Vanguard Magazine

www.vanguardcanada.com JUNE/JULY 2022 29 INTERVIEW necessarily trusting nuclear power. The ability to go in and have conversations and listen to the residents in remote Inuit com- munities, to understand what their con- cerns are, I think that's one of the most important things. It's incredibly important to be able to get buy-in from folks when we would like to put one of these things in their neighborhood for instance In Ontario 60% of power is coming from a nuclear reactor, and that's forgotten. The reason it's forgotten is the US and the Canadian industries operate safely, so they don't get into the news, which is a good thing. I think it's public perception. Q How are you going to address this with potential host communities? That's a very good question, and the an- swer is communication, communication, communication. That's what it takes. It takes listening, and it takes us to under- stand that the timelines that we operate to are not the timelines that indigenous and Inuit communities operate to. Q I recently read that you did a feasibility study for Department of National Defence (DND) on the potential to provide power to Garrison Petawawa. Are you able to share some of the findings with us? Sure. Just as a little, I would say as back- ground, we are located in Chalk River, Ontario, which is on the Ottawa River, about 120 miles northwest of Ottawa. Our neighbor is Garrison Petawawa, which is one of the major military facilities here in the Ottawa Valley. Over the last year or two, we've done a feasibility study with the DND to see if we could provide clean, reli- able power to the Garrison Petawawa and allow DND to actually start to meet its net zero goals by 2050 and be able to prove that this technology could not only pro- duce electricity, but produce low tempera- ture heat for district heating of buildings, etcetera. Many of the large government installations use district heating or single boiler-fed heating to provide heat for their facilities in the winter. This study, done as part of our hybrid en- ergy system optimization model, showed that the use of nuclear energy could reduce carbon emissions by the base fairly signifi- cantly over the next few years. The idea is, while the Garrison receives most of its power from hydroelectric power today, the peak power demands are higher than what the grid can provide, and so they provide peak shaving or peak loading by using fos- sil fuel power. We were able to show that by combining some solar power input, we could reduce the emissions by between 20 to 50% overall. That would be a huge ad- vantage for DND as they work to get to net zero. Q Is there a website that our readers can look at to find more information about some of the things you've expressed? That's www.cnl.ca. If you go to that site, I think you'll get a good overview of not only the science and technology advances that we are working on as Canada's Na- tional Nuclear Laboratory, but we are also conducting the largest environmental clean-up mission ever in Canada, and that expands across four provinces and territo- ries here in Ontario, Manitoba, Quebec and into the Northwest Territories. A large portion of the work that we do today is environmental cleanup. Q Just one closing question. You've touched upon three key points that I think every Canadian is interested in. One is the climate. Two is clean energy, and the other is security. Given all the things that you're doing and involved in, what do you think are the important steps for Canada to ensure that it's on the right path to achieve its ambitious climate change, energy, and security goals? First, I think is policy. Second is funding, and third is having the intestinal fortitude to go through and make some difficult decisions. Climate change is, I think, the generational issue that we have to face, but not everybody agrees on how we get to net zero. I think what you're seeing around the world, and in Canada as well, is a real push that nuclear energy is a major part of that, but I think, from the government perspective, you need to look at it as an all-of-the-above strategy, whether you're looking at wind, solar, geothermal, nucle- ar, hydroelectric power, and you're going to need some fossil fuels for the foreseeable future. All those need to be in the mix. You have to be able to fund them appropriately, but you also have to have the political sup- port for all of them and have the scientific understanding based on the fact of what you have to do to achieve your goal. Q It certainly does help to improve the standards of life for everybody. Small modular reactors definitely seem like they hold significant value and opportunity to support our energy ambitions, independence, and Arctic sovereignty. This is something I've been part of for 40 years, the nuclear world. If I didn't think it was valuable and important, I wouldn't have been in it for so long. Would you like to listen to this interview in audio form? Be sure to check out our complete podcast catalogue at vanguardcanada.com/category/podcast or search for us on Spotify.

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