Clarifications on Candus, the Role of Chalk River, and Smnrs

Clarifications on CANDUs, the role of Chalk River, and SMNRs

Background January 19 2019

The following discussion arose from an ongoing disagreement about implications of the Canadian Government’s Road Map for Small Modular Nuclear Reactors. It may be a little too technical for some people, in which case feel free to just skim it or ignore it.

(1) It is preposterous to say that naturally occurring “heavy water” does not exist, simply because one has to extract it from natural stocks of water. That is equivalent to saying that “natural uranium" does not exist, because one has to extract it from natural deposits of uranium ore. The point is this: unlike tritium and plutonium that are human-made in CANDU reactors, the CANDU heavy water inventory is not fabricated by humans but extracted from ordinary water.

(2) The Canadian nuclear power industry has used only natural uranium as fuel, and naturally-occurring heavy water as coolant and moderator. No enrichment of the fuel. SMNRs would change all that — they ALL require enriched uranium or plutonium. True, enriched uranium “starter rods” have been used in commercial CANDUs (for example to overcome xenon poisoning after shut downs) but not as an enriched fuel. When Cameco sought permission to begin processing SEU (slightly enriched uranium) in Port Hope, the outpouring of public opposition in that industry-friendly town was so powerful that Cameco simply withdrew its application for a licence. Meanwhile, however, the Chalk River nuclear research gang never stopped using enriched uranium, including weapons-grade highly enriched uranium, despite strenuous efforts by non-proliferation organizations to halt this alarmingly dangerous practice and despite repeated promises by AECL to stop the use of such immediately weapons-usable materials altogether. When AECL early on sold a research reactor to Jamaica requiring weapons-grade uranium fuel, the Americans hit the roof and blew the whistle and put a stop to any furtherance of such activities with other countries. Spreading weapons-grade materials around the world is an extraordinarily irresponsible activity.

(3) I am fully aware of the early ignominious experience with plutonium and thorium irradiation by Canadian/British nuclear scientists at Chalk River, at the behest of the weapons establishments in the USA and UK. In fact Canada sold 254 kilograms of plutonium produced in Chalk River RESEARCH reactors to the USA from 1946 to 1976 – all but 2 kilograms of which was used in the US nuclear weapons program www.ccnr.org/DOE.html .

Clarifications on CANDUs, the role of Chalk River, and SMNRs

Canada also provided Britain with its very first chunk of plutonium, from Chalk River’s NRX reactor, just months before the UK exploded its first A- Bomb in the Monte Bello Islands off Australia. At Chalk River, the British also conducted all of the pilot plant work for the design of their own major military reprocessing plant (to separate plutonium for weapons use) at Windscale in Northern England — now called Sellafield -- http://ccnr.org/canada_britain.html .

(4) After the decision was made in Washington DC in December 1944 to allow plutonium-producing nuclear reactors to be built in Canada (at Chalk River) as part of the WWII A-Bomb program — www.ccnr.org/myth_1.html — the American military insisted on the Canadians irradiating thorium rods at Chalk River in order to extract uranium-233 for potential use as a nuclear explosive. See www.ccnr.org/think_about_thorium.pdf . There were two reprocessing plants built at Chalk River, one to extract plutonium from irradiated uranium rods and one to extract uranium-233 from irradiated thorium rods, yielding (as a byproduct) significant quantities of high-level radioactive liquid wastes -- a liquid radioactive inventory that is only recently being solidified (although there were a number of highly radioactive glass blocks of “vitrified” nuclear waste produced quite early on at Chalk River).

(5) During the 1976-78 Royal Commission on Electric Power Planning (the Porter Commission), AECL and the Chalk River gang swore to the Commissioners that they had absolutely no plans to embark upon commercial reprocessing, leading to the use of plutonium-based or thorium- based fuels in Canada. But at the very same time, those same individuals were surreptitiously urging the Government of Canada in the strongest possible terms to start doing just that. In February 1977 they put on an all- day seminar for senior civil servants in Ottawa urging in the strongest possible terms to build two pilot reprocessing plants, one for extracting plutonium and the other for extracting uranium-233 from irradiated thorium. See www.ccnr.org/AECL_plute.html and www.ccnr.org/aecl_plute_seminar.html . When this duplicity was brought to the attention of the Porter Commission by myself, a series of hearing days were allocated for questions related to reprocessing and so-called “advanced fuel cycles”.

(6) In its 1978 Report “A Race Against Time”, the Porter Commission came out strongly against reprocessing and advanced fuel cycles in Canada, concluding that “We prefer on-site (i.e. generating station site) spent fuel storage to a centralized facility. We believe that a centralized facility would

Clarifications on CANDUs, the role of Chalk River, and SMNRs presuppose the reprocessing of spent fuel.” At about the same time President Carter had banned reprocessing of commercial nuclear fuel in the USA and sought to have this ban extended world-side, because of the extraordinary proliferation risks by making separated weapons-usable materials widely available for theft or diversion. The Canadian government followed suit, urged by CCNR in 1977, and banned commercial reprocessing in Canada. www.ccnr.org/Stop_and_Think.html .

(7) Yet in Northern Ontario, candidate communities for becoming a “willing host community” to receive all of Canada’s irradiated nuclear fuel are not being properly informed of this danger and what it might mean for their communities, even though reprocessing has ALWAYS been an explicit option (almost never specified to the locals, and usually buried in the fine print) for AECL’s original Geologic Disposal Proposal and for the Nuclear Waste Management Organization’s subsequent missionary efforts. AECL and the Chalk River gang has always yearned for the opportunity to traffic openly in plutonium. As Jeremy Whitlock (ex-AECL, now IAEA) said on August 5, 2005, "What's even more exciting . . . is the prospect of recycling used nuclear fuel to extract some of the 99% remaining energy potential [i.e. plutonium] that it retains after leaving the reactor. . . . The potential for future societies to elect to pursue this route has been entrenched in the proposed program of Canada's Nuclear Waste Management Organization.”

(8) One of the many alarming aspects of the current Government Road Map for Small Modular Nuclear Reactors (SMNRs) is the possibility that some form of reprocessing, plutonium and uranium-233 extraction, and commercialization of immediately weapons-usable fuels — despite a long- standing prohibition against such developments — could be smuggled in under the guise of an SMNR program.

(9) There is a reason why the industry uses “SMR” for Small Modular Nuclear Reactors, instead of “SMNR”. Proponents leave out the “N" because they know that people don't want more nuclear reactors. That’s why the nuclear industry is contracting in both North America and Western Europe.

(10) Nuclear is being shunned because it is economically unviable. The virtual bankruptcy of Areva over the new Finnish reactor at Olkiluoto, the real bankruptcy of Westinghouse over new reactor projects in Georgia and South Carolina, the recent withdrawals of Hitachi and Toshiba from two new

Clarifications on CANDUs, the role of Chalk River, and SMNRs reactor projects in the UK while swallowing substantial losses, all these examples (and more !!) testify to the bad economics of nuclear power.

(11) The economic viability of SMNRs is equally uncertain. Experts agree that each SMNR hopeful would have to sell dozens to hundreds of units just in order to break even. The government should not be squandering taxpayer’s money by misusing it as venture capital in such a risky undertaking. Let the banks do it.

Gordon Edwards.