:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee.
First of all, on behalf of the 71,000 men and women who work in Canada’s nuclear industry, from the workers at our TRIUMF research centre in British Columbia, the SLOWPOKE-2 facility at the University of Alberta, Cameco and AREVA in Saskatchewan, and all our power plant workers and researchers in Ontario, Quebec, and New Brunswick, we commend the people of Japan, who have shown both amazing resilience and fortitude since the devastating earthquake and tsunami almost two weeks ago.
Let me start by saying that while there is no such thing as absolute safety, Canada’s fleet of reactors is safe. Each structure is designed and built to seismic standards, despite being located in areas with low seismic activity and virtually no risk of a tsunami. Safety has always been, and continues to be, the number one priority for our industry.
Our industry is based on worldwide learning and continuous improvements based on a worldwide body of engineering experience.
As a result of the Japanese nuclear incident, the federal regulator is reviewing the safety cases for all of Canada’s nuclear facilities, as is normal when events of this nature occur. We are proud of our safety record, but we are never complacent. The tragedy in Japan will of course be examined thoroughly for lessons we can apply here at home.
My colleague Mr. Duncan Hawthorne will be speaking to you about this in more detail in a few minutes.
Let me turn to the broader subject of energy security. Nuclear energy is an important part of Canada’s diversified electricity supply mix. Indeed, we are a 24-hour baseload power source. We produce 15% of Canada’s electricity and over 50% of Ontario’s.
A major advantage of nuclear power is that it produces massive amounts of electricity reliably, safely, and over long periods of time. With continuous advancements in engineering and learning, we expect to get up to 60 years of life from our plants. However, as with all energy and fuel sources, there are challenges and rewards. Our industry’s cost structure consists of high capital costs and low fuel costs.
First let’s consider the benefits of those capital investments. They are the same as the benefits that come from all large, well-thought-out industrial infrastructure projects, the most important one being jobs. These projects also generate revenues and taxes for communities and benefits for supply chains all across Canada.
With respect to jobs, in July 2010 the Canadian Manufacturers & Exporters showed that just two projects alone, the refurbishment of facilities at Bruce and Darlington, will support 25,000 high-wage jobs for a decade, injecting $5 billion annually into Ontario’s economy and leaving us with better infrastructure that will serve our households and our industries for generations to come.
We must also consider the low operating costs of a nuclear power plant. Once a plant is producing energy, it requires little fuel. And uranium costs are subject to very little volatility in price, so an investment of this sort does not risk price volatility. According to studies conducted by the OECD , the overall cost to the consumer of nuclear power over the life of a power plant is similar to that of large-scale hydro, natural gas, and coal, and is even lower than wind and solar.
Our industry has very few external costs, meaning that we impose few costs on society or on the environment that we aren’t accountable for ourselves. That’s because we occupy small pieces of real estate. We release virtually no emissions into the broader environment. We produce spent fuel and other radioactive materials that are very small in volume and that are very strictly monitored, and we mostly keep and manage them ourselves.
In fact, we are the only industry that can really say that we know exactly where all our waste is. Our regulators make sure that we do. And to us, it’s not just pure waste; it’s a fuel that one day we may be able to recycle. As a net result, we account for the full costs of packaging, managing, storing, and disposing of these materials, which means that those costs are built into and covered by the price of nuclear power today.
On the environmental front, I mentioned that the power being produced is virtually emissions-free. If we did not have the nuclear power plants we have in Canada today, and instead relied on fossil-fuel-based electricity for that output, our country would generate more than 90 million tonnes of greenhouse gases every year. That would add about 12% to our annual greenhouse gas emissions.
Further replacing fossil-fuel-based energy with nuclear energy can have a very positive impact as we strive to lessen our country’s, and indeed the world’s, carbon footprint. Nuclear’s low emissions, low fuel costs, and low real estate needs were already attractive to many countries before we started talking about either capping carbon emissions or putting a price on them. As energy demands increase and we move towards a carbon-constrained world, nuclear energy has a role to play in Canada and abroad. As developing countries look to sustainable and renewable fuel sources, nuclear is a clear choice. It is virtually emissions-free. It is affordable. It can help create jobs at home and in developing countries, which will stimulate economies rooted in innovation and research.
I wish I had more time to talk about innovation and nuclear research and development, and indeed about nuclear medicine, but I don't. These are great sources of pride for our nation. Through these areas, our industry is driving productivity, and ultimately improving our standard of living.
In closing, I will say that with each passing year the global community of people who care about the environment has more and more in common with the global community of people who provide nuclear power generation, those who are continually striving to improve its safety, its economics, and its environmental performance.
With that, I'd like to thank you for the opportunity to be here today.
:
Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman.
Obviously the presentation on nuclear power would be impacted by the events that have taken place in Japan, so I felt it might be helpful to give the committee an overview of what's here. I've provided a slide deck to try to allow the committee to understand exactly the sequence of events.
Now let me, without actually going through slide by slide, try to give you an overview of the situation. Of course everyone has watched the devastating effect the earthquake and tsunami had on the entire region of Japan that was affected.
With respect to the nuclear plant itself, at the time the earthquake hit there were six units on the site, units one to six. Three were in operation—units one, two, and three—and three were in various stages of shutdown mode. When the earthquake hit, the plant responded as you might have wished it would do. It withstood the earthquake and the automatic cooling systems went into operation, again in a way the design would have wanted to see that happen.
About 30 minutes after the earthquake, the tsunami created massive damage to the facility and in fact swamped much of their shutdown system. Basically, it's easy to see from here that the plant was not capable of withstanding the level of tsunami it was struck by. The height of the wave exceeded the design expectation for the site. It had a devastating effect on all of the shutdown systems.
I've tried to explain this event in many ways to people, and I was just at a meeting in Ontario this morning trying to do the same thing, so if I can explain this in layperson's terms, it might be easier for you.
If you can imagine your own kettle at home that's boiling water, that's actually very much like a boiling water reactor. The water actually boils within the reactor during normal operation, and instead of the water escaping through your spout as it would in your kettle, it actually then is fed to the turbine generator. So if you can imagine a scenario where suddenly you have nowhere to send the steam—because that's what happened when this event occurred, the connection between the reactor and the turbine was broken—you still have a tremendous amount of heat being generated inside your kettle and nowhere for the steam to go.
The obvious concern there is how do you keep it cool? How do you prevent the lid from blowing off? In the early period after this event when they lost cooling, that was exactly the situation they were faced with, the possibility of the water continuing to boil off and structural damage occurring.
Really, from the minute the tsunami hit, they had to consider how to apply cooling to these three powerful reactors that are still generating heat. Having tried a series of things, they then were forced with a situation where they knew that fuel damage was occurring, the water level in the reactor was dropping, and they had to do two things fairly quickly: one, to relieve the pressure by venting, and two, to find some alternate way of adding water to the reactor. They chose to do that by using seawater and using fire pumps, and they progressively worked their way through these three units.
One of the things I think we've all seen pretty dramatic pictures of is where the secondary containment has been affected. Really, the reason for that is that as they're venting, they're also venting hydrogen into that secondary containment. Under normal operation that hydrogen should have been burnt off as it was generated. There would be a lower volume of it, and it would have been dealt with as it came. But their hydrogen ignition equipment was also electrically powered. So without that, they vented hydrogen in a pretty large volume, and then the hydrogen ignited and it blew the secondary containment apart on unit one and then did the same on unit three. Those were the structural impacts we've all watched.
The important thing, however, is despite the obvious visual impact that had, the structure of the primary containment for all of these reactors continues to be sound.
The second stage of the problem, then, is now that they have water in these vessels, they have to deal with the fact that the fuel pools have been sitting with fuel and they'll also need to be cooled. That's compounded by the fact that the secondary containment has been blown off in two of the units. So you have fuel that's overheating in a fuel pool, with no means of cooling it either, and as it steams off it sends contaminants into the atmosphere.
As things stand today, and you'll have seen this in much of the video footage, they've been using extraordinary measures to cool the fuel pool: they've been using fire trucks to hose down the fuel pools and add water; they're using seawater and fire pumps to keep the reactors cool. It really is all a coping strategy.
The situation has gotten better every day, but we'd be wrong to say that they have it stabilized at the moment. They are still doing it in a very non-standard way. Over the course of the last 48 hours they've been able to get electrical power back to these reactors, and that allows them to start recovering instrumentation, controls, and normal cooling systems.
My estimate would be that it will take at least another two weeks to try to get back to normal system operation, in terms of providing cooling by normal means. But these facilities are commercially out of action forever, and it's now about putting them into a safe layup and shutdown state.
At the heart of this, of course, is a question mark over whether or not the design basis for this plant was valid. Everyone I think understands that Japan is a very seismic-reactive area. Their plants are designed to meet earthquake standards that we would never consider applicable to our area. But even there, this quake and the tsunami that was a consequence of it exceeded the design specification.
As Denise said earlier, lessons for us.... We have very sound design-basis arguments here, of course. In Japan, not only is the plant designed differently, but the location of the plant is very different, in terms of the onerous environment.
We are conducting a review of our plants to do three things: firstly, to confirm that the design basis for our plants is sound; secondly, to confirm that the equipment we rely on can be proven to be available in a range of scenarios, such as fire, flood, explosion, and those kinds of things. The third thing we've been asked to do is to liaise with emergency measures organizations so that we can confirm that all of our controls and arrangements for any off-site event are adequate to meet this low-probability outcome.
We've been asked to do that in a matter of months by our regulator. Much of this we consider to be providing reassurance. We have already a pretty advanced situation here in Canada. We have a set of documents called “severe accident management guidelines”. I say that we are, in Canada, ahead of many in the production of those documents, which would obviously provide some reassurance, were we to suffer events that go beyond our design basis.
As an industry, of course, we all believe that there will be lessons to be learnt from the Japanese event. A job we have here in Canada is to reassure people about the safety of our own plants.
I'll finish by saying one thing, which is important: when there were two events that happened in the past that affected our history—Three Mile Island in 1979, 32 years ago last week, and Chernobyl 25 years ago—both of those events originated in the plant and escalated within the plant. We are not that operator today, and we haven't been that operator for a long time. This Fukushima event actually was a natural catastrophe, which affected the plant. We should certainly be prepared to learn lessons from this, but we should not allow it to compromise our view of the 30-plus years of safe operation that we in Canada have seen from our own nuclear plants.
I'll happily answer any questions.
Thank you.
:
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Clearly, today's meeting is rather special, particularly given what is happening in Japan. So it is understandable that our questions may be influenced by that to some degree. We will try to define where we stand on that issue. That is quite clear.
Canada must have a variety of energy sources, but the fact remains that the nuclear issue is a very sensitive one now, both in terms of transporting waste and in terms of the waste itself. A lot of people say that nuclear power plants do not emit a lot of CO 2, but if we look at what is happening in Japan, we can see that, when an explosion occurs and radiation is released, people are worried.
I would like us to dig a little deeper. I understand that you see things from the point of view of the industry. No one wants things to work badly, even if they want to make a profit. I understand that. So safety must be the priority. In any case, it is up to the regulators and to governments to ensure that checks and balances are in place in this area and to ensure that things go well.
Ms. Carpenter, you said that Canada's nuclear facilities are safe. We know that there are several plants in Ontario and that we have to face certain realities in New Brunswick and at Gentilly, in Quebec.
Do you think it will require a lot more money to ensure that we never have a Fukushima here? Or do you believe that what we currently have is sufficient and that we need not be concerned?
I am talking about construction and additional investments.
:
Yes, there have been some questions in response to this event. Would we have to re-engineer much of our equipment and plant, and would that then add to the cost of it?
While it's not a final outcome in terms of all of the causal factors in Japan, our view would be that our plants are designed to meet what we would consider to be credible design-basis faults. Once we have carried out the review we've been asked to do with the regulator, it will be our job to confirm that the design basis is sound.
We are pretty confident that will be the case. I still expect there'll be a number of lessons learned, but I don't expect them necessarily to be capital-intensive lessons. I expect they will be lessons about how you manage a multiple event, because obviously this is a site with four units, all together. So if you have an event in one, then it actually can escalate to all four. And obviously in Ontario we do have units.
For my own plant, of course, many parallels have been drawn because we actually do have six operational units, much like the plant at Fukushima. When we return our other two units to service shortly, we will have the largest power plant in the world in one place, in Ontario.
So I think there will be lessons about how our emergency management system copes with all of this generation in one place, and whether our plans are adequate to address that. But I think it is already clear to me that there will not be major plant requirements.
For example, if you think about the Fukushima plant, to make it more tsunami-proof, if I can say that, it would simply have been a matter of repositioning some of the equipment at a higher level. It wouldn't have been about purchasing more equipment. So some of those things would obviously be taken into the design for a new build.
:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee.
I appreciate the opportunity to testify today, and I will share some research I've been working on about the cost of building nuclear reactors. Plus, I've done some analysis looking at the impact of safety, an issue the last panel suggested needs to be considered at this moment.
The high cost and large capital expenditures associated with the construction of nuclear reactors make the technology more expensive and risky than available alternatives. Because reactor projects are extremely complex and involve environmental safety concerns of very toxic and volatile fuel, they are prone to cost overruns. The cost is driven by the difficulty of dealing with the fuel.
Their huge size and long lead times make them vulnerable to changes in marketplace dynamics, or public policy for that matter, which may eliminate or alter their economics. Because of these characteristics, certain utilities in the U.S. cannot raise funds in capital markets to build them.
Reacting to this marketplace reality, nuclear utilities in the U.S. have sought to sidestep the judgment of financial markets to secure massive subsidies that shift the risk of nuclear construction away from utility stockholders onto taxpayers, in the form of loan guarantees, and onto ratepayers, in the form of advanced cost recovery. Equipment vendors are probably kicking in some subsidy too in an effort to get a bandwagon going.
In the U.S. the industry had some success getting loan guarantees and advanced cost recovery, but the reality of the economics of nuclear reactors has set in. Almost every one of the projects that was talked about or asked for licences has been delayed, suspended, abandoned, or cancelled altogether.
What we've had here in the U.S. is a classic bubble with a promotional frenzy in the early part of the 2000s followed by a speculative surge and then the failure of the industry to live up to its promises about costs, something it has always had difficulty doing. Finally, the bubble burst with low-cost natural gas, declining demand growth, stable alternatives, and subsequent cancellations.
The long lead times of these reactors and high costs make them a uniquely bad investment to make in a period of great uncertainty. The simple fact of the matter is that what you want in uncertain times are investments that are flexible, let you make changes, don't sink costs, the antithesis of building large central station facilities. I have laid this out in exhibits attached to my testimony.
As bad as nuclear economics were in the recent past, I believe the incident at Fukushima will make them more difficult.
As you heard in the last panel, after an incident all the people with responsibility for various aspects of nuclear reactors have to step back and re-examine. Policy-makers would be irresponsible not to look at how safety standards are set and how the process is used to re-evaluate the cost-benefit of various alternatives. To consider gathering more information and slowing down is a good policy.
Safety regulators would be irresponsible not to re-examine safety, perhaps looking for more safety measures, which may lead to long lead times or the retrofit of existing plants. Of course financial analysts will have to look at the risk of these projects, whether they are more difficult to complete and whether they're less attractive than alternative options, whether they are less popular with policy-makers who will give them less support. As a result, the cost of capital will increase.
Cost escalation flows from the conduct of these complex plants. I looked at the U.S. before Three Mile Island, I looked at the U.S. after Three Mile Island, I compared that to the French before and after, and what we know is that nuclear construction had a cost escalation problem before Three Mile Island, it had a cost-escalation after, and the problem got a little worse after, because safety was an increased concern.
Some utilities will argue it is unnecessary, especially when subsequent events or incidents don't occur. But one can also argue that the lack of events is a function of taking proper account of safety.
I looked in my testimony at the occurrence of such events, not to predict when a future event will occur but to make it clear that these are possibilities. They do happen; they need to factor into our thinking; and inevitably they will have an impact on costs.
In the U.S., there was never any reason for the government to put taxpayers or ratepayers at risk when this nuclear bubble started to inflate. Instead, they should have listened to the judgment of the capital markets and let the technology be. If in the future it comes around, I'm a consumer advocate: I would be glad to support it if its costs would support it, leading me to conclude that it was the least-cost option to pursue. But the simple fact of the matter is that the economics of new nuclear reactors, certainly in the U.S., were bad before Fukushima and will be worse after.
Thank you for the opportunity.
Thank you, Chair, and honourable members of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Natural Resources. I appreciate the opportunity to appear before you today as part of the committee’s work in studying Canada’s energy security and the contribution that nuclear makes to safe, reliable, and low-emission baseload electricity generation.
First, let me begin by stating the obvious: that our thoughts and prayers are with the people of Japan during this extraordinary period in their history.
A bit about OPG: it is Ontario’s largest electricity generator and owned by the people of Ontario. From our 65 hydroelectric stations, three nuclear plants, and six fossil stations, we have in-service electricity generation of around 19,000 megawatt electrical. OPG nuclear generation represents approximately 30% of our generation portfolio.
Safety is central to everything we do. OPG has had many years of operation with no significant nuclear safety events. In fact, in over 40 years of nuclear operations, there have been no injuries to any member of the public as a result of those operations.
Along with our own nuclear plants, we lease to Bruce, as was mentioned earlier, two plants, which they operate. Finally, OPG operates the nuclear waste management facility that services OPG and Bruce Power.
OPG produces 60% of Ontario’s electricity. With the Ontario government’s directive to stop burning coal as a fuel by the end of 2014, OPG will predominantly be generating low-emitting electricity from its hydro and nuclear plants. In fact, in 2010, 90% of our electricity was virtually free of greenhouse gas generation.
Nuclear power enables renewable power generation from wind and solar, which are so dependent on variable weather conditions. Again, based on provincial direction to end the use of coal in our fossil plants, OPG is actively investigating the possibility of biomass and natural gas in combination to be a potential replacement fuel for our fossil fleet.
We have approximately 11,000 employees, and our company generates $6 billion in gross revenues, which supports many communities directly and indirectly across Ontario. Moreover, for the people of Ontario, the real owners of the assets, the commercial success of OPG contributes to the well-being of all Ontarians through the investments we make into those assets and taxes and other payments we make to the province. Our net income stays in the province.
OPG's three nuclear multi-unit CANDU plants are located at Pickering and Darlington, Ontario. We have been operating nuclear power plants since 1971. In 2007, OPG was awarded the prestigious Institute of Nuclear Power Operations performance improvement award for our facilities.
Our reactors are licensed to operate by the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission. We recognize that our licence to operate relies not only on our strong safety record but also on the earned trust from the communities in which we operate. We work very closely with our host communities at Pickering and Darlington, where we enjoy strong local support. This has translated to strong host community support for OPG's plan regarding a new nuclear build and for refurbishment to the Darlington facility. Our community partnerships include regular updates on nuclear operations as well as on safety and health issues.
In 2008, OPG was selected to operate two new nuclear units at the Darlington site. This has the potential to generate 3,500 jobs during construction as well as 1,400 jobs during the operation of those two plants. On September 21, 2006, we began the federal approval process when we submitted an application for approval to prepare the site for the new nuclear project to the commission.
The Darlington new nuclear project joint review panel hearing process on the environmental assessment began on March 21 and is scheduled to end on April 28 of this year. These EA hearings will be followed by hearings to license a chosen technology and hearings to construct and operate the plant.
OPG's nuclear operations are a key component of Ontario's long-term electricity plan. Nuclear provides the low-emitting baseload electricity that enables emerging renewable generators such as wind and solar to have the opportunity to develop their technologies and participate in the province’s electricity plan.
Part of the equation of energy security for OPG is our nuclear safety. We take great pride in the safety of our workers and communities across the board. Generation using nuclear power plays a fundamental role in the low-emitting electricity for the province. Industry and residents depend on this safe, reliable, and cost-effective electricity generation.
Our CANDU reactors take advantage of natural resources and technologies that are readily available in Canada, which further enhances security of the electricity supply, independent of external influences. Nuclear will continue to provide a safe and secure supply of energy for Ontario well into the future.
Now, Duncan Hawthorne spoke at some length about the occurrences in Japan, and I will not revisit that. I'm certainly open to answering any questions you may have.
For my part, I would simply say that we recognize the unfolding events in Japan. CNSC has requested that nuclear operators undertake a further review of the actions that we have, and OPG—in conjunction, in fact, with Bruce Power and the rest of the Canadian industry and operators—is fully cooperating with the CNSC in this review.
Canadian nuclear power plants are among the most robust designs in the world and have multiple redundant safety systems designed to prevent damage in the event of an earthquake and other disasters. These systems ensure that reactors are placed in a safe condition in the event of an earthquake or a loss-of-power incident. Seismic qualified systems function to ensure that the reactors are shut down, the fuel is suitably cooled, and any radiation release is contained.
Ontario is not a region where serious earthquakes are common. Despite this, the reactors have been built to resist earthquakes stronger than those that seismic studies say are likely to occur in Ontario. They are designed for a one-in-1,000-year earthquake and are robust for a one-in-10,000 earthquake. Ontario nuclear facility equipment and structures are built to CSA nuclear seismic standards. In addition, the topography of Ontario makes a tsunami a highly unlikely event. I would add, however, that consideration of other events, such as severe weather, is part of the design considerations for the power plants.
Ontario’s CANDU reactors have considerable redundancy in backup power supplies. Across the fleet there is a mix of standby generators, emergency power generators, auxiliary power generators, and so forth. Over the years, OPG has invested in upgrades in the systems as well as in fire protection and fire suppression systems, as part of our commitment to ongoing safety improvements.
This concludes my presentation. I'd like to thank you for the opportunity to appear before the committee. I'd reiterate that OPG is a key player in the Canadian electrical generation industry and nuclear generation business. OPG and the Province of Ontario are committed to safe, reliable, and secure nuclear generation now and in the future.
I guess I would also like to extend our invitation to the committee to visit our facilities, where we can show you first-hand the safety systems and the backup supplies, where you could talk to some of our front-line employees. These are people who come to work at the plant everyday, who live and raise families in our community.
I'd be pleased to answer any questions.
:
In the document I gave you and the documents at the Vermont Law School website, there are really two key elements that turned the nuclear renaissance into a bubble. There never was a renaissance; we don't even have one picture on the wall. They really never did produce a renaissance.
Two critical factors undid the industry. One, they talked about a very low set of construction costs at the beginning. They could not deliver them by any stretch of the imagination. So it very quickly became clear that the actual projected cost of delivering them, before they started pouring concrete, which is when overruns occur, was at least three times as much as they originally talked about in the early 2000s. So the bubble came undone very quickly.
When people began to look at alternatives, while the projected cost of nuclear was increasing, the costs of the alternatives were not. Of course in the U.S. the cost of natural gas has plummeted and it looks to be very plentiful and very cheap, and the CEO of Exelon, the largest U.S. nuclear utility, has basically said nuclear can't compete. He's given big speeches and he's shown his numbers.
So it was the combination of those rising projected costs and stable alternatives. Then if you throw in the recession, which dramatically reduced demand and growth in the U.S., you really do have a perfect storm that burst the bubble long before the renaissance got going.
Frankly, you've heard the list of alternatives, although one that was not mentioned is efficiency. In my analysis that I presented to the committee I include a Wall Street analyst, because they always include efficiency; they're the only ones who do. So you've got four or five good alternatives: efficiency, wind, solar, biomass, and natural gas. Individual states and individual provinces should look at those, but they really, in my opinion, need to apply a very rigorous economic analysis.
Good afternoon, Professor Cooper. It is a pleasure to speak to you.
Much has been made—as you mention—of a nuclear renaissance. It seems to me that, since we have been talking about it, things have never gone so poorly. In Canada, we are in the process of reassessing it all. In fact, from your comments, we realize that the costs of constructing and refurbishing nuclear plants are enormous, not to mention the timelines. We have what went on at Point Lepreau as an example.
I live in Quebec. The refurbishing of the Gentilly nuclear plant has raised many questions. If you are familiar with that plant, perhaps you could tell me more about it. It has always seemed to me that nuclear energy was not really clean energy. In order to sell us on the idea of nuclear energy, we were told that it was clean energy because there were few CO2 emissions, but they forgot to talk to us about the disposal of nuclear waste.
I have two questions. If you are familiar with Gentilly, what do you think of the refurbishment of that plant? Because of the nuclear bubble that you are telling us about, have we not fallen behind in developing truly clean energy?
:
Well, I'm not familiar with the refurbishment of that specific plant, although I have participated in proceedings in the U.S. in which refurbishment is an issue, and it suffers a little bit from the same problems. When you first do it, it looks inexpensive, but then when you actually get into it, it gets more and more expensive. So it really requires very careful consideration.
It's my understanding that there was a project talked about in Canada that also got very expensive. It gets into the many billions of dollars. So we need independent analysis of the costs.
Long lifetimes are going to be a serious concern with the older plants. I've looked at Vermont Yankee, which is not far away, and it has raised many concerns.
With respect to the bubble, one of the things I found in my research is that when utilities become committed to nuclear, it tends to consume their attention and resources and crowds out the alternatives, and that is a real problem.
With respect to “clean”, I think we got to be lazy with that adjective, in the sense that it's a low-carbon resource, but it is not a clean resource. The fuel is very volatile and very toxic. We've had a reminder of that. We had gotten a little bit...lazy is the best word in thinking about it.
And frankly, the volatility and toxicity of the fuel is what drives the costs. All this engineering around that reaction is a function of the fact that it is very difficult to control—and we try very hard—and if the controls fail, the consequences are very great.
Of course, the waste product has the same characteristics. It's very volatile and toxic.
So we have forgotten that all of this engineering, which we're proud of, is driven by the inherent nature of the fuel. It's important to remember that, when we think about things such as wind, which does not have those problems.
:
I'd have two specific things to say. Certainly there are hazards. No one would say that any technology is free of hazard, and we take great care with the fuel, which even after the reactor is shut down continues to generate heat and has fission products that we need to protect ourselves from.
There are a couple of points I would make. One is that the history, the performance of the nuclear industry, particularly over the last ten years but perhaps fifteen, has been remarkably improved in terms of safety, in terms of performance. In fact, in the U.S. the utilities have increased the effective generation and contribution of nuclear power by the equivalent of about 20 new facilities without any capital investment, simply through improvements and minor investments in the plant.
The refurbishments, the new builds—these projects clearly are long-term in nature; they take ten years from conception to construction. Certainly I would be in total agreement that there are risks associated with them that need to be managed.
The key for us, speaking about Ontario Power Generation, is preparation and planning. When we do a good job in planning and we take the right time to define the scope of the work, the projects are successful.
We have many examples. We manage an outage portfolio, which is about $1.5 billion over a five-year time period, and we bring these projects in on time and on budget. There are clearly some exceptions to that; there are challenges. These facilities, though, generate power for a long time. The new builds have the potential to generate power for in excess of 60 years. That's a lot of reliable full-power operation to essentially anchor the grid to allow for other forms of electricity.
I would never say that there are no risks associated with nuclear power. The question is what the benefit is, whether we can manage it, and essentially whether we are prepared to harness the benefit from it. It's as simple as that.
:
I have a very small point of order.
As you know, we have critical votes tomorrow afternoon, and it seems to be likely—all the campaign buses have been rented—to precipitate an election. First of all, I wish everyone the best of luck in what comes in the next 35 days.
Mr. Scott Andrews: No you don't.
Mr. Nathan Cullen: I do, except for Scott. As part of my point of order, can we change the record to say “except for Scott”?
Mr. Scott Andrews: He took all my money in poker last night.
Mr. Nathan Cullen: That's right, I took all his money in poker.
To the committee members, I hope the committee is able to reconvene this particular study. I think it's been of great interest to many of us. It's an important one, and I hope it doesn't get dropped in the next Parliament.
But mostly I want to say good luck to everybody. Knock on doors.