Author: CREDNB

Ottawa, Monday, March 27, 2023 – Environmental and civil society groups are giving a thumbs-down after the federal government announced new funding on Friday towards the development of small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs). The groups will be looking closely at the numbers in Tuesday’s budget.

The “Prime Minister Trudeau and President Biden Joint Statement,“ issued on Friday March 24, committed Canada to provide funding and in-kind support for a US-led program to promote SMRs.

The Canadian government’s Strategic Innovation Fund has already given close to $100 million to corporations working on experimental SMR technologies. In addition, the Canada Infrastructure Bank has committed $970 million to Ontario Power Generation’s plan for a 300-megawatt SMR at Darlington. Federal funding is benefiting US-based companies GE-Hitachi and Westinghouse, and Canada’s SNC-Lavalin, among others.

All the funded SMR projects are still in the research and development phase. Worldwide, no SMRs have ever been built for domestic use.

In addition, the federal government is giving Atomic Energy of Canada Limited $1.35 billion a year to conduct nuclear research and development and to manage its toxic radioactive waste. Nearly all this funding is transferred to a consortium of SNC-Lavalin and two US-based companies (Fluor and Jacobs) that that are heavily involved in nuclear weapons and SMR research.

Over 100 groups from all across Canada have criticized the federal government’s plan to promote SMR nuclear technology, stating that:

• SMRs are a dirty, dangerous distraction that will produce radioactive waste of many kinds. Especially worrisome are those proposed reactors that would extract plutonium from irradiated fuel, raising the spectre of nuclear weapons proliferation.
• SMRs will take too long to develop to address the urgent climate crisis in the short time frame necessary to achieve Canada’s goals.
• SMRs will be much more expensive than renewable energy and energy efficiency. Small reactors will be even more expensive per unit of power than the current large ones, which have priced themselves out of the market.
• Nuclear power creates fewer jobs than renewable energy and efficiency. Solar, wind and tidal power are among the fastest-growing job sectors in North America.

The International Energy Agency forecasts that 90% of new electrical capacity installed worldwide over the next five years will be renewable.

The federal government needs to invest urgently in renewables, energy conservation and climate action, not slow, expensive, speculative nuclear technologies.

QUOTES:

“Taxpayer dollars should not be wasted on a future technology whose time is past, like nuclear reactors, when truly clean renewable solutions are up-and-running and getting more affordable all the time.” – Dr. Gordon Edwards, Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility

“Let’s compete to be world leaders in renewables. Pouring public funding into speculative reactor technologies is sabotaging our efforts to address the climate crisis.” – Dr. Ole Hendrickson, Sierra Club Canada Foundation

“The SMR technologies are all at the early R&D stage, yet the funding is not following good governance practices by requiring high standards of peer review.“ – Dr. Susan O’Donnell, Coalition for Responsible Energy Development in New Brunswick

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Les groupes s’opposent au financement des petits réacteurs nucléaires modulaires dans le budget fédéral

Ottawa, le 27 mars 2023 – Des groupes environnementaux et de la société civile s’opposent à l’annonce faite vendredi par le gouvernement fédéral d’un nouveau financement pour le développement de petits réacteurs nucléaires modulaires (PRNM). Les groupes examineront de près les chiffres du budget de mardi.

La “Déclaration conjointe du Premier ministre Trudeau et du président Biden”, publiée le vendredi 24 mars, engage le Canada à fournir un financement et un soutien en nature à un programme dirigé par les États-Unis visant à promouvoir les PRNM.

Le Fonds stratégiques pour l’innovation du gouvernement canadien a déjà accordé près de 100 millions de dollars à des entreprises travaillant sur des technologies PRNM expérimentales. En outre, la Banque de l’infrastructure du Canada s’est engagée à verser 970 millions de dollars à l’Ontario Power Generation pour la construction d’un réacteur PRNM de 300 mégawatts à Darlington. Le financement fédéral profite notamment aux entreprises américaines GE-Hitachi et Westinghouse, ainsi qu’à l’entreprise canadienne SNC-Lavalin.

Tous les projets de PRNM financés sont encore en phase de recherche et de développement. Au niveau mondial, aucun PRNM n’a jamais été construit pour un usage domestique.

En outre, le gouvernement fédéral verse à Énergie atomique du Canada limitée 1,35 milliard de dollars par an pour mener des activités de recherche et de développement dans le domaine nucléaire et pour gérer ses déchets radioactifs toxiques. La quasi-totalité de ces fonds est transférée à un consortium composé de SNC-Lavalin et de deux entreprises américaines (Fluor et Jacobs), fortement impliquées dans la recherche sur les armes nucléaires et les PRNM.

Plus de 100 groupes de tout le Canada ont critiqué le plan du gouvernement fédéral visant à promouvoir la technologie nucléaire des PRNM :

• Les PRNM sont une distraction, une technologie sale et dangereuse, une qui produira des déchets radioactifs de toutes sortes. Les réacteurs proposés qui extrairaient du plutonium du combustible irradié sont particulièrement inquiétants, car ils font planer le spectre de la prolifération des armes nucléaires.

• Le développement des PRNM prendra trop de temps pour répondre à l’urgence de la crise climatique dans le court laps de temps nécessaire pour atteindre les objectifs du Canada.

• Les PRNM seront beaucoup plus coûteux que les énergies renouvelables et l’efficacité énergétique. Les petits réacteurs seront encore plus chers par unité d’énergie que les grands réacteurs actuels, qui n’ont pas d’acheteurs en raison de leur coût excessif..

• L’énergie nuclé aire crée moins d’emplois que les énergies renouvelables et l’efficacité énergétique. Les énergies solaire, éolienne et marémotrice font partie des secteurs d’emploi qui connaissent la plus forte croissance en Amérique du Nord.

• L’Agence internationale de l’énergie prévoit que 90 % des nouvelles capacités électriques installées dans le monde au cours des cinq prochaines années seront renouvelables.

Le gouvernement fédéral doit investir d’urgence dans les énergies renouvelables, les économies d’énergie et l’action climatique, et non dans des technologies nucléaires lentes, coûteuses et spéculatives.

CITATIONS :

“L’argent des contribuables ne devrait pas être gaspillé pour une technologie future dont le temps est révolu, comme les réacteurs nucléaires, alors que des solutions renouvelables vraiment propres fonctionnent maintenant et deviennent de plus en plus abordables.” – Gordon Edwards, Ph.D., Regroupement pour la surveillance du nucléaire.

“Soyons compétitifs pour devenir des leaders mondiaux dans le domaine des énergies renouvelables. Verser des fonds publics dans des technologies de réacteurs spéculatives, c’est saboter nos efforts pour faire face à la crise climatique.” – Ole Hendrickson, Fondation Sierra Club Canada

“Les technologies PRNM sont toutes à un stade précoce de R&D, et pourtant le financement ne suit pas les bonnes pratiques de gouvernance en exigeant des normes élevées d’examen par les pairs.” – Susan O’Donnell, Coalition for Responsible Energy Development au Nouveau-Brunswick

Decentralized and diversified energy systems are more resilient to extreme weather events and geopolitical conflicts. Join Tynette Deveaux, CRED-NB core member with Sierra Club Atlantic chapter, on March 23 @ 7pm Atlantic for a presentation on community energy in Canada and where it fits in the context of the global energy democracy movement. Register HERE.

CRED-NB is one of a dozen organizations that signed a petition for Fredericton City Council to adopt a Climate Emergency resolution. Read the resolution HERE. The resolution describes some of the effects of climate breakdown and commits Council to maintaining a safe and liveable environment through decarbonization.

Update: The Fredericton City Council reviewed and adopted the resolution in an unanimous vote on March 27. Congrats to all involved.

SMRs were in the news in February because of the hearings at the NB legislature and the big funding asks from our nuclear startups. Whenever nuclear energy is in the news, CRED-NB tries to be part of the stories, to share information that the government and NB Power are not sharing with the public. This week several CRED-NB members were featured in the CBC radio show Maritime noon. Susan O’Donnell from the UNB RAVEN project was a guest in the Fredericton studio, and callers included Ann McAlister (Council of Canadians Saint John) and Dave Thompson (Leap4ward Saint John). You can listen to the recording HERE (38 minutes).

Moltex – a start-up company from the UK, now based in New Brunswick – has sent the government a ransom note. The company wants “more than $250 million in public funding” to develop its small modular nuclear reactor (SMR).

Speaking to the media, the company’s CEO warned “New Brunswick needs to decide if it’s in or out, because it’s a big commitment.” So far Moltex has received $50.5 million from Ottawa, $10 million from New Brunswick, and $1 million from Ontario Power Generation.

We recommend rejecting the ransom demand for more.

Citing an old saying, the economist John Maynard Keynes once observed: “Owe your banker £1000 and you are at his mercy; owe him £1 million and the position is reversed.” So far, Moltex has received only $60 million and is acting as if the federal and provincial governments are already at its mercy. Another $250 million, and these governments will really be on their knees.

How does Moltex have the confidence to make this demand? Ultimately because these governments have drunk the kool-aid offered by a nuclear industry that has been moribund for decades but is still powerful enough to be invited to sing its own praises at House of Commons committee hearings.

Almost exactly thirty years ago, the last new nuclear reactor began producing electricity for the grid. None has been built in Canada since. Desperate to reverse its declining fortunes, the nuclear industry began touting a new generation of reactors it dubs SMRs, using the climate crisis as a cover.

This pitch caught the fancy of Ontario, New Brunswick, Saskatchewan, and Alberta, whose governments signed a memorandum of understanding in 2019 to aggressively promote SMRs as a climate change solution. The following year, the Natural Resources Canada Minister stated there is no path to net zero without nuclear power. Despite much evidence to the contrary, the federal government continues to argue that SMRs are needed for climate action. That mistaken belief in SMRs is what allows companies like Moltex to get public funding and demand more.

The $250 million will certainly not be the last demand. Consider NuScale, the SMR design farthest along in the U.S. regulatory process. In 2012, when NuScale estimated that “it will cost $500 million (U.S.) to obtain approval for its reactors from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission,” the company had already invested USD 100 million in technology development. Fast forward to a decade later: NuScale reports that the “cumulative capital invested to date” is USD 1.4 billion (close to 1.9 billion CAD), with a net loss (i.e., expenditure) of USD 49.6 million just in the third quarter of 2022. And NuScale still has not obtained approval to build its first proposed SMR, projected to start operating in December 2029. Assuming all goes well, NuScale might spend more than 2.5 billion CAD, five times the original estimate, before even starting construction.

NuScale is a pressurized light water reactor design—the most widely deployed reactor design globally. In contrast, Moltex is proposing a reactor design cooled with molten salt. The last time anyone built one of these was at the Oakridge Laboratory in the United States—in the 1960s. That failed experiment provides evidence about how well such reactors might operate: long story short, we can expect lots of problems with molten salt reactors, while they operate and for decades thereafter, as society grapples with the radioactive legacy of the nuclear wastes they would produce.

A recent report by the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine found that SMRs like the Moltex design will confront significant challenges, even for deployment by 2050, and that building such reactors at a large commercial scale will continue to need substantial government and industry investments for decades after that.

The Moltex design has an additional problem: it requires another untested technology to produce the fuel needed for its SMR. Based on a February 2021 presentation to the U.S. National Academies committee, this new technology appears similar to the pyroprocessing process tried for two decades at the Idaho National Laboratory. That experience was meant to prove the viability of pyroprocessing; instead, the significant cost overruns and schedule delays demonstrated “the numerous shortcomings of this technology.”

All these potential problems make the path forward for Moltex long and hard—and very expensive. The NuScale experience suggests that developing an SMR design to the point of securing a licence to build it could cost up to ten times what Moltex is asking for. Caving to Moltex’s demand now means falling deeper into a very deep money pit.

The graveyard of nuclear history is littered with numerous reactor designs that were never constructed because they would not have worked. Throwing more money at Moltex will not guarantee success. Wouldn’t it be best to stop now?

Susan O’Donnell is Adjunct Research Professor in the Environment & Society program at St. Thomas University, a social scientist with expertise in technology adoption, and an activist and core member of the Coalition for Responsible Energy Development in New Brunswick. M.V. Ramana is the Simons Chair in Disarmament, Global and Human Security and Professor at the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.

This article was published by the NB Media Co-op on March 2, 2023, HERE, after earlier publication on February 28, 2023 by the National Observer, HERE.

Today, the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility and researchers from five universities are urging Ottawa to reconsider its financial and political support for reprocessing in Canada – extracting plutonium from used nuclear fuel.

Plutonium is one of the key materials needed to make nuclear weapons—the other alternative is highly enriched uranium. Plutonium is created as a byproduct in nuclear reactors. Once extracted, plutonium can be used either as a nuclear fuel or as a nuclear explosive. The chemical process used to separate plutonium from other radioactive substances produced in nuclear reactors is called reprocessing.

In 1974 India used plutonium from a Canadian reactor to explode an atomic bomb in an underground test. The entire world was shocked to realize that access to plutonium and the making of an atomic bomb may be separated only by an act of political will.

Last week, a House of Commons committee released a report recommending that the government “work with international and scientific partners to examine nuclear waste reprocessing and its implications for waste management and [nuclear weapons] proliferation vulnerability.”

The recommendation by the House of Commons committee echoes numerous calls by civil society groups and by U.S. and domestic researchers after Canada announced a $50.5 million grant to the Moltex corporation in March 2021 for a New Brunswick project to develop a plutonium reprocessing facility at the Point Lepreau nuclear site on the Bay of Fundy.

Allowing plutonium reprocessing in Canada sends a dangerous signal to other countries that it is OK for them to extract plutonium for commercial use. Such a practice increases the risk of spreading nuclear weapons capabilities to countries that currently do not possess the means to make nuclear weapons. The risk is that much greater if Canada sells the technology, as is currently envisaged.

“By supporting the implementation of reprocessing technology intended for export, in connection with a plutonium-fuelled nuclear reactor, without regard for the weapons implications, Canada may be once again spreading the bomb abroad,” says Dr. Gordon Edwards, President of the Canadian Coalition on Nuclear Responsibility.

Reprocessing is often justified as a solution to the problem of dealing with nuclear waste, but in reality, it only makes the challenge even harder. Instead of having all the radioactive materials produced in solid spent fuel, these get dispersed into multiple solid, liquid and gaseous waste streams.­­­

Researchers from the University of British Columbia, Princeton University and three New Brunswick universities are supporting the call for an international review. “We’re heartened that the House of Commons Committee listened to the concerns about plutonium reprocessing raised by numerous experts and concerned citizens,” says Dr. Susan O’Donnell, Adjunct Professor at the University of New Brunswick.

Dr. Edwards cited three letters written to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau by nine prominent nonproliferation experts, including plutonium expert Dr. Frank von Hippel. “The Prime Minister’s failure to respond indicates an appalling lack of good governance on the proliferation of nuclear weapons,” said Dr. Edwards.

To date the government has not responded to the letters or even acknowledged the monumental significance of the nuclear weapons connection with reprocessing. The House of Commons Science and Research Committee cited the letters by Dr. von Hippel and others as rationale for their recommendation to conduct the review.

Commercial reprocessing has never been carried out in Canada but in the past, Canada has been complicit in the production of nuclear weapons. During the Cold War some reprocessing was done at the federal government’s Chalk River Nuclear Laboratory, at a time when Canada sold both uranium and plutonium to the US army for use in nuclear weapons. These operations resulted in a permanent legacy of nuclear waste and radioactive contamination in Canada.

The first reactors were built to produce plutonium for bombs. The first reprocessing plants were built to extract plutonium to be used as a nuclear explosive. Following India’s use of plutonium from a nuclear reactor supplied by Canada in its 1974 weapon test, the United States banned commercial plutonium reprocessing in 1977 to reduce the danger of weapons proliferation.

Canada has had an informal ban on reprocessing since the 1970s. A 2016 Canadian Nuclear Laboratories report stated that reprocessing used CANDU fuel would “increase proliferation risk.” That CNL admission was fully confirmed in a major report (330 pages) released three months ago by a U.S. National Academy of Sciences. The expert panel reached a consensus that the reprocessing technology proposed for New Brunswick by the Moltex corporation “does not provide significant proliferation resistance.”

The need for an independent international review is urgent, as Moltex announced just last week that the company is seeking an additional $250 million in government funding.

The researchers supporting the call for an international review of plutonium reprocessing in relation to the spread of nuclear weapons are:

Dr. Gordon Edwards, President, Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility

Dr. Susan O’Donnell, Adjunct Professor and Principal Investigator of the Rural Action and Voices for the Environment [RAVEN] project, University of New Brunswick

Dr. Janice Harvey, Assistant Professor, Environment & Society Program, St. Thomas University

Dr. Jean-Philippe Sapinski, Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies, Université de Moncton

Dr. M.V. Ramana, Professor and Simons Chair in Disarmament, Global and Human Security, School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, University of British Columbia

Dr. Frank von Hippel, Senior Research Physicist and Professor of Public and International Affairs Emeritus, Program on Science & Global Security, Princeton University

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The nuclear industry has spread its tentacles everywhere, including in our school system. An open letter written by educators and published by the NB Media Co-op is critical of a contest promoted by the New Brunswick government to high-school students that promotes nuclear energy.

“For educators, teaching students how to deconstruct bias and how to enhance critical thinking skills is an overarching curriculum mandate. Information literacy is tied to critical thinking skills and teachers have an obligation to challenge students particularly to consider a wide variety of resources in their research projects. The promotional contest supported by the New Brunswick government on the topic of small modular nuclear reactors, also known as SMRs, breaks every rule in the book.” Read the commentary HERE.

On Feb. 14, our Coalition made our case against SMRs to the MLAs on the Climate Change and Environmental Stewardship committee of the Legislative Assembly of New Brunswick. Our presentation used the best scientific analysis to critique the “advanced” SMRs for development in New Brunswick. CRED-NB core member Susan O’Donnell presented on behalf of the Coalition. Our written presentation in English is HERE (and HERE in French). The video of the session is on YouTube, HERE. Check out the video to learn more about the SMR plans and what our elected representatives have to say about them.

There were 13 presentations over two days. Other presentations to watch for are, on Feb. 14: J.P. Sapinski, M.V. Ramana. On Feb. 15: Gordon Edwards, Chief Hugh Akagi + Chief Ron Tremblay + Kim Reeder, and Louise Comeau + Moe Quershi. Each has a one-hour time slot, with 20 minutes by presenters followed by 40 minutes of Q&A with the MLAs on the committee. The full schedule of presentations is HERE. The link to the video archive is HERE (scroll through or search to find the webcast archive from Feb. 14 and 15).