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Growing climate, nuclear risks spark doomsday fears

Past year has prompted warnings of armageddon amid war in Ukraine and concerns over higher rate of warming, but has also seen COVID pandemic recede and other positive signs

https://www.timesofisrael.com/growing-climate-nuclear-risks-spark-doomsday-fears/ By SHAUN TANDON 29 Dec 22, WASHINGTON (AFP) — For thousands of years, predictions of apocalypse have come and gone. But with dangers rising from nuclear war and climate change, does the planet need to at least begin contemplating the worst?

When the world rang in 2022, few would have expected the year to feature the US president speaking of the risk of doomsday, following Russia’s threats to go nuclear in its invasion of Ukraine.

“We have not faced the prospect of Armageddon since Kennedy and the Cuban missile crisis” in 1962, Joe Biden said in October.

And on the year that humanity welcomed its eighth billion member, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned that the planet was on a “highway to climate hell.”

In extremes widely attributed to climate change, floods submerged one-third of Pakistan, China sweat under an unprecedented 70-day heatwave, and crops failed in the Horn of Africa — all while the world lagged behind on the UN-blessed goal of checking warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels.

Biggest risk yet of nuclear war?

The Global Challenges Foundation, a Swedish group that assesses catastrophic risks, warned in an annual report that the threat of nuclear weapons use was the greatest since 1945 when the United States destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki in history’s only atomic attacks.

The report warned that an all-out exchange of nuclear weapons, besides causing an enormous loss of life, would trigger clouds of dust that would obscure the sun, reducing the capacity to grow food and ushering in “a period of chaos and violence, during which most of the surviving world population would die from hunger.”

Kennette Benedict, a lecturer at the University of Chicago who led the report’s nuclear section, said risks were even greater than during the Cuban Missile Crisis as Russian President Vladimir Putin appeared less restrained by advisors.

While any Russian nuclear strike would likely involve small “tactical” weapons, experts fear a quick escalation if the United States responds.

“Then we’re in a completely different ballgame,” said Benedict, a senior advisor to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which in January will unveil its latest assessment of the “doomsday clock” set since 2021 at 100 seconds to midnight.

Amid the focus on Ukraine, US intelligence believes North Korea is ready for a seventh nuclear test, Biden has effectively declared dead a deal on Iran’s contested nuclear work and tensions between India and Pakistan have remained at a low boil.

Benedict also faulted the Biden administration’s nuclear posture review which reserved the right for the United States to use nuclear weapons in “extreme circumstances.”

“I think there’s been a kind of steady erosion of the ability to manage nuclear weapons,” she said.

Charting worst-case climate risks

UN experts estimated ahead of November talks in Egypt that the world was on track to warming of 2.1 to 2.9 C — but some outside analysts put the figure well higher, with greenhouse gas emissions in 2021 again hitting a record despite pushes to renewable energy.

Luke Kemp, a Cambridge University expert on existential risks, said the possibility of higher warming was drawing insufficient attention, which he blamed on the consensus culture of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and scientists’ fears of being branded alarmist.

“There has been a strong incentive to err on the side of least drama,” he said.

“What we really need are more complex assessments of how risks would cascade around the world.”

Climate change could cause ripple effects on food, with multiple breadbasket regions failing, fueling hunger and eventually political unrest and conflict.

Kemp warned against extrapolating from a single year or event. But a research paper he co-authored noted that even a two-degree temperature rise would put the Earth in territory uncharted since the Ice Age.

Using a medium-high scenario on emissions and population growth, it found that two billion people by 2070 could live in areas with a mean temperature of 29 C (84.2 F), straining water resources — including between India and Pakistan.

Cases for optimism

The year, however, was not all grim. While China ended the year with a surge of COVID-19 deaths, vaccinations helped much of the world turn the page on virus, which the World Health Organization estimated in May contributed to the deaths of 14.9 million people in 2020 and 2021.

December 30, 2022 Posted by Christina Macpherson | 2 WORLD, climate change | Leave a comment

How did the US nuclear industry fare in 2022?

Nuclear plants big and small are getting support from the feds. Still, problems persist — TerraPower can’t source fuel, Oklo and NuScale are tangled in red tape, and more.

Canary Media 28 December 2022 Eric Wesoff

The U.S. nuclear power market continued to sputter in 2022 as it faced regulatory, technical and financial setbacks — despite solid support from the federal government.

This mirrors the global nuclear scene; plant closings and construction delays have resulted in nuclear falling to just 9.8 percent of global power generation in 2021, its lowest level since the 1980s, according to the World Nuclear Industry 2022 annual report.

The United States generates more nuclear power than any other country in the world, with about 95 gigawatts of capacity, followed by China, but construction of new plants has been plagued by cost and schedule overruns, as well as an inability to keep up with the plunging costs of natural gas and renewable energy sources. Still, nuclear power provides a crucial 20 percent of U.S. electricity from the 92 light-water reactors that were built in a seemingly unreplicable construction binge in the 1970s and ‘80s.

Some of these plants are struggling financially, many are approaching their decommission dates, and the only new large reactors constructed in recent memory, at the Plant Vogtle in Georgia, have been calamitous money pits brimming with incompetence and even fraud.

Here are the U.S. nuclear industry’s highs and lows from 2022.

Diablo Canyon lives

Diablo Canyon, California’s last remaining nuclear plant, was granted up to $1.1 billion in support from the U.S. Department of Energy in November, which might allow the two-reactor plant to remain in business. ……………..

Still, Diablo faces a reckoning with the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission regarding its license, as the plant must now confront years of deferred maintenance in the run-up to its anticipated retirement.

Fuel loading at Vogtle

On October 17, Georgia Power reported that “fuel load” into the Plant Vogtle Unit 3 reactor core had been completed, marking an overdue milestone in the bumpy journey of getting two new reactors at this power plant up and running. During the fuel-loading process, technicians and operators transferred scores of fuel assemblies one by one to the Unit 3 reactor…………………….

On December 7, Vogtle’s Unit 4 completed cold hydro testing, the penultimate step before hot functional testing, which is scheduled to begin early next year.

The two units are the first new nuclear units to be built in the U.S. in more than three decades — and they haven’t made nuclear power look good. The project is six years overdue and will cost utility customers over $30 billion, more than double the original price tag. DOE’s Loan Programs Office provided more than $12 billion in loan guarantees to help complete Vogtle’s expansion.

DOE and IRA love nuclear power

The Biden administration is committed to maintaining the existing nuclear fleet and bringing innovative, new nuclear-reactor designs to market.

The Inflation Reduction Act provides generous production credits for existing nuclear plants and added premiums for meeting prevailing-wage requirements. These credits offer a potential $30 billion lifeline to struggling plants at risk of early retirement.

The IRA also provides a tax credit for advanced nuclear reactors and a credit of up to 30 percent for microreactors, while devoting $700 million to support the development of high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU), the highly enriched fuel used in many advanced nuclear reactors.

This funding is in addition to the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law’s $6 billion Civil Nuclear Credit program, which lets existing U.S. reactors bid on credits to help support their continued operations. The DOE’s Loan Programs Office also has $11 billion in funding for nuclear plants and nuclear supply chains, according to Jigar Shah, director of the office.

………………………….. TerraPower and dozens of other advanced nuclear startups require a concentrated form of fuel — HALEU. But the only current commercial supplier of HALEU is Tenex, a Russian state-owned company. That wasn’t a great situation even before Russia invaded Ukraine.

In mid-December, TerraPower announced that it has pushed back the planned start date for its reactor because depending on HALEU sourced from Russia had become an unworkable business plan. “Given the lack of fuel availability now, and that there has been no construction started on new fuel enrichment facilities, TerraPower is anticipating a minimum of a two-year delay to being able to bring the Natrium reactor into operation,” said CEO Chris Levesque.

The world’s fleet of light-water reactors runs almost entirely on fuel enriched to 3 to 5 percent U-235, which is classified as low-enriched uranium (LEU). In contrast, the vast majority of non-light-water reactor designs in development, like TerraPower’s, run on enrichments of 5 to 20 percent (HALEU).

X-energy goes public via SPAC

X-energy, a developer of small modular nuclear reactors and fuel, is going public through the magic of a merger with Ares Acquisition Corporation, a publicly traded special-purpose acquisition company…………… Once the disreputable domain of pink-sheet over-the-counter stocks, SPACs have become an acceptable way for companies to go public without the burden of revenue or the actual due diligence most public companies go through. ………………………………………………..

NuScale’s NRC blues………….

https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/nuclear/how-did-the-us-nuclear-industry-fare-in-2022—

December 30, 2022 Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs, USA | Leave a comment

US spies pushed Twitter to censor ‘anti-Ukraine narratives’ – media

more

https://www.rt.com/news/568879-twitter-files-cia-collusion/ 28 Dec 22

New batch of of files exposes collusion with ‘other government agencies’.

The Pentagon, CIA and other US intelligence and law-enforcement agencies became increasingly “more aggressive” with takedown requests, the latest trove of Twitter files has revealed. The documents suggest the agencies were effectively pushing the platform to censor foreign-policy stories that ran against the Washington-approved narrative.

The files show the FBI acting as doorman to a vast program of social media surveillance and censorship, encompassing agencies across the federal government – from the State Department to the Pentagon to the CIA,” journalist Matt Taibbi wrote in the Christmas Eve edition of the Twitter Files, released with the blessing of the social media platform’s owner, Elon Musk.

Thousands of censorship requests flowed to Twitter from what were termed OGA” in the documents, or “Other Government Organizations,” through the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force.

Twitter executives often struggled to validate government claims, but were under constant pressure to find evidence to blame any foreign actor, Russia in particular.

“Found no links to Russia,” an unnamed analyst said in one of the emails, later suggesting he could “brainstorm” to “find a stronger connection.” Former Trust and Safety chief Yoel Roth admitted in another instance that he’d found “no real matches using the info.”

Internal communications show that Twitter had been getting so many requests that its executives had to improvise a system for prioritizing them. The feds had dedicated personnel tasked with tailoring takedown requests to Twitter’s policies for faster processing, which the execs acknowledged as “odd,” but even then the company often struggled to justify censorship.

“Many people wonder if Internet platforms receive direction from intelligence agencies about moderation of foreign policy news stories. It appears Twitter did, in some cases by way of the FITF/FBI,” Taibbi wrote. At least some of these directives originated at the CIA, according to former agent and whistleblower John Kiriakou, who said he “recognized the formatting.”

The feds sometimes sent massive batches of over 1,000 accounts lined up for “digital execution,” with only a brief explanation of the alleged problems. On multiple occasions they accused “Russian agents” of directing accounts that highlighted “predominantly anti-Ukraine narratives” or documented “purported rights abuses committed by Ukrainians.”

Another intelligence assessment sent to Twitter claimed that accounts spreading information about “neo-Nazis” in Ukraine were part of a Kremlin-controlled propaganda campaign and must be banned.

In what Taibbi called a “damning admission,” an unnamed former CIA-turned-Twitter executive once noted that the “government partners” were getting increasingly “aggressive” with their takedown requests.

“Due to a lack of technical evidence on our end, I’ve generally left it be, waiting for more evidence,” he said about the InfoBRICS account. He further argued that since “BRICS is an inherently Russia-dominated economic organization” it was “always likely…directed by the Kremlin.”

“Our window on that is closing, given that government partners are becoming more aggressive on attribution and reporting on it…I’m going to go ahead with suspension and marking the domain UNSAFE.”

Spearheaded by Taibbi in cooperation with fellow reporters Bari Weiss, Lee Fang, and others, the Twitter Files have shed light on several controversial decisions made by the company, including material surrounding the suspension of ex-President Donald Trump, the practice of shadow banning, as well as a site-wide ban on a New York Post report about the foreign business dealings of Hunter Biden, the son of President Joe Biden.

The files also explained how the US intelligence community worked hand-in-glove with the platform to flag speech for suspension that the US government deemed “misinformation,” and showed how the FBI and Twitter locked horns over the agency’s claims of increased activity by ‘propaganda’ bots, of which Twitter said it found no evidence.

December 30, 2022 Posted by Christina Macpherson | media, secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA | Leave a comment

Every social media firm censors for US government – Musk

Platforms remove content at the “explicit direction” of US federal agencies, the Twitter CEO has claimed.

Rt.com 28 Dec 22,

All social media platforms work with the US government to censor content, Twitter CEO Elon Musk claimed on Tuesday. Documents released by Musk following his purchase of Twitter showed that the platform colluded with the FBI, CIA, Pentagon and other government agencies to suppress information on elections, Ukraine, and Covid-19.

“*Every* social media company is engaged in heavy censorship, with significant involvement of and, at times, explicit direction of the government,” Musk tweeted, adding that “Google frequently makes links disappear, for example.”

Musk was referring to internal Twitter communications published by journalist Matt Taibbi with his approval, which suggested that the platform’s senior executives held regular meetings with members of the FBI and CIA, during which the agencies gave them lists of “hundreds of problem accounts” to suspend in the run-up to the 2020 election.

In addition to Twitter, the government was in contact “with virtually every major tech firm,” Taibbi claimed. “These included Facebook, Microsoft, Verizon, Reddit, even Pinterest.” CIA agents “nearly always” sat in on meetings of these firms with the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force, Taibbi claimed, explaining that although this task force was convened to fight alleged election interference by foreign states, it made “mountains of domestic moderation requests.”

A lawsuit filed earlier this year by the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana alleges that officials from no fewer than 12 government agencies met weekly with representatives of Twitter, Facebook, and other Big Tech firms in 2020 to decide which narratives and users to censor, with topics ranging from alleged election interference to Covid-19…………………………….
https://www.rt.com/news/569016-musk-social-media-censorship/

December 30, 2022 Posted by Christina Macpherson | secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA | 3 Comments

“Nuclear Sharing” – USA’s obscene system to turn non-nuclear weapons countries into nuclear attackers/targets.

The Steadfast Noon exercise will practice a controversial arrangement known as nuclear sharing, under which the United States installs nuclear equipment on fighter jets of select non-nuclear NATO countries and train their pilots to carry out nuclear strike with U.S. nuclear bombs.

NATO Steadfast Noon Exercise And Nuclear Modernization in Europe,

By Hans Kristensen • October 17, 2022,

Today, Monday October 17, 2022, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) will begin a two-week long exercise in Europe to train aircrews in using U.S. non-strategic nuclear bombs. The exercise, known as Steadfast Noon, is centered at Kleine Brogel Air Base in Belgium, one of six airbases in Europe that store U.S. nuclear bombs. The exercise takes place midst significant modernizations at nuclear bases across Europe.

The arrangement is controversial because the United States as a party to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) has promised not to hand over nuclear weapons to other countries, and the non-nuclear countries in the sharing arrangement have promised not to receive nuclear weapons from the nuclear weapon states. In peacetime the nuclear weapons are under U.S. control, but the arrangement means that they would be handed over to the non-nuclear country in war time. The arrangement was in place before the NPT was signed so it is not a violation of the letter of the treaty. But it can be said to violate the spirit and has been an irritant for years.

Steadfast Noon exercises are held once every year, but this year is unique because the exercise will take place during the largest conventional war in Europe since World War II with considerable tension and uncertainty resulting from Russia’s war in Ukraine. Moreover, Steadfast Noon is expected to more or less coincide with a large Russian strategic nuclear exercise. For NATO officials, other than Putin’s war in Ukraine, this is all routine. But for the public, it is but the latest development in rising tensions and unprecedented fears about nuclear war.

According to NATO, Steadfast Noon will involve 14 countries (less than half of the 30 NATO allies) and up to 60 aircraft. That involves fourth-generation F-16s and F-15Es as well as fifth-generation F-35A and F-22 fighter jets. A number of tankers and surveillance aircraft will also take part. Although the exercise is practicing NATO’s non-strategic nuclear forces, a couple of U.S. strategic B-52 bombers will also participate. Training flights will take place over Belgium and the United Kingdom as well as over the North Sea. There might also be flights over Germany and the Netherlands.

Practicing Nuclear Bomb Sharing

The Steadfast Noon exercise will practice a controversial arrangement known as nuclear sharing, under which the United States installs nuclear equipment on fighter jets of select non-nuclear NATO countries and train their pilots to carry out nuclear strike with U.S. nuclear bombs.

“If NATO was to conduct a nuclear mission in a conflict,” NATO says, “the B-61 [sic] weapons would be carried by certified Allied aircraft…However, a nuclear mission can only be undertaken after explicit political approval is given by NATO’s Nuclear Planning Group (NPG) and authorisation is received from the US President and UK Prime Minister.” It is unclear why the U.K. Prime Minister would have to authorize employment of U.S. nuclear weapons, and unless NATO territory had been attacked with nuclear weapons first, it seems unlikely that the 29 countries in the NPG would be able to agree to approve of employment of non-strategic nuclear weapons from bases in Europe.

NATO disclosed earlier this year that seven NATO countries contribute dual-capable aircraft to the nuclear sharing mission. The countries were not identified but five are widely known: Belgium, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, and the United States. The sixth country is probably Turkey (despite rumors that it was no longer part of the mission), in which case some Turkish F-16s are still equipped to deliver B61 bombs. The seventh country is a mystery, but might possibly be the United Kingdom, in which case some British Eurofighters would have a nuclear mission with U.S. bombs [Note: a UK role has not been confirmed].

Nuclear Base Modernizations

During the past several years, the nuclear bases and the infrastructure that support the nuclear sharing mission in Europe have been undergoing significant upgrades, including cables, command and control systems, weapons maintenance and custodial facilities, security perimeters, and runway and tarmac areas.

There are currently six active sites in Europe that store U.S. nuclear bombs: Kleine Brogel air base in Belgium, Büchel air base in Germany, Aviano and Ghedi air bases in Italy, Volkel air base in the Netherlands, and possibly Incirlik in Turkey. The estimated number of weapons at each site is based on the number of active vaults, aircraft, and other information:

Each of these bases have one or two dozen active vaults (Weapons Storage Security System, WS3) inside as many protective aircraft shelters. Ramstein air base in Germany used to be the largest storage site in Europe but only 7 vaults remain active possibly for training and transfer. All weapons were withdrawn from Lakenheath before 2007 but the United Kingdom was recently added to the nuclear infrastructure storage modernization program, which means there are now eight active WS3 sites in Europe:

The modernizations at the various bases vary depending on capacity, location, and host country. At Kleine Brogel Air Base in Belgium,…………………………

At Büchel Air Base in Germany…………………….

At Volkel Air Base in the Netherlands,…………

Ghedi Air Base in Italy………….

Upgrades of Aviano Air Base in Italy and Incirlik Air Base in Turkey……….

Weapons Modernization……………………..

Finally, the existing B61 nuclear bombs will soon be replaced by the enhanced B61-12 guided nuclear bomb. Development is essentially complete and full-scale production of about 480 B61-12s is expected to begin soon. The new weapon is thought to have the same yield range as the current B61-4: 0.3, 1.5, 10 and 50 kilotons. Training of the units in Europe to receive the new weapon is scheduled to begin in early-2023 and the first weapons potentially arriving at the first base in late-2023 or 2024.

In addition to the non-strategic fighter jets F-15E, F-16, F-35A, and Tornado, the B61-12 will also be integrated on the B-2 and B-21 strategic bombers. ecause of the increased provided by the tail kit, all the digital aircraft that can make use of it (all except F-16 and Tornado) will be able to hold at risk a wide range of targets. The combination of increased accuracy and lower-yield options on non-strategic and strategic stealth aircraft will significantly increase the capability of the gravity bomb mission.

December 29, 2022 Posted by Christina Macpherson | EUROPE, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Canada’s first new nuclear power reactor in 30 years has embarked on a crucial review. Can it pass quickly?

GE says it’s the simplest reactor it has ever designed. Such claims are common among SMR developers, and are almost entirely untested.

“The vendors would really like to have basically no guards with guns at a reactor site, if they can avoid it,”

While a solar or wind farm can typically be built in a few years, nuclear reactors have been known to take a decade or longer. With governments and utilities pondering how to achieve net-zero greenhouse emissions by mid-century, this has proved to be a significant competitive disadvantage for nuclear power.

Globe and Mail, Dec. 28, 2022, Matthew McClearn

On the shores of Lake Ontario, about 70 kilometres east of Toronto, something is happening that hasn’t happened in Canada in well over a generation: Workers are breaking ground for a new nuclear reactor.

Ontario Power Generation plans to construct a GE-Hitachi BWRX-300 at its Darlington Nuclear Generating Station in Clarington. To do that it needs permission from the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC)

The utility’s application to the CNSC, which it submitted in the fall, will be the first real test of GE-Hitachi’s claims about the reactor, a new model that is not yet used anywhere else in the world. The uncertain process could have dramatic implications for what this new reactor will ultimately cost, how long it will take to build – and whether anyone else will want to build one.

The reactor’s design is novel in several respects. At 300 megawatts, the BWRX-300 is marketed as a small modular reactor, or SMR. (Darlington’s existing four reactors each produce 935 megawatts.) In considering the application, the CNSC will be the first regulator in the world to review an SMR for large-scale power generation.

This will be the first large nuclear power reactor the CNSC has reviewed since 1993. And, if built, it would be the first nuclear power reactor in Canadian history that wasn’t of the homegrown CANDU design.

GE-Hitachi has said the BWRX-300 will be 60 per cent less expensive per megawatt than a typical reactor, making it the cheapest SMR on the market, and that it can be built in as few as 24 months. And the company has touted “passive safety systems.” Even if operators walked away, it has said, the reactor would cool itself without power for a whole week, at minimum. The company also claims the BWRX-300′s environmental footprint is less than that of larger reactors. GE says it’s the simplest reactor it has ever designed.

Such claims are common among SMR developers, and are almost entirely untested. The BWRX-300 “has not gone through any licensing review anywhere, in any country,” said M.V. Ramana, a professor at the University of British Columbia’s School of Public Policy and Global Affairs who researches nuclear energy. “When a design is submitted to a regulator for safety review, the regulators ask questions, and the design starts being changed. And so there is going to be this process of evolution.”…………………………………

Allison Macfarlane, director of UBC’s School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, said SMR vendors have also sought smaller emergency-planning zones in the U.S. And she noted that some vendors argue that SMRs will require less physical security than larger reactors. “The vendors would really like to have basically no guards with guns at a reactor site, if they can avoid it,” she added.

Acquiring regulatory approval to build a newly designed reactor within two or three years is not the norm.

Prof. Macfarlane said there is no hard rule on how long the process takes. The fastest application she has seen before the NRC was a request by the U.S. Navy for an informal review of a reactor for a nuclear aircraft carrier. (The Navy didn’t actually require NRC approval.) The NRC’s review took 18 months, she said.

For a power reactor, the best case scenario before the NRC is three to four years. At worst, the process can stretch out for a decade.

“Usually, there’s just this endless back and forth,” she said.

Prof. Ramana is also skeptical of OPG’s timeline. Most nuclear projects suffer delays, he said. “When it comes to a new reactor design, those delays tend to be much larger. … It should not be a surprise to anyone if this design is going to be quite delayed.”

That accords with GE-Hitachi’s own experiences in the U.S. The company applied to the NRC for final design approval for its Economic Simplified Boiling Water Reactor in 2005. The reactor wasn’t certified until nine years later, in 2014. In 2011, the company applied to the NRC to renew the design certification for its Advanced Boiling Water Reactor, which had first been certified in the 1990s. That process took about a decade.

Even if the CNSC does grant OPG its construction license in record time, delays are not uncommon after construction has commenced. One notorious example is Westinghouse’s AP1000 reactor, which made an outsized contribution to that company’s filing for bankruptcy protection in 2017.

“In the case of the AP1000, the delays happened well after the design was licensed to be constructed,” Prof. Ramana said.

That historical experience notwithstanding, OPG, various levels of government and voices from across the nuclear industry have said that this new reactor will be in service as early as 2028. Meeting that deadline is a matter of no small urgency for the nuclear industry. While a solar or wind farm can typically be built in a few years, nuclear reactors have been known to take a decade or longer. With governments and utilities pondering how to achieve net-zero greenhouse emissions by mid-century, this has proved to be a significant competitive disadvantage for nuclear power…………………..

The CNSC is an administrative tribunal that reports to Parliament through the Minister of Natural Resources. While it doesn’t answer to him, that minister, Jonathan Wilkinson, has promoted SMRs in recent statements. By adopting them early, he said in October, “Canada could realize a significant share of the global exports of technology, goods and services.” In its most recent budget, the federal government earmarked nearly $51-million to improve the CNSC’s capacity to regulate SMRs.

CNSC president Rumina Velshi is also a vocal supporter. She declared in October that SMRs “are likely to be an important part of the next generation of nuclear” and that they “will need to be deployed quicker, less expensively and much more widespread than reactors of the past.” The CNSC has established a new group focused exclusively on SMRs, which will “guide the entire organization on SMR readiness.”

Earlier this year, Ms. Velshi told attendees of a summit on advanced reactors that the CNSC would rise “to the challenge of conducting SMR licensing reviews efficiently and effectively.”

Ms. Velshi is enthusiastic about the CNSC harmonizing its codes and standards with those of regulators of other countries. She has said this is “essential” for SMR deployment worldwide, and has signalled her intent to work closely with the NRC.

In September, the two regulators signed an agreement to collaborate on reviewing the BWRX-300.