It is my pleasure to be here today, to appear before the committee on behalf of Cameco once again, as your study examines the important role of the Canadian nuclear sector and the role it plays in our economy through trade, manufacturing and processing, and high-quality employment; addressing climate change and the transition to cleaner energy; and the advancement of nuclear science and technology, innovation, and research and development.
Cameco firmly believes that a strong natural resource sector that includes a strong and growing nuclear sector will continue to provide a stable foundation for ongoing growth and prosperity for all Canadians. As one of the country's leading sustainable resource developers, Canada's largest industrial employer of aboriginal people, and a major contributor to low-carbon technologies that address climate change, Cameco is proud to be a leader in Canada's nuclear sector.
Based in Saskatoon, Cameco is a significant player in the global uranium market and accounts for just under 20% of total global uranium production. Our portfolio in northern Saskatchewan includes the top two uranium-producing mines in the world, at McArthur River and Cigar Lake. We also maintain production sites in the United States and Kazakhstan, and development opportunities in Australia.
However, Cameco is much more than a mining company. We operate all along the nuclear value chain. Cameco owns uranium refining, conversion, and fuel fabrication facilities in Blind River, Port Hope, and Cobourg, Ontario. We're the sole provider of uranium conversion services for Canadian CANDU reactors, and our manufacturing facilities provide nuclear components for power reactors around the world.
I've been following the testimony of a number of other witnesses before the committee who have done an excellent job highlighting the important and significant contribution that the nuclear sector makes to the Canadian economy and our energy system—60,000 skilled jobs; 16% of Canada's total electricity mix, 60% here in Ontario; a $5-billion industry; and innovation and research and development. Today, then, I would like to focus most of my remarks on the impact that the nuclear sector has in northern Saskatchewan and our approach to community partnerships.
During previous testimony, I believe it was Mr. Harvey—who I see is not here today—who implored our sector to do a better job of telling our story. Mr. Strahl asked a number of questions about public confidence in our nuclear sector. This morning I would like to tell the story of Cameco's approach to indigenous and community relations in northern Saskatchewan and around the world, and the impact that approach has had on public confidence in Cameco's operations.
Indigenous engagement and employment has been a priority for Cameco since our inception in 1988. Our success as a company is directly linked to the long-term, positive partnerships that we have built with first nations, Métis, and other aboriginal communities where we operate. Nearly one third of Cameco's total Canadian workforce is comprised of individuals of first nations or Métis heritage. However, employment opportunities are only one element of Cameco's relationship with our partner communities. This year alone, Cameco, with our partner Areva, has signed two significant partnership agreements in northern Saskatchewan.
In June the “lands of north”—in Dene, “Ya’Thi Néné”—partnership collaboration agreement was signed with three first nation and four northern community partners, based on Cameco's five-pillar approach to community partnerships.
The first pillar is workforce development, with hiring preferences for people from local communities and career awareness so that people who are in elementary and secondary school have the opportunity to move on to post-secondary education, with the understanding that there may be a career available to them in the mining or nuclear sectors.
Second is business development, with a preference for community-owned businesses. It's a significant part of our supply chain, our work with community and aboriginal-owned businesses in northern Saskatchewan.
Third is community engagement, with new structures for engagement and consultation.
Fourth is environment stewardship, with ongoing community-based environmental monitoring of our operations.
The final pillar is community investment, with production-based payments paid to a community trust that the community can use in ways that it sees fit.
This comprehensive and unique agreement builds on an enduring partnership for the development of uranium resources in the Athabasca basin of northern Saskatchewan.
In addition to the lands of the north partnership, Cameco and Areva also announced the Six Rivers Fund, a unique legacy trust fund managed by an independent board of directors focused on youth education, sports, recreation, and health and wellness. The Six Rivers Fund will be supported from the profits of uranium recovery projects at our Key Lake operations.
These projects will be supported using the interest earned on the trust fund investments. In the decades ahead, we hope the Six Rivers Fund will reach a total of roughly $50 million. In its first year of operation, $100,000 was available for community projects in northern Saskatchewan.
We believe we have some of the most advanced and innovative collaborative agreements in the country, and possibly in the world, with our indigenous partner communities. We have moved beyond the approaches of the philanthropic “we should do this” and the risk mitigation “we have to do this” to the value-added “we want to do this”, because it makes our company better.
I have a short story to illustrate this point. Cameco once purchased an exploration property in Australia from a competitor that had spent many years unsuccessfully negotiating with local indigenous communities. Cameco, employing the same approach we use here in Canada, entered into discussions with local leaders and invited them to Saskatchewan to see first-hand how we operate. When we arrived in northern Saskatchewan, we arranged for this Australian delegation to live in our partner communities for a couple of days to ask their own questions and discover on their own how we operate and the relationships we've built with our local partner communities. Shortly after the visit, we were able to enter into a partnership agreement with those aboriginal communities in Australia.
One of the ways our approach to indigenous partnerships benefits our company, besides excellent employees and community businesses that serve our operations, is how we are viewed by our partner communities. Public confidence in Cameco's operations in northern Saskatchewan is very high. This confidence extends to other locations where we operate.
Our latest polling numbers, completed earlier this year, peg our province-wide support in Saskatchewan at roughly 81%. That 81% number also translates into northern Saskatchewan when it is taken as a unique polling sector. In Port Hope, Ontario, roughly the same amount, 89% of residents in the community, support the continuation of Cameco's operations.
While these results are encouraging, they are not surprising. Unlike other forms of energy and electricity generation, polling typically shows that support for the nuclear industry is often strongest where nuclear operations exist; and that the more individuals know and understand about the nuclear sector, the more supportive they tend to be. This, combined with Cameco's ongoing efforts to improve community partnerships, puts us in good stead everywhere we operate.
Canada's uranium mining industry, and the nuclear industry as a whole, is positioned to be a world leader for decades to come in both domestic and international markets. Current political, policy, economic, and environmental drivers are pointing at nuclear energy as a key element of a global shift to low-carbon energy and to a low-carbon economy.
Canada is one of the few countries in the world that can boast of a competitive advantage all along the nuclear value chain. We have the highest-quality uranium deposits and the ability to mine, mill, and refine uranium into fuel for nuclear power plants. Our CANDU reactor technology is deployed around the world. We manufacture reactor components. Our nuclear expertise as it relates to science, operations, technology, and regulation is in demand and recognized as world-class. We have a highly skilled, innovative workforce, including indigenous professionals, capable of making it all happen. With these tremendous strengths, Canada's nuclear sector is poised to take advantage of the opportunities for growth in the international nuclear marketplace.
Here is what we know about nuclear technologies and nuclear energy. Nuclear technology is proven and the long-term economic benefits of nuclear energy are clear. Comparing nuclear to other energy sources, I believe we can conclude that nuclear energy produces very low greenhouse gas emissions from a very small footprint. Our waste is managed in an effective manner, with new technologies emerging all the time to recycle and reuse that waste. A strong nuclear sector catalyses technological and other advances in medicine, material science, advanced manufacturing, and food safety.
Getting back to the point about telling our story, we as a sector do need to tell our story better, but we also need the support of Canadian governments—federal, provincial, and municipal—to help us tell our story. Rarely is the word “nuclear” mentioned by governments when they speak of clean energy or a low-carbon energy future, despite the significant role that nuclear energy could play in that type of future and the role it is already playing today to reduce greenhouse gas emissions around the world. Canadian policy-makers and political representatives should be proud of these contributions by our country and of Canada's leadership in such an important sector.
Canada holds a competitive advantage in the nuclear energy industry. We need to nurture that advantage and capitalize on the opportunities it presents. Invest in the sector. Support the work that is already under way, small modular reactor development as an example, and the basic research required to maintain that competitive advantage long into the future.
Make sure there are places for nuclear engineers and scientists to live and work in Canada by supporting the entire nuclear value chain. Help Canadian companies gain access to international markets for their products and employ more Canadians as a result of their success.
Thank you to the committee for taking the time to study a significant contributor to Canada's economy, the natural resources sector. As a global champion in both the uranium mining and nuclear sectors, Cameco sees tremendous potential in these markets over the next few decades.
I look forward to your questions. Thank you.
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Thank you very much. It's an honour to be here today.
[Translation]
I would like to thank the members of the committee for the opportunity to discuss fusion energy.
[English]
I've provided a set of slides, which I am going to speak to. I wanted to start by just reminding people what fusion is.
The first slide talks about the fusion technology. Fusion is the energy source that the universe really runs on. It's the energy source of the stars and the sun. It's a process where, at very high temperatures and pressures, atoms are forced together and fused into other atoms. And on earth, what we would be doing to create energy from fusion is to fuse atoms of hydrogen. Now, that takes a temperature of about 150 million degrees. These are extreme conditions, and so this is a very difficult technology. The benefit is that a tremendous amount of energy can be produced. From those atoms of hydrogen, one kilogram of fusion fuel produces the same amount of energy as roughly 10,000 tonnes of coal. You could imagine building a power plant and putting the fuel source in a small room onsite and allowing it to run for 30 years.
Not only that, but it's a zero C02 source of energy. The reactors would run on demand, and the fuel source is abundant. We can extract the fuel source from sea-water, and there's enough on earth to run for hundreds of millions of years. This is an energy source that really will last for all of humanity.
Fusion R and D has been going on around the world for decades now, a lot of that led by national governments. More recently there's been a tremendous amount of progress, and I wanted to highlight some of that on the next slide. Not only is a multinational project called Iter under construction in the south of France, but we've also seen major facilities either under construction or commissioned or hitting important results in Japan; in Germany with the Wendelstein stellarator that was recently commissioned; in the United States at the national labs in Sandia and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. There are big investments being made around the world in this sector. I haven't even talked about the Chinese, who actually have fusion as a core element of their energy road map.
More importantly, what's new in fusion is the advent of private sector companies like my own, which is General Fusion. Science magazine, a science journal, a couple of years ago called us “Fusion's restless pioneers”, in that this is a group of entrepreneurs that have come together to look for more practical paths to fusion, not only more practical but more economically viable, and most importantly, that will achieve fusion energy commercially sooner.
In the United States, in Europe, and in the U.K., we've seen these companies attract tens of, even hundreds of, millions of dollars in private capital. Here in Canada, General Fusion is actually the second largest of these companies in the world. I'm proud about what we've done.
Here's a little bit about General Fusion. We're 65 people based in Burnaby, British Columbia. We've secured over $100 million in private capital since 2009. Investors in General Fusion include venture capital firms in Canada, in the United States, and in Europe and a sovereign wealth fund in Malaysia. Also highlighted are technology leaders such as Jeff Bezos, the founder and CEO of Amazon and a member of the Breakthrough Energy Coalition; and Cenovus Energy, Canada's oil and gas company, which has invested in General Fusion because of the opportunities that fusion energy could provide not only in terms of an energy source for the world but also as a heat source in the long run in Canada's oil and gas industry.
We're also proud to be supported by Sustainable Development Technology Canada. I would highlight that we are 65 employees, more than 50 of whom are in R and D. General Fusion is one of Canada's largest, if not the largest, R and D investor from the private sector in the nuclear industry in Canada.
Questions have been asked in previous sessions about what we have been doing to build awareness about what this technology is, and I wanted to highlight some of the recognition that General Fusion has received.
In the last few years, General Fusion has been highlighted everywhere from the cover of Time magazine, to this most recent month's Scientific American, to a TED talk that has received over a million views to date, to BBC World Service, to the Vancouver Sun, to The New York Times, and so on. And in the last two years, General Fusion has been named to the Global Cleantech 100. This is the first time that any nuclear company was named to the Global Cleantech 100, and we are one of the few Canadian companies on that list.
I also wanted to talk to you today about a document that we in the fusion research community in Canada have put together. This “Fusion 2030” document has been submitted to the committee. I understand it's being translated. It's a joint initiative of the fusion research community across Canada.
Not only General Fusion but also research groups in Alberta and Saskatchewan have been important leaders, and we've had contributions from people in Ontario and Quebec as well.
It's an initiative that proposes how we can position Canada to support the development and deployment of a demonstration fusion power plant by 2030. It proposes a staged program, the first part of which is an investment in renewing Canada's research capacity.
Unfortunately, Canada is the only industrialized country without a national fusion program, and we haven't had one for about 20 years. In that period of time, what we've seen is a decay of the research infrastructure in fusion R and D in Canada. Programs such as the plasma physics program at the University of British Columbia, from which our founder got his Ph.D., no longer exists. That means we're not training the graduates that a company like General Fusion needs. It means the research partners within Canada that a company like General Fusion needs don't exist, so we turn to recruit internationally and to partner internationally. That's a missed opportunity for Canada. Not only that; when there are successes in this technology around the world, we don't have the domestic researchers who can collaborate with those people externally and bring and take advantage of that technology.
The reason everybody else is investing around the world is not only because this is a game-changing energy source that could make a massive difference when it comes to global climate change and energy poverty, but it's also because fusion R and D impacts many fields. The superconducting technology that was developed for fusion research is what is in your MRI machines. Plasma physics has a tremendous impact on the semiconductor industry. Fusion has been one of the leaders in the development of scientific computing, a field that is touching everything now, from computational biology, to material science, to physics, to chemistry. Advances in fusion are pushing lasers, photonics, nanotechnology sensors, and robotics.
The reason other countries make big investments in fusion is also because it's a cornerstone of their R and D and innovation strategy. Again, this is something that we feel strongly needs to be a part of Canada's strategy.
I'd be happy to answer questions from you about what we've put together as a community, and I look forward to the discussion.
Thank you.
Good morning, Mr. Chairman and honourable members of the committee. Thank you for providing this opportunity for Terrestrial Energy to contribute to your important examination of the future of Canada's nuclear sector, with a view to considering its innovation, sustainable solutions, and economic opportunities.
I'm here today to make the case that Canada urgently needs to renew its commitment to nuclear innovation. To be clear, this is not simply about renewing our commitment to the conventional reactor systems of the last 50 years, although that is important too. I'm saying that the tapestry of nuclear technology is far richer, and that we can do so much better.
The case I make is to renew Canada's commitment to nuclear innovation and specifically its commitment to advanced reactors being developed here in Canada by the private sector today. Providing industry with a clean, sustainable, and cost-competitive energy substitute to fossil fuel combustion in the time frame that we have set ourselves, by 2050, is the great challenge and opportunity of the age. Advanced reactors are uniquely capable of meeting this great challenge.
While there are sound economic reasons to re-license and refurbish existing nuclear plants to extend their productive lives, the conventional reactor technologies these plants employ are not the future of nuclear energy. After 50 years of development, conventional reactors are still too expensive, whether used in a small modular reactor or new, large nuclear plower plants. Different technology choices are needed.
The future of nuclear, and in fact the future of industrial energy provision, belongs to advanced reactors, the products of true nuclear innovation. These reactors will be smaller, far less expensive, quicker and simpler to build, and have many more industrial uses. Advanced reactors promise to provide the pathways to increase industrial competitiveness and support economic growth around advanced technologies. They promise to make our 2050 climate goals feasible by filling the enormous gap that current renewable solutions cannot fill. Renewables such as wind and solar show little ability to develop the product needed to drive deep decarbonization—clean, cost-competitive, reliable, sustainable, scalable: heat.
Advanced reactors can deliver this heat because they embrace true innovation in an industry that has seen little fundamental change in 50 years. They can do this because they employ fundamentally different technology choices. As market, industrial, and national needs change, we should look with fresh eyes on old problems, specifically on the merits of different nuclear technologies and the benefits that private sector-led nuclear innovation can bring today.
This is what Terrestrial Energy has done, the company of which I am chief executive. Others have done this as well. Terrestrial Energy is a developer of an advanced reactor called the “integral molten salt reactor”, or IMSR. We are among the first advanced reactor vendors to be formally engaged in the regulatory process, in our case with the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission.
The IMSR employs molten salt technology. It uses a liquid fuel, a molten salt instead of a traditional solid fuel. This is a fundamentally different approach and typifies the true innovation of advanced reactors.
With the IMSR, we as a company are on track with our plans to license, construct, and commission the first commercial advanced nuclear power plant in the world. It will be here in Canada and it will be operating in the next decade.
I expect it will just take four years to build our next IMSR power plants. They will be cost-competitive with coal or natural gas plants, yet unlike coal or natural gas plants, ours will produce no greenhouse gases. The IMSR promises to give industry a better product, industrial heat that is not tethered to grid or pipeline. It is not simply about electricity. IMSR power plants can be used, for example, to fuel clean natural resource extraction, clean petrochemical and chemical production, desalination, or to back up wind and solar power in place of natural gas—all this in Canadian and international markets. These markets are currently served by fossil fuels and are valued in trillions of dollars per year today.
This is not pie in the sky. It is the proven product of national laboratory development programs undertaken principally in the United States during the sixties, seventies, and eighties. We as a company have successfully made the IMSR innovation case to many in the nuclear industry in Canada, and abroad as well, where the IMSR is receiving significant international attention. It has been made to Sustainable Technology Development Canada, and it is being made today to the U.S. Department of Energy. I have been invited to meetings at the White House on two occasions in the past year to provide briefings on the capability of IMSR technology. Our U.S. affiliate is right now moving forward with its application to the U.S. Department of Energy for a $1.2-billion to $1.5-billion loan guarantee to support the construction of the first United States IMSR power plant.
IMSR development is receiving interest from many large industrial companies. It is supported by peer engineers and executives in the international nuclear community. They too recognize that the future of the nuclear industry lies with true innovation driven by the needs of this age, and therefore with advanced reactors. I believe the IMSR promises to be truly transformative.
Internationally, the nuclear energy option is today firmly in public political discourse, particularly as it relates to industrial competitiveness and achieving the towering ambitions of COP 21 climate targets. In Canada, by contrast, we appear embarrassed to mention nuclear technology despite our great tradition. We are in danger of being out of sync with change at a pivotal time and watching a great opportunity pass by.
Canada has the opportunity today, but perhaps not tomorrow, to establish itself as a leading nation in the race to commercialize advanced reactors. Foreign companies today are coming to Canadian shores to develop their advanced reactors because they recognize Canada's historic capabilities and, importantly, the openness of our regulator, the CNSC, to new technologies. Canada must make them welcome and give them a home. If it does, it stands to recapture its leadership position in a technology critical to a clean, competitive, industrial future for all of us. It stands to reap enormous economic benefits from helping the world meet its future energy needs and to continue Canada's position as a G7 net energy exporter.
I make the case for Canada to commit urgently to the nuclear innovation led by the private sector today, and to ask respectfully that the members of this committee embrace this opportunity and kick-start a new conversation about nuclear energy, nuclear innovation, and advanced reactors in our country, a conversation based on optimism, opportunity, and the promise of a much better world. This is an opportunity that cannot be missed.
I would be very pleased now, Mr. Chairman, to respond to any questions from your colleagues.
Thank you.
:
Thank you very much for the question.
I'm going to answer in English.
[English]
You're right, 150 million degrees is a tremendous challenge, and no material can maintain or withstand those temperatures. What fusion systems have done for a long time is take advantage of magnetic fields. At those temperatures, every material becomes a plasma, as an ionized gas that can be manipulated with magnetic fields, and so magnetic fields can be used to hold that hot gas, that plasma, away from solid walls, or in our case liquid walls, and in that way contain this super-heated gas without it damaging the materials and the structure around it.
People have done this for a long time. In fact, fusion, I think, doesn't get enough credit for the progress it has made. If you were to look back a few decades, you would see the advancements in fusion, comparing the 1970s to today, have come along by about a factor of 10,000 in terms of energy produced. We're within a factor of two now of producing net positive energy for the grid, so this is why you're seeing this advance of private sector companies into the field.
On your question about the funding required, it really depends on the technology that you're talking about. All of the private companies, including General Fusion, are proposing ways that are much less expensive, that lend themselves toward something that can be a more practical power plant.
The $100 million we have secured to date has meant major advances in our technology, and we're looking at moving ahead toward the creation of a larger full-scale fusion system that again will be in the range of a $100-million sort of investment. We expect that we will secure most of that funding from the private sector.
Elsewhere in Canada, on the research and development proposal that we're looking to renew our capacity, we're starting small. We want to see something grow to the level of perhaps $20 million a year, to put the faculty positions back in place in Canadian universities so that we can graduate the talent we need to participate in this sector.
Those are the sorts of investments we're talking about.
It's truly an honour to be here this morning. I would like to thank you for the opportunity to speak with you about the Canadian nuclear industry, specifically the CANDU Owners Group, also known as COG.
Today I will explain who we are and tell you about our work, which is done in collaboration with our members, the operators of CANDU nuclear plants worldwide, including Canadian operators such as Bruce Power, New Brunswick Power, and Ontario Power Generation. I will give you some context on the value of this work, not only for our members in the industry but for Canadians as a whole.
COG is a not-for-profit organization entirely funded by its members, the operators of CANDU reactors worldwide. Our sole focus at COG is to continuously improve performance through collaborative knowledge sharing, research, and development activities. Simply put, our vision is to achieve CANDU excellence through collaboration. The goal is to sustain safe, clean, reliable, and affordable electricity for the millions of citizens worldwide who rely on our technology, including more than 14 million Canadians in Ontario and New Brunswick, who get much of their power from CANDU stations.
COG's activities result in an investment of more than $65 million in R and D annually. According to the European Commission Joint Research Centre's annual global ranking, this amount is equal to the R and D investment of a top-15 Canadian private company. It is a direct contribution to the economy, and to spin-off research and development activity in Canada in the public, private, and education sectors.
In regard to the education sector, working with the University Network of Excellence in Nuclear Engineering, or UNENE, COG invests about three-quarters of a million dollars annually on collaborative research projects with Canadian universities. Perhaps the most exciting part of this investment is the outcome of the research: a safe, clean, dependable, and affordable baseload electricity source, free of greenhouse gas emissions. This improves our quality of life and provides a low-carbon electricity source to address the threat of climate change.
With our members, COG has made great strides in the improvement of safety and performance in CANDU plants worldwide. In addition to pooling their financial resources, our members share the time and knowledge of their top engineers, scientists, operators, and maintainers. They work in teams alongside experts from COG and from companies like AMEC, Canadian Nuclear Laboratories, Kinectrics, SNC-Lavalin, and S.N. Stern Laboratories, to name just a few, all part of today's knowledge economy. They achieve together more than any single company could achieve on its own. That is the power of collaboration, and that is the strength of COG.
Here are a few examples of the results our members have accomplished together, and the research and knowledge-sharing programs COG facilitates.
A good place to start is with our post-Fukushima response, whose aim was to ensure our CANDU stations, and our people, are positioned to respond to highly improbable events well beyond those we envisioned when we designed and built the plants. Aligned with the requirements outlined by the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, ours was one of the most comprehensive and consistent responses worldwide.
On a personal note, I was directly involved in these initiatives. To see our nuclear plants successfully implement a strong response to Fukushima, and to help lead the world in that response, was a highlight of my career.
As well, through COG's R and D and joint project programs, our members have also extended the life of critical plant components, resulting in longer and safer plant operating life. This has saved billions of dollars, improved operating safety, and also reduced environmental impact by deferring the need for new generation. It has also enabled OPG and Bruce Power to adjust their project schedules to minimize the number of units that are shut down and are undergoing refurbishment and major component replacement at the same time.
Our research and development has also improved safety margins on operating equipment, which not only improves safety in a very fundamental way but also helps to improve revenue generation, thereby reducing the cost on a per-megawatt basis. It also has improved practices and programs to further reduce the environmental impact of our operations. This includes mitigation for impingement and entrainment of fish in the Great Lakes and improvements to spawning grounds.
Working together, our members have strengthened human performance and operator knowledge in safety and reliability. They have collaborated to develop new processes and techniques for better outcomes on everyday activities as well as unplanned events. The result is some of the best plant performances year over year in the history of our nuclear stations, even as they have moved into the later phases of life. For example, Bruce Power's 40-year-old refurbished units 2 and 4 reactors sustained 99.5% and 88.4% capability factors last year. Pickering unit 4, which began operation in 1971, achieved a 97.3% capability factor last year. These are excellent results that compare well with much younger units and reflect our ability to get more out of plant assets as our understanding of operations and maintenance has evolved.
Darlington, as the fleet's newest plant, has benefited most from that knowledge and research, because everything we learned from the earlier plants was applied to Darlington even sooner in its life cycle, which sets it up for strong performance post-refurbishment.
Through hundreds of shared initiatives, COG has provided the technical and experimental basis from which our members implement programs and plant changes. The billions of dollars in savings is an excellent return on their investment in both financial and human terms.
I'm now going to step back and provide a bit more context on the foundation of our organization. COG was formed 32 years ago, in 1984, by the Canadian nuclear operators, all of whom operated plants with made-in-Canada CANDU technology. Two years later, the first of COG's international members, also CANDU operators, joined and were followed by others. Today our international members include CANDU and pressurized heavy water reactor operators in Argentina, Romania, Korea, China, Pakistan, and India. In fact, every utility worldwide operating one of these reactors is a member of COG, and these reactors account for more than 10% of all power reactors worldwide. We should take pride in seeing this unique, made-in-Canada technology used extensively and successfully throughout the world.
COG's international aspect allows for further cost sharing, which means our Canadian plants benefit from research jointly funded by the international community. The international members bring diverse perspectives from operating their plants within different cultures and from vantage points that may differ from our Canadian perspective. This strengthens us and lifts our eyes to challenges and opportunities for innovation that we may not otherwise have considered.
This also provides COG the opportunity to share the strengths of our Canadian experience in areas of the world still developing nuclear capacity, including in the areas of nuclear safety and safety culture. The world is small, and a nuclear event anywhere has a ripple effect everywhere. By helping to strengthen our international partners in their operations, we also strengthen nuclear's reputation here at home.
We are also building bench strength through supplier participants. In collaboration with the Organization of Canadian Nuclear Industries, we have connected operators and suppliers in a dialogue to improve safety and reliability right through the supply chain. This includes in the plant, where suppliers are working more closely with operators than ever before. In particular, we have focused efforts on preparing suppliers for the refurbishment at OPG's Darlington station and for the major component replacement projects at Bruce Power.
COG is an entry point for its members to interact with many organizations worldwide. Our collaboration agreements with industry organizations here in Canada and globally have led to award-winning partnerships as well as stronger policy at both the national and global level.
When we talk about the future of nuclear, we can and should look to new technologies. We can also continue to rely on the ones serving us well today. The Darlington, Bruce, and Point Lepreau plants can provide safe, clean, affordable, and predictable power for generations of Canadians to come.
In closing, COG's mission is to improve performance through collaboration. The goal, always, is continuous improvement through both the human and technical performance of our operating stations. COG's role is to help our members better operate their nuclear plants, achieve stronger human performance, and ultimately build a foundation for public trust.
Thank you for your interest in the future of nuclear and for giving me the opportunity to share with you COG's role in shaping its future.
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Good morning, Mr. Chair and members of the committee.
[Translation]
Thank you for inviting me to discuss the future of the nuclear sector.
[English]
In the course of your study, you have already heard from many of our colleagues in the nuclear sector. You've heard about how nuclear power provides 15% of Canada's electricity, using a safe, reliable, and low-carbon technology. You've heard that the nuclear sector provides 60,000 high-quality jobs in Canada, and you've heard how Canada's nuclear knowledge is a strategic capability providing Canadians and our partner nations with long-term energy security, and giving us a seat at the international table for important topics like nuclear non-proliferation.
Since you've already heard about these benefits, I would like to spend my time with the committee today discussing Canada's nuclear sector in a broader sense, specifically focusing on the innovation and nuclear expertise that resides in Canada outside of the traditional nuclear power industry. My hope is that this slightly different perspective will underscore how investments in the nuclear sector can have positive effects on Canada's innovation capacity in many adjacent sectors, including defence, counter-terrorism, space research, and medicine.
Our company, Bubble Technology Industries, is a direct example of how government investment in nuclear research can yield long-term economic benefits to Canada. In 1988 our company was formed as the very first commercial spinoff from the Atomic Energy of Canada Limited, or AECL. We were created to commercialize a new type of radiation detector, called the Bubble Detector, which was invented by my father, Dr. Harry Ing, while he was working as a research scientist at AECL.
Radiation detectors are, of course, important in the traditional nuclear power sector, but they are also important in many other sectors where radiation can be found. In defence and security applications, we need to detect, track, and, when needed, intercept nuclear materials that could pose a potential security threat. In addition, we can use radiation to help find other types of security threats such as explosives, concealed weapons, and contraband.
There are also many other applications where radiation is used, such as medical diagnostics and life-saving nuclear medicine procedures; industrial sterilization and packaging processes; density gauges used in the construction industry; inspection techniques used to check the quality of welds in the aerospace industry; disease control for crops in the agriculture industry; and well-logging techniques in the oil industry. As a result, when we talk about the broader nuclear sector, we are in fact talking about nuclear technologies that intersect with many other industries that are vital to Canada's economy.
As part of that broader nuclear sector, our company started with just seven employees and a single radiation detection product. The spinoff process was new to AECL and new to my father. There were many sleepless nights in those early days, trying to figure out how to keep a small spinoff company afloat.
Fortunately, we survived it. In the intervening 27 years that we've been in business, we've grown to about 50 employees, we now have more than two dozen products that are successfully exported to 25 countries, we've been awarded more than 20 patents, and we've conducted over 200 innovative contract research programs for customers around the world.
Our cutting-edge technology has been used in counter-terrorism applications to protect people and infrastructure at some of the world's largest events, including multiple U.S. presidential inaugurations, multiple Super Bowls, World Series events, the Olympics, and major international political summits.
Our technology has also flown on over two dozen space missions to support research aimed at protecting astronauts from radiation hazards, and understanding the radiation environment in space a little bit better. Astronaut Chris Hadfield conducted experiments on board the international space station using our radiation detection technology, and he personally spoke about how radiation in space is a serious concern for astronauts, particularly as we look ahead to longer-manned missions to Mars.
Our company's accomplishments have been made possible by a creative, dedicated, and highly skilled staff. Within our company we have the ability to generate innovative ideas and then carry those ideas through all stages of research, development, production, and worldwide deployment.
When we started back in 1988, as a tiny spinoff company from a government lab, I don't think anyone could have predicted the evolution of our company. When you start a company, the odds are not good. Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada tracks small business statistics: 50% of small businesses in Canada fail after five years; less than 12% of small businesses in Canada export their goods or services, and when they do, they typically export to a single country, usually the United States. Yet even with those somewhat discouraging statistics, small and medium enterprises, or SMEs, continue to be the backbone of the Canadian private sector. SMEs employ over 90% of the private sector workforce in Canada, and they created more than 95% of the net new jobs in Canada between 2005 and 2015. Those two figures alone make it imperative for Canada to nurture and invest in its small businesses, as they truly are the engine of the Canadian economy.
When you invest in nuclear research and innovation in Canada, and when you support small businesses in Canada through programs like the SR and ED tax incentives, NRC's industrial research assistance program, and PSPC's build in canada innovation program, you open the door for a group of small businesses that can beat the odds. You create companies like Bubble Tech, and others in our sector, that can beat the 50% failure rate for start-ups, that can scale from seven employees to 50 employees in a sustainable way and provide high-quality, knowledge-based jobs, and that can export to 25 countries instead of one country or no countries.
Beating the odds is possible, because with the right focus and sustained government investment, Canada is well positioned to be a world leader in the nuclear sector, not only in the traditional nuclear power segment but also in the broader nuclear sector, which intersects with defence, security, medicine, construction, aerospace, agriculture, and the oil industry.
The government can help small businesses like ours beat the odds by supporting the full spectrum of nuclear research, innovation, and commercialization activities in Canada. We need to educate and train highly skilled personnel in the nuclear sector. We need to encourage Canadian research by implementing a small business innovation research program in Canada, similar to programs used in more than a dozen countries, including the United States. We need to encourage the Canadian government to lead by example, by buying innovative Canadian technologies, and by considering Canadian content in its purchases. And we need to further incentivize large companies doing business in Canada to partner with small Canadian companies.
More than anything, we need to recognize that small Canadian companies can be world class. When they are, they warrant our support, because they represent our country's best chance at job creation and economic growth. Thank you.
[Translation]
Thank you for your time.
My question goes to COG. We have CANDU reactors running in the world, in Canada, China, Korea, and several other countries, thanks to the hard work done by the operators and also through COG. Our CANDU reactors remain the best performers among the nuclear fleet worldwide.
Inevitably, some day these CANDU reactors will age and eventually be decommissioned. I assume it is quite unlikely that we are going to see a new reactor, a new build, in Canada in the next years, or even the next decade. So while we have to decommission our CANDU reactors, we cannot decommission our talent and manpower, and the brain power, for example, at Chalk River, or other people working in the field.
I guess for the Canadian nuclear industry to survive and even to grow, we need to create a market globally. Right now, our technology, like our CANDU 6, is a generation II technology. We used to have ACR-1000, which is a generation III. You know that; you know that probably better than me, but nobody has even talked about that, so that's been on the shelf.
If we go to the global market, what technology can we provide, and what should the government do to have a long-term strategy to support the growth of our nuclear industry in Canada?
:
Thank you very much for the question.
First, I would like to clarify that the CANDU Owners Group does not engage in marketing activities. The responsibility, actually, or the lead for marketing CANDU technology is with SNC-Lavalin. SNC-Lavalin has the rights to do that. They are in the best position to talk about exactly what they are doing, but I would be happy to share with you some of the information that has been publicly made available.
They're in active discussions right now with China for developing the advanced fuel CANDU reactor. China's vision for nuclear technology is that it would like to recycle the fuel from its light-water reactors, the pressurized water reactors that it's operating in its country. The CANDU reactor provides a viable technology for taking spent fuel from the light-water reactors and re-burning it in a CANDU-type reactor. Their vision, as I understand it, is for every four light-water reactors to build one advanced fuel CANDU reactor to accept the fuel. That provides certainly an exciting opportunity, because it provides a market for about 25 advanced fuel CANDU reactors just in China. Again, SNC-Lavalin is in a much better position to speak on this. I'm reflecting information that I read about in the public domain.
In regard to the second part of your question, on what is government's role in sustaining it, government has a key role in sustaining the infrastructure that enables nuclear to exist, to continue to improve with time. I just came back, for example, from a trip to India last week. I met with the leaders of the Department of Atomic Energy, the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board, the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited, and the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre. There they have sustained a vision around nuclear development that transcends changes in government, that is long-range, and has many aspects to it. Underlying it is a very strong research base.
We need to have a strong R and D platform. The importance of having a research reactor just was mentioned at the previous session. Today, COG is doing work in the NRU reactor. We are making the most of the time that we have available to us before that reactor shuts down.
What will we do when that reactor shuts down? We will still need to do some research. We will likely need to do some research in the coming years. What we are doing right now at COG is looking for alternative places to do that research if we cannot do it here in Canada. What that means is wherever we do that research, that facility will build the knowledge and capability and Canada will not, which means that in terms of sustainability we are driving towards a dead end if we don't build the fundamental R and D capabilities.
At COG we will find alternatives to support our members. We will have to look outside the country if we cannot find it in this country. But it will be a loss for Canada to go to other countries to do this fundamental research that we need to sustain the technology.
:
Thanks for the question, Cheryl.
When we speak about the technology valley of death, we're talking about the gap that exists between funding that supports research and then somehow bridging that to actually exploiting commercial value out of the technology: bringing it to market, selling it within Canada, and as well exporting it. For many years in Canada, there was simply no funding mechanism that would help a company make that leap from research to commercialization.
In the last few years, the government has introduced PSPC's build in canada innovation program, which is specifically geared toward taking high-maturity technologies and providing funding so that federal agencies can try that Canadian technology at very little risk. The funding comes from PSPC. There's a match between a company with the new technology and a federal department, and the federal department acquires the technology through PSPC funding and then is able to test that technology. We've been able to use that program with such groups as the RCMP and the Canadian Department of National Defence to get them to try some of the new radiation detection technologies that we've developed at Bubble Tech.
That is a single program, which is certainly a move in the right direction. It takes you to that first sale, but doesn't really follow through or provide long-term support for subsequent sales.
I think in Canada one of the difficulties has always been—particularly in our sector, defence and security—that we're obviously very heavily involved with many other NATO allies, and sometimes it's easy to just tag along with what other people are buying without taking a good, hard look at home-grown technologies that may be best in class and need that opportunity to get utilized by a customer in the market.
One thing we would love to see is just more opportunities where the Canadian government is really taking a good, hard look at Canadian technologies, and, where the merit is there, where the technology is solid, to really be a leader by adopting the technology and being able to demonstrate that Canadian technology in real-field applications.
For us, when we go to export overseas, one of the first questions we receive from any other foreign government is who else is using this? Is your own government using this? For many years we would have to say, well, the Americans are using it, or various groups in Europe are using it, but it's a difficult position to be in. You'd like to be able to say that your own government has selected your equipment and can provide references. I think that's one of the key things the government can do in the future.
:
Thank you for the question.
Immediately after the event happened on March 11, 2011, through the CANDU Owners Group we formed a group called the CANDU industry integration team. This was a group of leaders from all the utilities, both domestic and international. We started to identify and build a strategy toward responding to the event, based on the best information we had at the time. As more information came out, we fine-tuned our strategy. Through the CANDU industry integration team we also had a mechanism for having a dialogue with the regulator. We kept the regulator informed of the direction in which we were heading, and the regulator in turn kept us informed of where their expectations were also heading. So we maintained a dialogue but still independence between regulator and operator.
Because we were working together as a group, we were able to have different utility members of that group participate in different international forums, so we were able to cast a large net that captured what the international community was doing and bring it back into the COG community. Then we tuned it to our particular technology.
The CANDU reactor has some inherent features that are excellent for the kind of event that happened at Fukushima. The most notable of these is that, unlike any other power reactor, the CANDU reactor essentially sits in a pool of cold, low-pressure heavy water that's about 250 tonnes, and then is surrounded by another pool of cold light water that's about 500 tonnes. So if there were a loss of power, you have immediately 750 tonnes of cold water right there that helps to mitigate the progression of the accident. We leveraged that and identified what additional mitigation strategies we could put into place to significantly or indefinitely prolong the cooling to the reactor should the primary and backup systems fail, as they did at Fukushima.
We built a whole new line of defence in depth based on portable equipment that could be brought in, easily and quickly connected, to feed those water systems that were already there that were keeping the reactor cool, and because of the design of the CANDU reactor, we had quite a bit more time available to bring in that portable equipment. We leveraged that, so we built that into the strategy. I believe we have a very solid base now for being able to say that if there is any kind of unexpected event, we have multiple different ways, not only within the plant but by bringing in portable equipment from outside the plant, to terminate the event earlier, before it progresses into a severe accident.