons Business with SMRs, December 3, 2020, WWW.HILLTIMES.COM/2020/12/03/CANADA-RE-ENTERS-NUCLEAR-WEAPONS-BUSINESS-WITH-SMALL-MODULAR-REACTORS/274591
Natural Resources Minister Seamus O’Regan is expected to announce within weeks his government’s action plan for development of “small modular” nuclear reactors (SMRs).
SMR developers already control the federally-subsidized Chalk River Laboratories and other facilities owned by the crown corporation, Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL). Canada is now poised to play a supporting role in the global nuclear weapons business, much as it did during World War II.
Canada was part of the Manhattan project with the U.S. and U.K. to produce atomic bombs. In 1943 the three countries agreed to build a facility in Canada to produce plutonium for nuclear weapons. Researchers who trained at the Chalk River Laboratories went on to launch weapons programs in the U.K. and France. Chalk River provided plutonium for U.S. weapons until the 1960s.
Canada’s Nuclear Schizophrenia describes a long tradition of nuclear cooperation with the United States: “For example, in the early 1950s, the U.S. Navy used Canadian technology to design a small reactor for powering its nuclear submarines.” C.D. Howe, after creating AECL in 1952 to develop nuclear reactors and sell weapons plutonium, remarked that “we in Canada are not engaged in military development, but the work that we are doing at Chalk River is of importance to military developments.”
The uranium used in the 1945 Hiroshima bomb may have been mined and refined in Canada. According to Jim Harding’s book Canada’s Deadly Secret: Saskatchewan Uranium and the Global Nuclear System, from 1953 to 1969, all the uranium mined in Saskatchewan went to make U.S. nuclear weapons. Canada remains the world’s second-largest producer of uranium. North America’s only currently operating uranium processing facility is owned by Cameco in Port Hope, Ontario.
Canada built India’s CIRUS reactor, which started up in 1960 and produced the plutonium for India’s first nuclear explosion in 1974. Canada also built Pakistan’s first nuclear reactor, which started up in 1972. Although this reactor was not used to make weapons plutonium, it helped train the engineers who eventually exploded Pakistan’s first nuclear weapons in 1998.
In 2015 the Harper Government contracted a multi-national consortium called Canadian National Energy Alliance – now comprised of two U.S. companies, Fluor and Jacobs, along with Canada’s SNC-Lavalin – to operate AECL’s nuclear sites, the main one being at Chalk River. Fluor operates the Savannah River Site, a South Carolina nuclear weapons facility, under contract to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). Jacobs also has contracts at DOE weapons facilities and is part of a consortium that operates the U.K. Atomic Weapons Establishment.
Joe McBrearty, the president of the consortium’s subsidiary that operates Chalk River and other federal nuclear sites, was a U.S. Navy nuclear submarine commander and then chief operating officer for the DOE’s nuclear laboratories between 2010 and 2019.
All three consortium partners have investments in SMRs and are ramping up research and development at AECL’s Chalk River facility. Some SMR designs would use uranium enriched to levels well beyond those in current reactors; others would use plutonium fuel; others would use fuel dissolved in molten salt. All of these pose new and problematic weapons proliferation risks.
Rolls Royce, an original consortium partner that makes reactors for the U.K.’s nuclear submarines, is lead partner in a U.K. consortium (including SNC-Lavalin) that was recently funded by the U.K. government to advance that country’s SMR program.
A military bromance: SMRs to support and cross-subsidize the UK nuclear weapons program, says “Industry and government in the UK openly promote SMRs on the grounds that an SMR industry would support the nuclear weapons program (in particular the submarine program) by providing a pool of trained nuclear experts, and that in so doing an SMR industry will cross-subsidize the weapons program.”
The article quotes a 2017 Rolls Royce study as follows: “expansion of a nuclear-capable skilled workforce through a civil nuclear UK SMR programme would relieve the Ministry of Defence of the burden of developing and retaining skills and capability.”
The SMR connection to weapons and submarines could hardly be clearer – without SMRs, the U.S. and U.K. will experience a shortage of trained engineers to maintain their nuclear weapons programs.
With the takeover of AECL’s Chalk River Laboratories by SMR developers, and growing federal government support for SMRs, Canada has become part of a global regime linking nuclear power and nuclear weapons.
Federal funding for new nuclear reactors is a serious mistake that blocks swift ation on climate
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Canada’s Coalition for Responsible Energy Development sceptical about Small Nuclear Reactors
Questions abound about New Brunswick’s embrace of small nuclear reactors
Critics question business case, but CEO says the market is ‘screaming’ for the units, Jacques Poitras · CBC News Dec 07, 2020
When Mike Holland talks about small modular nuclear reactors, he sees dollar signs.
When the Green Party hears about them, they see danger signs.
The loquacious Progressive Conservative minister of energy development recently quoted NB Power’s eye-popping estimates of the potential economic impact of the reactors: thousands of jobs and a $1 billion boost to the provincial economy.
“New Brunswick is positioned to not only participate in this opportunity, but to be a world leader in the SMR field,” Holland said in the legislature last month.
Green MLAs David Coon and Kevin Arseneau responded cheekily by ticking off the Financial and Consumer Services Commission’s checklist on how to spot a scam.
Is the sales pitch from a credible source? Is the windfall being promised by a reputable institution? Is the risk reasonable?
For small nuclear reactors, they said, the answer to all those questions is no.
“The last thing we need to do is pour more public money down the nuclear-power drain,” Coon said, reminding MLAs of the Point Lepreau refurbishment project that went $1 billion over budget. …….
Premier Blaine Higgs is a fervent supporter, but in the last provincial election the Liberals promised they’d do even more than Higgs to promote them.
Under Brian Gallant, the Liberals handed $10 million to two Saint John companies working on SMRs, ARC Nuclear and Moltex Energy.
Greens point to previous fiascoes
The Greens and other opponents of nuclear power fear SMRS are the latest in a long line of silver-bullet fiascoes, from the $23 million spent on the Bricklin in 1975 to $63.4 million in loans and loan guarantees to the Atcon Group a decade ago.
“It seems that [ARC and Moltex] have been targeting New Brunswick for another big handout … because it’s going to take billions of dollars to build these things, if they ever get off the drawing board,” said Susan O’Donnell, a University of New Brunswick researcher.
O’Donnell, who studies technology adoption in communities, is part of a small new group called the Coalition for Responsible Energy Development formed this year to oppose SMRs.
“What we really need here is a reasonable discussion about the pros and cons of it,” she said……..
What we didn’t see was a market analysis,” O’Donnell said. “How viable is the market? … They’re all based on a hypothetical market that probably doesn’t exist.”
O’Donnell said her group asked for the full report but was told it’s confidential because it contains sensitive commercial information………..
The market is screaming for this product,” Rory O’Sullivan, CEO of Moltex said, adding “all of the utilities” in Canada are interested in Moltex’s reactors ……
ARC’s CEO Norm Sawyer is more specific, guessing 30 per cent of his SMR sales will be in Atlantic Canada, 30 per cent in Ontario and 40 per cent in Alberta and Saskatchewan — all provincial power grids.
O’Donnell said it’s an important question because without a large number of guaranteed sales, the high cost of manufacturing SMRs would make the initiative a money-loser.
The cost of building the world’s only functioning SMR, in Russia, was four times what was expected.
An Australian government agency said initial cost estimates for such major projects “are often initially too low” and can “overrun.”
Up-front costs can be huge
University of British Columbia physicist M.V. Ramana, who has authored studies on the economics of nuclear power, said SMRs face the same financial reality as any large-scale manufacturing.
“You’re going to spend a huge amount of money on the basic fixed costs” at the outset, he said, with costs per unit becoming more viable only after more units are built and sold.
He estimates a company would have to build and sell more than 700 SMRs to break even, and said there are not enough buyers for that to happen. ….
O’Sullivan says: “In fact, just the first one alone looks like it will still be economical,” he said. “In reality, you probably need a few … but you’re talking about one or two, maximum three [to make a profit] because you don’t need these big factories.”
‘Paper designs’ prove nothing, says expert
Ramana doesn’t buy it.
“These are all companies that have been started by somebody who’s been in the nuclear industry for some years, has a bright idea, finds an angel investor who’s given them a few million dollars,” he said.
“They have a paper design, or a Power Point design. They have not built anything. They have not tested anything. To go from that point … to a design that can actually be constructed on the field is an enormous amount of work.
Both CEOs acknowledge the skepticism about SMRs.
“I understand New Brunswick has had its share of good investments and its share of what we consider questionable investments,” said ARC’s CEO Norm Sawyer….
But he said ARC’s SMR is based on a long-proven technology and is far past the on-paper design stage “so you reduce the risk.”
Moltex is now completing the first phase of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission’s review of its design, a major hurdle. ARC completed that phase last year.
But, Ramana said there are problems with both designs. Moltex’s molten salt model has had “huge technical challenges” elsewhere while ARC’s sodium-cooled system has encountered “operational difficulties.” …..
federal Natural Resources Minister Seamus O’Regan told CBC earlier this year that he’s “very excited” about SMRs…..
O’Donnell said while nuclear power doesn’t emit greenhouse gases, it’s hardly a clean technology because of the spent nuclear fuel waste.
Government support is key
She also wonders why, if SMRs make so much sense, ARC and Moltex are relying so much on government money rather than private capital.
…….. So far, Ottawa hasn’t put up any funding for ARC or Moltex. During the provincial election campaign, Higgs implied federal money was imminent, but there’s been no announcement in the almost three months since then.
Last month the federal government announced $20 million for Terrestrial Energy, an Ontario company working on SMRs.
…….O’Donnell said her group plans to continue asking questions about SMRs.
“I think what we really need is to have an honest conversation about what these are so that New Brunswickers can have all the facts on the table,” she said. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/questions-small-nuclear-reactors-1.5828784
1 This Month
26 April – Chernobyl: Inside the Meltdown airs on National Geographic on Sunday 26th April from 4pm
29 April – Nuclear Expert Webinar #1 – Radiation Impacts on Families with Mary Olson and Cindy Folkers
- 12:15 PM MT – 1:45 PM MT
- Location: Virtual – REGISTER TODAY
4 May -West Suburban Peace Coalition to discuss Iran war at May Educational Forum
Monday, May 4, 7:00 – 8:00 PM Central Standard Time
Title: : How Trump’s Narrative Tries to Shape the Reality of the War on Iran.
Contact Walt Zlotow, zlotow@hotmail.com 630 442 3045 for further information
14 May – online event From Bombs to Data Centres: the Face of Nuclear Colonialism
Pine Ridge Uranium is the real threat, not Tehran- Tell Burgum: Stop the Extraction.
Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes – A good documentary on Chernobyl on SBS available On Demand for the next 3 weeks– https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/tv-program/chernobyl-the-lost-tapes/2352741955560
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
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