ENSU Committee Meeting

STANDING COMMITTEE ON ENVIRONMENT AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

COMITÉ PERMANENT DE L'ENVIRONNEMENT ET DU DÉVELOPPEMENT DURABLE

EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Wednesday, April 1st, 1998

• 1547

[English]

The Chairman (Mr. Charles Caccia (Davenport, Lib.): I apologize for the delay, but we had to wait for a quorum, which we now have.

The purpose of our meeting today is, in accordance with Standing Order 108(2), to examine the report by the federal environment assessment review process people when they launched, I'm told, nine years ago, a study on the management and disposal of nuclear fuel waste. The report is now in the hands of the government and interested parliamentarians.

Today, we have the great honour and pleasure to welcome at least two members of the panel that produced this report. One is Lois Wilson, whom you all know, I suppose, from her previous role with the Anglican Church, I believe—the United Church. I apologize, I had better go back to church, too.

The other one is a distinguished civil servant who has served in a variety of capacities, Blair Seaborn. One of the many roles he performed was that of deputy minister of the environment in the 1970s and early 1980s. He was deputy minister to two ministers who subsequently became governors general, Madame Sauvé and the present Governor General.

Mr. Seaborn has a distinguished career at home and internationally. He is extremely well known for the work he has done in terms of environmental protection and, of course, more recently for having produced this report, which is an outstanding document. It has become a milestone in the evolution of nuclear fuel waste policies.

We welcome you both very heartily.

We apologize for the delay, and welcome everybody in this room.

Without further delay, Mr. Seaborn, if you would like to indicate how you would like to proceed, we will be very happy to hear you.

[Translation]

Mr. Blair Seaborn (Chair, Nuclear Fuel Waste Management and Disposal Concept Environmental Assessment Panel): Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen.

[English]

Thank you very much for inviting us to come along. I hope our third colleague will be able to brave the vagaries of travel in Canada and join us before the session is through.

• 1550

I have, with your permission, a short statement that I would like to make at the beginning, Mr. Chairman. If I do that, it might set the stage for later questioning that members would wish to put to us.

On March 13, a couple of weeks ago, the federal ministers of the environment and of natural resources released the report of the environmental assessment panel on nuclear fuel waste management and disposal concept.

Today, in these brief opening remarks, I'd like to focus on the panel's main conclusions and its key recommendations to the government. I'll cover as succinctly as I can the main points of the report, but I'll leave out many of the details. I hope some of you will have a chance to read them later. But I hope to get to some of the details afterward in response to your questions.

First, before going to the conclusions and recommendations, I'd like to set the context by summarizing the panel's terms of reference. Our eight-member panel was not an ordinary panel. It was asked to examine not a waste disposal site, nor even a site-specific design, but a concept for the geological disposal or burial of Canada's nuclear fuel waste.

The concept was one proposed by Atomic Energy of Canada Limited, AECL, and was for the disposal of nuclear fuel waste in a multi-barrier system some 500 to 1,000 metres below the surface of the rock of the Canadian Shield.

We were asked in the panel to comment on the safety and acceptability of this concept and to make recommendations to governments to assist them in reaching decisions on the acceptability of the concept. We were also asked to examine the criteria that should be used for determining the safety and acceptability of any concept, not just this one, for the long-term management of nuclear fuel waste.

Finally, the panel was asked to examine the future steps that should be taken in this long-term management of nuclear fuel waste in Canada. In short, in this particular part of our mandate, we were specifically asked to provide policy advice on this matter to governments.

You should note that the energy policies of Canada and the provinces, as well as the place of nuclear energy in those policies, were not part of our panel's mandate.

The panel reached four major conclusions. The first two were of general application.

First, there must be broad public support to ensure the acceptability of any concept for managing nuclear fuel wastes.

Second, safety is a key part, but only one part, of acceptability. Safety must be viewed from two complementary perspectives: technical and social.

Two other conclusions had a bearing specifically on the AECL concept.

Third, from a technical perspective, the safety of the AECL concept has been, on balance, adequately demonstrated for a conceptual stage of development, but not from a social perspective.

Fourth, as it now stands, the AECL concept for deep geological disposal has not been demonstrated to have broad public support. The concept in its present form, therefore, does not have the required level of acceptability to be adopted as Canada's approach for managing nuclear fuel waste.

So where do we go from here? It's the panel's view that a number of additional steps are required to develop an approach for managing Canada's nuclear fuel waste in a way that could achieve broad public support. We therefore recommend to governments the following steps:

- one, issue a policy statement on managing nuclear fuel waste so that Canadians will be clear on the government's long-term approach to the question in all its complexity;

- two, initiate a process to involve aboriginal people;

- three, create a special agency to manage nuclear fuel waste;

- four, conduct a public review of AECB's regulatory documents using a more effective consultation process;

- five, develop a comprehensive public participation plan;

- six, develop an ethical and social assessment framework within which the nuclear fuel waste question can be examined; and

- seven, develop and compare options for managing nuclear fuel wastes.

• 1555

From our major conclusions and these recommendations on future steps, certain things follow.

The first is that until the foregoing steps have been completed, we recommend that the search for a specific site should not proceed.

Secondly, should the AECL concept be chosen as the most acceptable option after all the recommended steps have been undertaken, then governments should direct the nuclear fuel waste management agency, the new agency that we recommend should be set up, together with Natural Resources Canada and AECB, to review all the social and technical shortcomings in the AECL concept as it was presented to us. These shortcomings were identified by the panel's own group of scientific advisers and by other review participants. These agencies would then establish their priority and develop a plan to address them.

That, in rather brief form, constituted the panel's advice to governments, and it is now, of course, up to governments to consider that advice and to take their decisions.

My colleague and I—and I hope it will soon be two colleagues—will be very pleased to answer questions related to the panel report.

[Translation]

I am ready to answer your questions. Thank you very much.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Seaborn. Would Dr. Wilson like to add a few words?

[English]

Dr. Lois Wilson (Member, Nuclear Fuel Waste Management and Disposal Concept Environmental Assessment Panel): No, I think I'll respond to the questions.

The Chairman: Thank you. Then we proceed as usual.

Today, we have the Damocles' sword of a possible vote in the House, which could interrupt proceedings, so I would propose that we make, so as to accommodate as many members as possible on the first round, one question each, and then hopefully there will be no votes so that we can have a second round of questions. Is that acceptable?

We'll start as usual with Mr. Gilmour, followed by Mr. Herron and by Mr. St-Julien, and those who wish to follow, please let me know. One question each, please.

Mr. Gilmour.

Mr. Bill Gilmour (Nanaimo—Alberni, Ref.): Thank you, and welcome.

I read the report. It is, as the chairman said, an excellent report. It's also a subject that I'm most interested in and have been for quite a while. I was most interested that from the technical point of view it appears it can be done, that nuclear waste can be safely stored in rock. But the problem is the social acceptability of this.

Can you comment on why that is pulled apart? Technically it can be done, yet socially it can't. What are the major public concerns? Is it the “not in my backyard” syndrome? Where is it coming from?

Mr. Blair Seaborn: It comes from a number of places. Let me try, first, a response to that, and possibly Dr. Wilson would like to elaborate on it.

Dr. Lois Wilson: Yes, I would.

Mr. Blair Seaborn: We chose our words carefully, that safety must be looked at from both a technical and a social perspective, and we said that on balance this does seem to be a possible technically safe method of dealing with nuclear fuel waste. It is only at the conceptual stage. There are a lot of matters that would have to be worked out in detail later on, but, yes, it is feasible to think of this one as a technical solution.

But when you bring to bear what we've referred to as a social perspective on safety, you run into quite another series of things. Perhaps I could just elaborate a little bit on the two perspectives.

Technical people, on the whole, are perfectly comfortable looking at a broad concept as a way of addressing a technical problem, putting it out for critical comment amongst their peers, getting a lot of critical comments back and saying, yes, okay, noted; that one I don't accept; this one I do—enfolding that and then moving ahead to a refinement of the original concept to make it acceptable, make it safe in a fuller sense of the word, after they have more detail related to it. Some of that would be site-specific information you would have to have to be quite sure about safety in the technical sense.

• 1600

The second point worth making about the technical perspective, I think, is that scientific people are very used to, and comfortable with, dealing with probabilities and looking at risk as a combination of the probability of something happening one time in a hundred thousand or one time in a million and then comparing that with the effect that would ensue if it did occur that way—in that one odd occasion.

If you look at safety from a social perspective, not from those who are drilled all the time in working in technical matters, I think you will find that when, as was the case, we received a lot of quite critical scientific and other comments on the AECL concept from distinguished scientists, amongst others, people looking at safety from the social perspective, they were saying, how on earth can you say that this is potentially safe when we've had this whole enumeration of shortcomings in the proposal that AECL has set forward?

Also, if you look at risk safety from a social perspective, I think most people will be far more concerned about the eventual very serious effects should this unlikely event occur than thinking about the possibility of it being one in a hundred thousand or one in two hundred thousand or one in a million. It's not something with which they feel at all comfortable, and I suspect that most people tend to think of what would be the disaster that would occur. So if you look at safety from that perspective, it's a lot harder to say that this is a safe proposal than if you looked at it from a technical perspective.

[Translation]

The Chairman: Thank you. Mr. Herron, please, then Mr. St-Julien.

[English]

Dr. Lois Wilson: Could I add something to what he said?

The Chairman: Yes, please.

Dr. Lois Wilson: It's simply to say that it's important, if you have a copy of the report, to reread pages 50 and 51, which try to address this issue. I noticed that when our report first came on the mass media it was reported as saying this is technically safe but it's socially unacceptable so all we have to do is convince the public. We're saying it's something a little more nuanced than that, and Mr. Seaborn, I think, has said it very clearly—that from a social perspective people bring their historical experience in matters of this kind, and they've not all been positive. They need some demonstration. They don't particularly trust computer models the way scientists do.

The health effects, for example, were mostly in terms of fatal cancers or morbidity rates and not a broad enough concept of health. The World Health Organization has a very broad concept of how it would affect the health of a community and so on, which is a social perspective. There was no review by social scientists of the whole thing.

We're not saying simply that it's technically feasible and so all we have to do is convince people; we're saying that from a social perspective there is also the feeling that it is not safe, that there are some things that have to be corrected there. I wanted to emphasize that because it's a very important point.

The Chairman: Thank you.

Mr. Herron, s'il vous plaît.

Mr. John Herron (Fundy—Royal, PC): My question may not seem too worrisome to some folks, but I notice that the standpoint is that the containers that would be used would be either copper or titanium, or maybe stainless steel or something like that. The containers would actually be able to ensure the waste was maintained in them for about 500 years, yet it would take about a million years for the radioactivity of the waste fuel to actually decline to an acceptable level of natural uranium. What happens after 500 years? I'm not going to be around. I'm quite young as a parliamentarian, but I know even I am not going to be around for then. What's the plan then?

Mr. Blair Seaborn: Could I point out first of all that in setting forth their proposal, the AECL proposal, which is what we are to look at critically, they said that they were proposing containers that would last for a minimum of 500 years and might well last anything up to a million years before they would be breached. I'm pretty sure we've covered that somewhere in this lengthy report, although I can't immediately draw your attention to the particular page.

• 1605

So there is a range of periods by which containers, depending upon how they were manufactured and what thickness they had and so on, and what conditions they encountered, might well last, according to AECL, far longer than that period.

What they are trying to examine in their concept is what happens next when those containers fail and they are breached. And I suppose that's why they have said we must have a whole series of barriers. The first barrier is the waste form itself. The second barrier is the container made of titanium or copper, according to the proposals they've put forward. And then there is a series of other barriers: the buffer, which is of a special clay material; then some backfill; and then of course the rock itself of the Canadian Shield, which they would hope to choose in a place where there are very few fissures.

When eventually, because it will always happen at some time, there is leakage from the containers out into the geosphere, in due course that leakage could come to the surface through groundwater movement. Their attempt has been to have that as long a period as possible so that the deleterious effects of the radionuclides would be diminished as far as you could diminish them before it hit the surface and hit the natural environment and human beings.

I'm trying to give an explanation of what AECL is proposing. That's what we looked at, that's what we answered critically.

The Chairman: Will you come back on a second round?

Mr. Blair Seaborn: Yes.

[Translation]

The Chairman: Mr. St-Julien, please.

Mr. Guy St-Julien (Abitibi, Lib.): Mr. Seaborn, I'm concerned to know whether, since you have been in your position, your Panel has reviewed studies that universities may have conducted to locate lands where nuclear waste could be stored in Quebec.

Mr. Blair Seaborn: I don't know of any university or other body that has looked for specific locations. We have been asked to confine ourselves to reviewing a concept and to avoid any issue pertaining to the identification of a location. No one has done that.

Mr. Guy St-Julien: I am sorry I didn't have the time to read your study, but I would like to ask you more specifically whether you know of any university in Canada that has conducted a study on salt groundwater under the Canadian Shield.

[English]

Mr. Blair Seaborn: I'll switch to English, if I may.

There's a lot of knowledge, amongst geologists at a number of universities in Canada, on groundwater movement, and I'm trying to remember the other technical name. Indeed, a lot of study was done by AECL itself on groundwater movement and presented to us. So, yes, there's a fairly considerable knowledge of the location of groundwaters and how they move in the Canadian Shield. I would not say, and I don't think any scientist would say, that it is a totally precise science, but there is a considerable knowledge of the existence and movement of groundwater, yes.

[Translation]

Mr. Guy St-Julien: More specifically, I would like to know whether the University of Waterloo conducted a study a few years ago with funds it received from Atomic Energy of Canada and whether it informed your Panel of the locations it visited in Quebec where it gathered samples for the purpose of designating future locations for the storage of nuclear waste.

Mr. Chairman, I have in my hand a list of questions that I asked in the House of Commons in 1991. I specified five locations where the University of Waterloo had gathered samples as part of its study on salt groundwater for the purpose of identifying future locations.

Mr. Blair Seaborn: It is entirely possible that the University of Waterloo conducted such a study at AECL's request. However, the identification of locations is not part of our mandate.

We conducted visits and held public hearings in Ontario, in Quebec, in Montreal...

Mr. Guy St-Julien: In Trois-Rivières?

Mr. Blair Seaborn: Yes, and in Trois-Rivières as well. There was no question of identifying locations.

• 1610

Mr. Guy St-Julien: I see from your study that a number of universities testified. Did you talk to them about certain locations?

[English]

Mr. Blair Seaborn: I'm not aware of any list of locations presented to us. We had something like 500 presentations over the course of some time, but I do not recall anything along those lines.

Dr. Lois Wilson: This was partly because this was outside our mandate. We were not asked to do that; we were not directed to do that. We did, however, have a number of interventions from university professors from across the country on various things relating to the concept.

[Translation]

Mr. Guy St-Julien: Thank you. Will there be a second round?

The Chairman: Yes, of course.

[English]

Mr. Finlay, Mr. Casson, and the chair.

Mr. John Finlay (Oxford, Lib.): Mr. Chairman, I want to look at one statement on page 2. It's the second sentence in the last item, under “conclusions”.

...as it now stands, the AECL concept for deep geological disposal has not been demonstrated to have broad public support.

—I accept that—

The concept in its current form does not have the required level of acceptability to be adopted as Canada's approach for managing nuclear fuel wastes.

When you say it doesn't have the required level of acceptability, does that mean people don't know about it sufficiently, or people have raised sufficient questions, scientific or otherwise, such that it's not acceptable?

Mr. Blair Seaborn: It is I think both of those. This is the first time, so far as I know, that there's been an extensive public debate—the hearings we held in Canada on this whole question.

We will be the first to admit that we only touched a small part of the population. You tend to do that. We are all quite convinced that the level of knowledge and understanding of this question is not anything like what it should be to make an informed decision based on good public understanding. That is very important.

Mr. John Finlay: Thank you.

Dr. Lois Wilson: Just to add to that, in one part of the report we said that the report may be declared acceptable, but in fact who will finally declare it acceptable is the public. We were quite aware of what was happening in Germany when they transported nuclear waste through their country, and the negative outcry of the public. That's what we're after—to get broad public support of what should happen.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Finlay.

Mr. Casson, please.

Mr. Rick Casson (Lethbridge, Ref.): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

We're looking at developing a container of some sort that will contain this waste for 500 years or a million years or whatever. Are there other countries that have stored waste in this way that have proven successful, or proven unsuccessful? Is there anything to base that on?

Mr. Blair Seaborn: No country has yet reached the point of saying, “This is our final and agreed position on long-term management for nuclear fuel waste”. Many of them are searching for it, and needless to say, our scientists keep in close touch with scientists in other countries on these matters, and a number of other countries are looking to this possibility—deep-rock disposal with a container, possibly of titanium, possibly of copper—as the solution. But of course no one has been able to prove that this will work, because nuclear waste has not been around long enough.

We're looking ahead a thousand to a million years, and nuclear waste has only been generated for about 40 or 50, I suppose, and more recently than that in Ontario.

That is one of the problems, I think, that everyone is facing in this—that you have to make extrapolations from other knowledge, based on your quite detailed knowledge perhaps of how the radionuclides will react and how copper, for example, will react in certain conditions, in order to make forward judgments, with modelling, as to how long you can safely keep this stuff away from the natural environment and mankind.

Dr. Lois Wilson: I'd like simply to underline that equally important is that no country has achieved the social consensus necessary to build a disposal facility, and we discovered in our hearings that that is equally important to the technical side.

Mr. Rick Casson: Mr. Chairman, why would we say, then, that we could use copper, or titanium, or we could stick it in the solid rock? Have there not been tests or examples somewhere else, where people have tried this and it's worked?

• 1615

Mr. Blair Seaborn: Yes, there has been extensive testing of the types of rocks, how groundwater moves through those rocks, what different kinds of buffering material would do better than others to keep the movement of the radionuclides from coming to the surface, tests also on the properties of copper and of titanium. Others, I think, have done testing on stainless steel. Yes, a great deal of research on that has been done in a number of countries.

All I'm saying is that we haven't lived long enough to be able to do definitive studies as to what would happen over such a length of time. Some work has been done on analogs—for example, old copper artifacts that have been underwater for hundreds of years. Measurements have been taken on those to see what damage has done to them, to what extent they have been eroded.

Those sorts of analogs are part of what has gone into the scientific examination of this particular proposal—that quite apart from laboratory testing of things. But you just can't do it for those timeframes in a laboratory, because we haven't been around long enough.

The Chairman: All right. We'll come back on the second round, but allow me also to ask one question.

The financing is dealt with in your report in a very clear fashion. You indicate, if I remember correctly, that 0.01% per kilowatt-hour or whatever is claimed to be put aside in order to build up a fund in order to eventually finance the whole project.

The question therefore is this. How much is in that fund? Who is in charge of it? Is that fund being used at the present time in order to continue the work that you have initiated? In other words, is the rate consumers pay adequate to finance the massive project that eventually will be required? Could you please comment on that.

Mr. Blair Seaborn: We were told repeatedly by Ontario Hydro—and that is the utility that produces the greatest amount, far more so than Hydro-Québec or New Brunswick Power—that they have been for a number of years setting aside a certain amount of money, which they've reckoned will be sufficient to pay for the full cost of a repository of the kind that's being proposed, when it is required.

The problem is that this amount of money—and I'm sorry, I do not recall what that figure stands at now—is a bookkeeping item on the books of Ontario Hydro. It is not in a segregated fund. Therefore, you are faced with the problem: if you needed $10 billion tomorrow, where would it come from? It's not a fund that now exists.

We have therefore recommended very strongly that the money that has been put down in a bookkeeping sense should become a real source of money in a segregated fund, and in addition, that there should be an examination by an outside auditor to see whether the amounts that have been set aside by Ontario Hydro and the other two utilities are indeed likely to be sufficient to pay the full costs of the operation of disposing or storing the wastes.

The Chairman: Thank you.

Second round, Mr. Gilmour.

Mr. Bill Gilmour: Appendix L goes into the other alternatives briefly, and I notice in your recommendations you go into it in more detail. But given all the options—whether you store it in the ocean or shoot it into space or all the various options—is deep-rock storage the best possibility that we have at the moment? Is that where it's looking that we'll be eventually going, once we solve the social aspects?

Mr. Blair Seaborn: We have said in our report, having examined in appendix L a number of other possible ways of handling the nuclear fuel waste in the long term, that in our view, at least two other options should be looked at as potentially good options in addition to the AECL concept of deep-rock disposal with modifications.

• 1620

One of those would be continued storage on-site in their present reactor sites, Darlington, Pickering and the rest, possibly with modifications to the existing storage arrangements, which are thought to be good for 50 or 100 years perhaps. But if you were thinking of keeping them there for tens of thousands of years, you might have to make some modifications. It's our belief that Ontario Hydro could come up with some facts and figures related to that option fairly readily.

Another option—in total, this would make it the third one—that we think should be looked at is centralized storage, either above the ground or below it.

I make the distinction between storage and disposal in this way. Storage is a system that has a built-in, indefinite monitoring device so you can continue indefinitely to see what's happening down there. That's also designed so that it's fairly easy to retrieve the waste from its repository in the event you want it to be reused or if anything goes wrong.

We feel those are three very feasible options that should be looked at.

Moreover, we think it's not reasonable to ask the people of Canada, let alone their decision makers, to say yes to what's being proposed now and accept it without having compared it with the risks, costs, and benefits of at least a couple of other options, both of which we think could be fairly readily described, at least to the point of detail that would be needed to come to a decision. Thereafter, it might turn out that deep-rock disposal was the most desirable one, or the least undesirable one, if you will. But if so, then a lot of work would have to be done on it.

Dr. Lois Wilson: I'll simply underline that the costs, benefits, and risks ought to be outlined for the three options, but there may be more developed by the time we get around to it.

Also, in the first round of hearings, there were many uncertainties expressed by those who intervened on the AECL concept. So one cannot simply say this is the best one.

The Chairman: Thank you.

Mr. Herron, please.

Mr. John Herron: You made a comment earlier when referring to what other countries have done in terms of long-term storage, and that eventually it will be required for us to look at a long-term storage situation. That's sort of where my question is headed: when will it be appropriate for us to actually start to take some action in this?

In my professional experience, I used to work for a steel company. We sold stainless steel. For nine years we sold stainless steel that was used for spent-fuel baskets and containers. We used to get a pretty healthy order from time to time, as well.

I always had this uneasy feeling when we kept on selling these baskets and containers to New Brunswick Power, which is where I came from. This situation was going on in Ontario as well and a little bit in Quebec. I wondered where all of these things were being stored above the ground, and how long they would last before a long-term plan had to be done.

We heard witnesses offer different aspects on different areas when talking about contaminated sites. When we have lots of different sites storing materials, the odds of something getting contaminated would obviously end up increasing. We might have some kind of incidental accident.

How uncomfortable are you with the current temporary measures we're using in terms of having storage at different sites? When would it be appropriate for us to at least start taking action on this? How long do we have to go do this?

I'd be quite happy if my old company—it was a pretty profitable company before—didn't get these orders any more. This kind of situation does spook me a little bit.

Mr. Blair Seaborn: I think it's very generally accepted that the present method of on-site storage starts in most cases in big pools of water. Then after the fuel bundles have cooled down for about 10 years, they get moved into concrete canisters on site. That's generally thought to be a safe method of dealing with the waste on a comparatively temporary basis. When I say “temporary”, I'm talking about 50 to 100 years. They're monitored. They can be monitored right there.

• 1625

It's our view that it would be very desirable for governments to move and come to a decision within about three years. If governments came to a decision on the basis of a much better understanding than exists now as to which option for long-term management they want to pursue, it could be done in three years. We suggested the series of steps they must take in order to find out which option seems the best for Canada, taking all considerations into account.

If that were to happen—that's a three-year time period, which is tight—thereafter, if the decision were made to go to deep-rock disposal such as what's proposed here, the AECL reckons it would take another approximately 20 years to be narrowing down from a very broad territory to technically suitable sites, and also to find out if there are sites where the local population would be perfectly willing to have a repository established. They think that, with the technical work and the social consultation, would take something like 20 years.

Thereafter, you would have the actual construction of the site and its utilization, its filling, and its eventual closure. It would be 20 years plus, if you accepted this particular option, before you would have some place to start putting the nuclear fuel waste in a permanent disposal.

Dr. Lois Wilson: Can I add to that? We became aware also that the proposal was to store in the Canadian Shield, which is the home of many aboriginal people. Neither AECL nor the panel did an adequate consultation with them in a process designed by them.

They do it in a different way. Some were handicapped by language. They said they did not have adequate knowledge to assess what was being presented to them.

We're recommending that the government could start immediately to put that process in place now. In other words, turn it over to the aboriginal people to design it and carry it out parallel to the public participation process. You would be well advised, I think, to take the time to do that, because in the long run it will be productive. If we don't do it, then I think there will be some conflict and it won't be very productive.

Mr. John Herron: Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'll be brief.

My next question relates to the nuclear fuel waste management agency. More often than not, my personal reaction is that every time we set up a new agency to solve a problem, we usually have another problem.

Is this sort of thing necessary, do you think, in order to change the two cultures? One, there's the culture of acceptance within society. Second, there's a corporate or institutional culture, such that the reason for existing is to deal with long-term management. Is that necessary because AECL doesn't really have the...? I don't want to use the word “credibility” as it's too negative, but is it your perception that AECL can't sell this, so it would be better to have a different institutional culture to sell this?

Mr. Blair Seaborn: I think it's worth pointing out that AECL has not had the funding for the last year or two to pursue the work they did earlier that gave rise to this particular report. In other words, that agency as such is not intending to be in the business of long-term management of nuclear fuel waste. They want to be in other businesses, such as building reactors and selling them.

We hesitated for some time before saying you should create a new agency. We know the concerns that might give rise to. But it's our feeling that the trust and credibility of whichever body is going to implement these recommendations—we hope it's going to—is very important, just as trust in the regulator is important. You're likely to have a much better chance of gaining a sense of confidence from the public if you have a new start with a new agency that has no other responsibilities than to manage these wastes in an adequate fashion.

• 1630

We have stressed also that the agency, which we hope would not be a large one, which would do most of its work by contracting out at various stages of what it has to do, would not be just a technical agency, by any means. It would have to have a social component, equally important with the technical component, if it's to do its job properly.

Whatever the reason, it seemed to us that there was a certain amount of baggage carried by AECL and by Ontario Hydro that might make it a little difficult for them to pursue this task, and in any event, we thought it was better to try to make a fresh start.

We have not prejudged exactly what form that could be. It could be a crown corporation. It could be a not-for-profit corporation. It could be some ingenious mix of those two, and there are new beings coming into existence these days. But we think creation of a new agency—and we list its tasks there and how it would be accountable—is really quite a significant part of gaining some confidence from the public, helping them to understand better all of the implications of this particular problem and to take it through to a successful fruition.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Herron.

[Translation]

Mr. St-Julien, please.

Mr. Guy St-Julien: In your introduction, you said that the Nuclear Fuel Waste Management and Disposal Concept Environmental Assessment Panel was responsible for Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd.'s project for the storage of nuclear fuel waste in Canada's geological formations.

Coming back to my initial question, Atomic Energy of Canada granted funds to the University of Waterloo to collect water samples from five operating mines for geochemical analysis purposes. Information subsequently obtained from the analysis of those samples was supposed to enable us to better understand the geochemical characteristics of groundwater throughout the Canadian Shield and would thus have been useful in a general way to the Canadian nuclear fuel waste management program.

I have in my hand the dates and places where those samples were taken by the University of Waterloo. I find this bizarre. I live in Val-d'Or. In June 1984, the University of Waterloo conducted tests at the Sigma mine in Val-d'Or and at Teck Corporation's Lamaque mine. It went to the Telbel mine in August 1985, north of the 49th parallel, in Joutel, to the Matagami mine in February 1985, also north of the 49th parallel, and to the Norita mine in Matagami in February 1985.

When we assessed the Atomic Energy of Canada project, I believe that Atomic Energy of Canada provided you with all the lists of locations where samples had been taken and of the mines where underground research had been conducted, regardless of the city in Canada where that was done. It could have been a mine near here, in the Ottawa region. I hope that Atomic Energy provided you with a complete list of all the locations that the universities it funded visited.

[English]

Mr. Blair Seaborn: I'm not in a position to give you an answer to exactly what studies AECL conducted as part of this 15-year program of research. I just don't know it. It is possible that amongst the pages—I'm not sure how many pages of documentation we received from them, but it must have been 5,000, 6,000, 7,000, or 8,000 pages—there is in the text or in one of the reference lists some reference to this particular study. I am not aware of it, so I'm afraid you would have to turn that question to AECL. It's not something that came to our attention as a panel. I'm sorry.

[Translation]

Mr. Guy St-Julien: In closing, I nevertheless find your answer bizarre. I have a great deal of respect for you, but I put this question to the House of Commons in 1991. You will find it in nos. 443 and 444. All these places are indicated there. I thought that your mandate was to review Atomic Energy of Canada's project. You should nevertheless have been told the truth and given all the locations where Canadian mines were visited as well as storage sites or deep underground sites.

I know that Atomic Energy can't make a choice immediately, but I believe it asked Canadian universities, using the money of Canadian taxpayers, to look for future sites within x years. You should have a complete list so that we know the exact situation.

• 1635

I have here the five locations in the region where I live, including one that is under my house. I find it bizarre that Atomic Energy of Canada did not give you the list.

[English]

Mr. Blair Seaborn: We may well have it in our documentation, or it may be referenced as one of the long lists of reference papers. All I'm saying is that I do not recall that particular paper, and I don't know whether Dr. Wilson does or not.

Dr. Lois Wilson: What I'd simply like to add is that it would undoubtedly be in our papers, and the technical people would have known of it. But the conclusions we came to are the conclusions that you find in this report, in which that's included. That may come in handy if we go to siting, but ours is not a siting mandate.

The Chairman: So it's not in your terms of reference.

Dr. Lois Wilson: No.

The Chairman: Correct.

Mr. St-Julien.

[Translation]

Mr. Guy St-Julien: In closing, your mandate was to study the project conducted by Atomic Energy of Canada, which paid universities to conduct geochemical research. I was surprised to learn that research was conducted under my house. If research was conducted under your house, I am sure you would have obtained the list.

Mr. Blair Seaborn: We were responsible for reviewing the concept proposed by AECL.

Mr. Guy St-Julien: It was a broad concept.

Mr. Blair Seaborn: Yes, it was broad. That was one of the problems we had.

Mr. Guy St-Julien: It included studies.

Mr. Blair Seaborn: That's entirely possible.

Mr. Guy St-Julien: Thank you.

[English]

The Chairman: Mr. Casson.

Mr. Rick Casson: Mr. Chairman, I'm not sure if this is in order, but could we have him table the studies that he's referring to?

The Chairman: If he has a copy.

[Translation]

Mr. Guy St-Julien: Mr. Chairman, I could table the text of the questions I asked in the House of Commons and we could write to Atomic Energy of Canada to find out what is going on.

[English]

The Chairman: All right.

Mr. Casson, did you have a question?

Mr. Rick Casson: Yes, Mr. Chairman, I'd just like to get back to storage and methods of storage. I believe I heard or read somewhere that there are sites in the United States that have started to leak. They might not be long-term, but they are stored somewhere, and whatever method they're using is not working properly. Were you made aware of that or did you discover that during your...?

Mr. Blair Seaborn: The United States is looking to a disposal concept in Nevada, as AECL was, and they've done an enormous amount of research with respect to one site in Nevada. They did not obtain sufficient information and sufficient acceptability in time to be able to say that it is the site they will use.

The federal government there is under an obligation—I think I have this correctly—to take charge of the nuclear fuel waste from a number of utilities by a certain date. They had hoped to do that in the site they've looked at in Nevada. Because that site is not yet ready to be authorized and may be some distance from it, they are now looking to a temporary storage site that is, I believe, in Texas, but I'm not sure of that. There is no permanent storage site in the United States at present in any event.

There certainly have been reports of leaks from some of the sites where military-use nuclear fuel, radionuclides, are stored. I think that's in Hannaford, but it's not something in which I have any detailed knowledge, nor do I suspect Dr. Wilson does.

Dr. Lois Wilson: No.

Mr. Rick Casson: Thank you.

The Chairman: Thank you.

We'll start the third round very soon, because there are a few questions that we need to ask you, as we intend to write to the two ministers with some observations following this very helpful meeting.

One of the questions for which it will be very helpful to know your view is this. On the social acceptance aspect, which is one of your key conclusions, have you worked out a step-by-step process in addition to calling for consultations with aboriginal people, which we have understood in their importance? But that would be part of broader approach. What is the plan, if any, in this social acceptance endeavour?

• 1640

Dr. Lois Wilson: We think this would be the job of the people at the nuclear waste management agency. They would be in charge of it, but they wouldn't have to do it. They could contract it out to people who are able to do it. We didn't think the panel should do it, but that we should turn it over to the people responsible. It should be an ongoing comprehensive strategy, including when the decision points are to come up, so that the public would know when to intervene, and so that the level of public and community participation in each decision would be made clear.

We didn't think we should lay out the precise steps. We've put it over to the agency to do that, so that not only would the interveners know, but the people who are being considered for a proposed siting territory would know, and they would also know the timetable. Now, that may be some time off, of course, which is why I think that if we had laid it out, it would be out of date by the time the agency got around to it.

The Chairman: So the agency would be charged with the responsibility to lay out the plan to achieve social acceptance.

Dr. Lois Wilson: And implement it.

The Chairman: All right, fine.

The other questions that have some importance are these: What is the fuel we have that needs to be stored? What is the progression quantity? Is it going to double in the next so many years? Is that an exponential curve? In addition to that, do we intend to import fuel, as you indicate in your report on MOX? In other words, what is the magnitude of the task today, and how large will the task be so many years from now if we don't start tackling it immediately? In other words, how do we attach an element of urgency to this particular report?

Mr. Blair Seaborn: Let me say a little bit about quantities, if I may. The amount that we have now has been rather simply described as the amount that would fit into three NHL-sized hockey rinks filled up to top of the boards. That's the physical quantity, if you can just envisage that.

If the decision is taken to go to a repository, the amount that this repository would have to accommodate would of course depend on a number of factors. There are calculations in here as to how much would be involved at certain points in time. It depends on whether, in the most extreme case, all nuclear reactors in Canada were closed down right now, today—we then have those three full hockey rinks—whether the present ones were allowed to come to the end of their natural life and then not be replaced; whether each one was to be replaced as it reached the end of its life; or whether there was to be a 3%—I think this is the potential they dealt with—augmentation in the amount of nuclear energy as part of the total Canadian mix. They have done some calculations on that in this report. I'm sorry, though, I can't lay my hands on the immediate page right now.

Obviously, the longer the nuclear reactors are in operation, the greater the amount of nuclear waste that will eventually have to be dealt with in one way or another. It varies greatly depending upon whether you extend the life, just maintain what you have now, or augment the amount of electricity you generate by nuclear power.

It is our view that it would be very unwise just to say that it is not a big problem and we'll put it off indefinitely. That, I think, is the wrong thing to do, because twenty or thirty years from now we'll be exactly where we stand today and we won't know what to do with the stuff. We do not have public acceptance for what to do with it, which is why we're trying to lay out these recommendations of a fairly tight timetable with very swift action over a period of two or three years, to come to the basic decision as to how we're going to deal with these wastes, and to then get on with whatever method it is that's decided upon at that time.

Dr. Lois Wilson: Your question was precisely one of the problems that the public interveners had about what amount of waste we're looking at. Outside our terms of reference was the future of nuclear power and the importation of nuclear waste, and there was some feeling that unless we include that in the total picture, we'll never be able to really answer that question about the amount of nuclear waste. That was a big item in the acceptability of the concept.

• 1645

Mr. Blair Seaborn: There were, if I remember correctly, statements made by government representatives at some of our hearings to the effect that it is not intended to import waste from other countries if we were to develop an acceptable facility. So it was not the intention to import wastes from other countries, and if there were any change in that direction, then the government would carry out a full environmental assessment of that particular proposal.

The Chairman: On page 64 you have a very important recommendation, which is that the federal government should issue a policy statement governing the “long-term management of nuclear fuel wastes”. In a perfect world, when would you like to have a statement of this nature issued?

Dr. Lois Wilson: Yesterday.

Mr. Blair Seaborn: I would hope that we would have a statement to that effect within the next three to six months, after our report has been studied.

The report is now of course in the hands of government. The Minister of Natural Resources and the Department of Natural Resources have the lead responsibility in pulling together the answer the government will make. I would hope very much that a statement could be made stating in fairly broad and general terms how the federal government looks at nuclear power in the immediate future, but that the statement would also be the response to the recommendations in this report and would say, “Yes, we agree with these things” or “No, we do not agree with these recommendations, for the following reasons”. I would hope the statement would include the response to our report.

The Chairman: Moving on briefly and quickly to what you said earlier about the establishment of a segregated fund by Ontario Hydro, I suppose, or by the Ontario government, this report is addressed to two federal ministers. How do you expect this report to be managed so as to ensure a reply from the Ontario government?

Mr. Blair Seaborn: The segregated fund, of course, would be, in our view, contributed to in largest measure by Ontario Hydro, but if it continued to be the view that there should be one central—either storage or disposal—site in Canada for long-term management, then proportional contributions would have to be made by Hydro-Québec, which has a reactor, by New Brunswick Power Corporation, and a little by AECL for its experimental reactors.

In more than one place in this report, we have referred to “governments”, because the Ontario government was involved very closely in the early 1980s in agreeing upon the terms of reference which should apply to AECL and what research should be carried out by AECL. And in fact, Ontario Hydro worked very closely with AECL and was in a sense a subcontractor to AECL in a lot of the work which was done. They contributed one or two of the volumes of the huge array of documents which we received from AECL.

I do know that copies of the report have been conveyed to the Government of Ontario.

The Chairman: So that's all right, but let's put aside Quebec and New Brunswick for a moment because they may be rather marginal in this game. How does a federal report to two federal ministers elicit a reply from a provincial government at times when we are so careful and cautious, if not even fearful, about federal-provincial relations, whereby we rather prefer to manicure and pedicure provincial politicians rather than face difficult issues?

Mr. Blair Seaborn: I think I'm stepping a little bit beyond the purview of chairman of this report, but I'll nonetheless say, Mr. Chairman, that the report has been conveyed to the Government of Ontario. I assume that in coordinating the federal response from the various departments and agencies to the report, the officials in this town will also consult officials in Ontario and in Ontario Hydro to that effect.

If it is the wish of the Minister of Natural Resources, the federal minister, to have a public statement from the Government of Ontario it will be up to him, as I see it, to say that is the case, that he will expect a public statement from them, possibly one that could come forth at the same time as the federal government response to this one.

• 1650

The Chairman: But Ontario, as a government, has no obligation to reply.

Mr. Blair Seaborn: I do not think there is any obligation to reply on the part of the Ontario government, but I am subject to correction on that.

The Chairman: And Ontario Hydro, as such, has a deficit of some $13 billion. How can we expect from that source, which is heavily indebted, a participation for the formation of a segregated fund?

Mr. Blair Seaborn: That is indeed one of the difficulties we've pointed our fingers at, that the absence of a segregated fund means we had better start not only collecting the money but getting it put into real fund terms, and very soon.

The Chairman: So the claim made by Ontario Hydro of 0.01% per kilowatt-hour being charged to the consumer is really an empty claim.

Mr. Blair Seaborn: I don't think it's an empty claim. I think they have been charging that, but it has gone as a bookkeeping item, not into a segregated fund from which one could immediately draw real money in order to start this process. That's the problem.

The Chairman: It's a claim on paper.

Dr. Lois Wilson: Yes.

Mr. Blair Seaborn: Yes.

The Chairman: There is no money in the bank.

Mr. Blair Seaborn: That depends upon how you regard Ontario Hydro's financial situation, sir.

The Chairman: Fair enough.

Third round, Mr. Herron.

Mr. John Herron: No, thank you.

The Chairman: Mr. Casson.

Mr. Rick Casson: Mr. Chairman, I'd just like to ask Mr. Seaborn, if I may, about his consideration of MOX fuel in this scenario and what problems it could add or compound. It seems to be a whole different situation from the other fuel; it stays hotter for longer and it creates different problems.

Can you comment on that? If this type of fuel were put with normal fuel, would it jeopardize the whole storage facility?

Mr. Blair Seaborn: The question of the possible use of MOX fuel came into play under public consideration part-way through our hearings. It is excluded from our terms. We consider it outside our terms of reference to comment on that, but because a number of participants did express concerns about the proposal that MOX fuel should be burned in reactors in Ontario, for example, we heard quite a bit about it.

And we have mentioned in the report, as we have with respect to other things, concerns that people have expressed to us even though they may be outside our terms of reference and therefore would be not proper for us to comment on or make recommendations on.

The MOX fuel question is one that falls into that category. We've reported what we have heard, but we were not provided enough information about it to be able to make any comment as to what that would do to the adequacy or otherwise of the AECL proposal.

Mr. Rick Casson: Thank you.

[Translation]

Mr. Guy St-Julien: Dr. Wilson, earlier on, you talked about Aboriginal people. In your view, did Atomic Energy of Canada and your Panel make a considerable effort to consult Aboriginal people in my region, concerning the Cree of James Bay and the James Bay Agreement, and the Inuit of Nunavik, north of the 60th parallel?

[English]

Dr. Lois Wilson: The ones beyond the 60th parallel?

Mr. Guy St-Julien: Yes.

Dr. Lois Wilson: The input we got was “no”. We did hear from the lawyer who represented the native people and the aboriginal people on the James Bay project, but we were not up there, nor did they make intervention.

We did visit three aboriginal reserves, only three, one in Manitoba, two in Ontario. And we did have a number of interventions from aboriginal people, but their view was that they would like to design the process. For example, traditional knowledge of aboriginal people was never taken into account. They came into the hearings according to our rules and abided by those. They had some difficulties with the language and some in terms of their cultural understandings.

I guess we've made this recommendation also in view of the findings of the royal commission, but no, we didn't do that consultation properly. Neither did AECL, and I think that's a common admission.

[Translation]

Mr. Guy St-Julien: Thank you.

• 1655

[English]

The Chairman: Mr. Finlay. No questions? All right, then the chair has some.

Mr. Seaborn, having completed this extraordinary assignment and operating within some very clearly established terms of reference, and now thinking back—or thinking ahead; it doesn't matter, really—which are the questions that you would like to see answered that were not included within the scope of your terms of reference?

Dr. Lois Wilson: That's a good question.

Mr. Blair Seaborn: At the same time as this panel was established and announced, which was as long ago as 1989, I would remind you, the federal government made a statement to the effect that it would conduct a parallel review or examination of—I'm trying to remember exactly how it went—the environmental impacts of several ways of generating electricity, including the nuclear one. That was a matter that gave us some comfort, to hear that they were doing that, because we realized right from the beginning that it would be difficult to ask people to concentrate solely on the question of nuclear fuel waste without the larger look at the nuclear fuel cycle. We went in the hope that the other review would take place so that our review could take place in a broader context.

It never happened. I wrote as chair several times to successive ministers, urging them to conduct the review, and for a variety of reasons, that did not take place. That made our life somewhat more difficult. I'm not saying we would have thoroughly enjoyed a mandate that asked us to review the future of nuclear energy in Canada, and in some ways we were rather relieved to have this limited nuclear waste question. But it made it difficult for many participants to look at this question, quite isolated from the much broader question: what use do we want to make of nuclear in our energy mix in this country?

The Chairman: Could you give us examples of other questions that you would like to have answered?

Mr. Blair Seaborn: There are a number of things, of course, with respect to this particular conception, and we've mentioned those, but I don't think that's what you're aiming for.

Dr. Lois Wilson: Does he mean outside our mandate?

Mr. Blair Seaborn: You're thinking of things outside our mandate.

I think at some stage, and I hope sooner rather than later, the governments will have to encourage some sort of discussion or debate about energy matters in general in the country. This is much beyond our mandate, of course, but I think they will have to do that. Whether they can find a way of doing it, given the fact that energy is primarily the responsibility of the provinces, rests in their purview. I don't know, but I think you're going to run into difficulties if you do not have some debate of that kind. Quite frankly, if there is a public participation plan, which we have in mind, I think that may lead to a broadening out of the discussion.

The Chairman: Does the Kyoto commitment not require this kind of debate amongst governments?

Mr. Blair Seaborn: Which commitment?

The Chairman: The Kyoto commitment of last December, the debate on energy methods.

Mr. Blair Seaborn: I would not want to pronounce upon that. I don't feel knowledgeable enough on the detail of the Kyoto agreement to comment, sir.

The Chairman: Thank you.

Mr. Finlay.

Mr. John Finlay: I'd like to ask a question to Mr. Seaborn.

It seems to me that in the timeframe of your review, if I'm not mistaken, Sweden decided to decommission all its nuclear energy plants, or its nuclear plants for the production of electricity. Did you look at that at all? Do you have any knowledge of whether it was because they were afraid they would never be able to deal safely with the waste? What were the things that led them to that decision?

• 1700

Mr. Blair Seaborn: I believe it was a general concern expressed by at least some portion—and I wouldn't venture what portion—of the Swedish public that led the government back in the 1980s to hold a referendum on the future of nuclear energy in Sweden. It relies on nuclear energy, if I recall correctly, for approximately 50% of its needs. After that referendum was held, the government of the day made the commitment to phase out the nuclear part of its electrical energy by a date, which I think may not be that far off—some time early in the next millennium, 2005 perhaps. I'm sorry, I don't remember the exact period.

There are some, certainly, who will say that because there was that commitment, it has made it easier for the government to move ahead reasonably well on its search for a solution to nuclear fuel waste. The Swedes, by many accounts, have done a lot of very good work, both technical and social, in that respect.

The question, though, which is now in a number of people's minds and has been referred to publicly in Sweden, is whether it will be possible for us, in fact, because not a single one of those reactors has been closed down yet. It may have closed down one small one, I'm not sure, but it has not actually started to close them down. There are now some questions as to whether it will be able to do that or not, and if it were to close them down, what the alternative sources of energy for Sweden would be. So it is a continuing and vexing question.

Mr. John Finlay: Thank you very much.

The Chairman: Mr. Herron.

Dr. Lois Wilson: I'd like to go back to your question, Mr. Chairman, on items outside our mandate that we would like looked at. These came up in the hearings and I don't know how on earth it could be looked at, but the whole question of exporting nuclear reactors and therefore the implication of wastes from those in other countries came up quite frequently. I know that's Foreign Affairs, and government departments don't relate to each other all that much, but that was certainly an item in our hearings—how we're exporting them without looking at the results of that.

Mr. John Herron: My question is just a short one.

Through the many hearings you had and within your own mandate, or maybe slightly outside your own current mandate, because all these really should be classified as temporary storage sites in reality, was there any temporary storage site whatsoever that actually spooked you to some degree, where you thought it should be looked at or moved relatively shortly, compared to other sites?

Mr. Blair Seaborn: No, it was not our task to look at those, but we had hearings and visitations in a number of communities that are very close to the sites, such as Pickering and and Bruce. Nothing of that sort came to our attention at all.

Mr. John Herron: So you have no concerns on temporary storage at any sites.

Mr. Blair Seaborn: We were given no reason to think there are concerns about the temporary storage. Nothing is 100% safe in this world, of course, and we know that. But we were given no reason to have concerns about it and no one, to my recollection, expressed any concerns about that matter of temporary storage.

Mr. John Herron: So I can sleep easier tonight.

Mr. Blair Seaborn: I don't sleep uneasily because of the temporary storage.

Could I just pick on one thing Lois Wilson said on the export and possible import? There were statements, if I remember correctly, by AECL to the effect that in none of its contracts for export of reactors is there any commitment on its part or on the part of the Government of Canada to take waste back into Canada. It made that statement, but it is still a concern people have that it might happen.

Dr. Lois Wilson: That's right, and in terms of your question, Mr. Herron, the fact that we're sure temporary storage is good for 50 to 100 years buys the time to make the implementation of this report possible.

The Chairman: I have two questions. They relate to the study conducted by AECL, the environmental impact statements.

There were two case studies, we are told, conducted by AECL. The question has to do with whether the concept you examined was, in your opinion, sufficiently reviewed in view of the fact that their studies do not mention effects on the environment, and second, the fact that AECL, we are told, gave no consideration to small-scale accidents or emergencies and the like.

• 1705

Do you have any comment on that?

Mr. Blair Seaborn: In the basic EIS, as submitted to us, which describes the concept for deep-rock disposal, AECL did put forward, in considerable detail, material related to one case study that was based very heavily on the extensive research work they had done fifteen years or so ago in Pinawa, in eastern Manitoba. That's the research laboratory for deep-rock disposal.

As we prepared for the technical part of our hearings in Toronto in June of 1997—I think I have my years right—we also received from AECL some details about an additional case study they had done that described a rather different configuration for deep-rock disposal. It had different results, but it was meant to indicate that there is a fair amount of flexibility within a deep-rock disposal as to how you proceed. It was meant to convey the idea to us that you'd clearly want to develop the changes in real design as you went along and as you gained more information. So I think it's important to know those case studies.

You said something, sir, to the effect that there were no environmental...there's some concern about environmental impacts. We had quite a bit of information about the impacts on the environment.

The Chairman: The study contains no mention of effects on the environment.

Mr. Blair Seaborn: No, that's not correct.

Dr. Lois Wilson: It does.

Mr. Blair Seaborn: In the detailed studies there's a great deal of information. Some in our scientific review group and others did criticize certain gaps in that study, but there is indeed a lot of information about the expected impacts on the environment as well as on human health—very detailed ones, in fact.

The Chairman: Thanks.

The other question has to do with France. Considering the fact that nuclear energy is so dominant in their production of electricity, is there anything we can learn from France about the disposal of nuclear waste?

Mr. Blair Seaborn: The one difficulty there is that the French do not use the same systems we do. They reprocess their fuel and use it a second time. We have what is referred to as a “once through ” reactor.

The French—I think I'm up to date in my facts—are looking at three sites, of which they had hoped to choose two, eventually, to establish research laboratories that would be located in two different media, perhaps one in rock and one in clay. I think those were the two that seemed to be the favourites. They would conduct detailed research there, as the plan went, on the safety of using one or other medium with whatever engineered barriers are required.

Their intention is that those research laboratories should eventually, after they've done all the research, become in fact depositories or facilities for the long-term disposal of their wastes.

When they go out to look for the sites for the three laboratories, they are looking not only for technically suitable sites but also for sites where you'd find a community willing to have such a research laboratory in the knowledge that it could eventually become a long-term repository. I'm not able to say exactly how far along they are on that process.

The Chairman: Thank you.

Fourth and final round, Mr. Finlay.

Mr. John Finlay: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I think you mentioned the word “reusing”. We're looking at this matter of nuclear warheads and decommissioning submarines and using, if I understand it, that hot fuel in a reactor. Is there any suggestion that recycling these rods or this fuel can significantly reduce its half-life and hence its need for a million years' worth of storage?

• 1710

Mr. Blair Seaborn: I think a distinction must be made between the French recycling process, which is recycling fuel that they have already used in their reactors—it's not military at all—and the other question of what you might do to get rid of those large supplies of plutonium that are left over from the military applications. That really is the MOX fuel question.

I think the other question you are referring to is the possibility of so treating the nuclear fuel waste that it would become less dangerous. That's sometimes referred to as transmutation of the fuel. It's the old business of turning lead into gold, if you will, but this is a modern application of it.

A considerable amount of research is being done on the possibility of transmutation of nuclear fuel waste in Japan and in France. I can't remember whether or not the United States is doing any of that. It may be that Britain is doing a bit as well, and there are two or three other countries. We had that research very particularly in mind when we recommended that the nuclear fuel waste agency should follow very closely developments in other countries.

At the present time, however, as far as we could make out from the information available to us, the transmutation option does not offer significant cost and safety improvements over the other options we've been looking at. It may turn out to be better. There may be a breakthrough scientifically at some stage, but at this stage it is not something that leads us to say that's the way to go.

Mr. John Finlay: Thank you.

The Chairman: The final question is from here. As far as waste is concerned, did you indicate to us that the owners of the waste are the respective hydro corporations in the respective provinces?

Mr. Blair Seaborn: That is correct. They are the legal owners of their waste. Of course, AECL, which has some research reactors, is also the legal owner of rather small amounts of waste.

The Chairman: And would you agree with the observation that as the federal government dismantles its laboratories active in this field—Whiteshell and so on—its moral authority is weakened?

Mr. Blair Seaborn: I don't know whether.... No, I'd hesitate to comment on that, Mr. Chairman.

The Chairman: I know that you would hesitate.

Mr. Blair Seaborn: The research laboratory at Pinawa has been primarily looking at the research for waste management. It will have to go on somewhere else if it doesn't go on there.

The Chairman: Can you define for us, please, the federal responsibility in this field?

Mr. Blair Seaborn: I wish I knew the exact origins of it in constitutional terms, but nuclear energy in general falls under the federal head. That's why the federal government is so directly involved. If it were another kind of energy, it would not be.

The Chairman: To what extent does Ottawa have authority in, for instance, the establishment of a segregated fund with the respective hydro corporations?

Mr. Blair Seaborn: I am not a lawyer, as you know, sir. I would be surprised if Ottawa had authority in that regard. I hope it will have a great deal of persuasive power to convince Ontario Hydro and the other two utilities to establish a segregated fund. The idea is not new with our panel, I can assure you. It has been recommended before. At one stage, if I remember correctly, the board of AECL itself requested that the Ontario government allow it to create a segregated file, a segregated fund, but for whatever reason, that has not happened.

The Chairman: And the fact that Ottawa is reducing its research labs would not affect its authority.

Mr. Blair Seaborn: I think there are ways of exerting your authority, moral and otherwise, other than by research labs, yes.

The Chairman: Thank you very much.

Are there any further questions to conclude? Mr. Finlay.

Mr. John Finlay: I just want to check one point, Mr. Chairman.

I wrote this down earlier, but I thought you mentioned that the provision of energy was really a provincial jurisdiction. I hear you saying now, though, that nuclear energy is clearly under the federal head.

Mr. Blair Seaborn: This came about as a result of federal activities during the war, so nuclear is a federal head, yes. But please call in a constitutional lawyer to explain exactly how that works. You don't have one here as your witness today.

• 1715

The Chairman: On behalf of every member, I'm sure we all appreciate very much your appearance today. We thank you, and we applaud your work. Once we have received a reply from the two ministers, perhaps we will have another session with you six months or a year from now in order to follow up this particular file. It is one of those sleeping tigers that one should watch very carefully.

In the meantime, we congratulate you on your fine work, and that of all those who have worked with you.

Mr. Blair Seaborn: I thank you, Mr. Chairman, for giving us the opportunity to convey directly to your committee some of the work we've been engaged in on this particular and important matter. I only regret that, for reasons that I suspect relate to weather and aircraft, we do not have my colleague Dougal McCreath here. I know he would like to have appeared. He was counting on it.

The Chairman: Thank you.

This meeting is adjourned.