13:58:01 From Peter Bulkowski to Everyone: What is the estimated cost per kwh, at the plant gate for SMRs without subsidies for construction & operation, with waste reprocessing or disposal costs? 14:00:52 From Peter Ottensmeyer to Art Hunter(Direct Message): I have a question on nuclear waste recycling and slow acceptance by the nuclear industry of fast-spectrum reactors that can use 100% of the uranium instead of the less than 1% used currently by any and all thermal reactors that leave over 99% as waste. 14:05:51 From Ted Manning to Everyone: What are the key factors in choosing where to locate todays reactor technology? How significant is the emergence of low-loss ambient temperature transmission systems? Do we have any estimates of comparative risk/cost data? 14:06:19 From Peter Bulkowski to Everyone: If there are a hundred different designs of SMRs, how do expect to achieve mass production cost savings? 14:09:52 From Martyn Riddle to Everyone: What would it take to speed up the process of implementation for SMRs and MMRs? Are the issues mainly technical or financial? 14:23:58 From Jon Legg to Everyone: I'm a bit confused about the vertical bar chart which showed (I think) purchases of electricity from Quebec. Is this a prediction by ISEO of what lies in store for us? 14:33:39 From David Pollock to Art Hunter(Direct Message): How much more could we do and how much faster if public was onside? What about thorium or non-uranium sources for fuel as reassurance to public? Can time frames be moved up? 14:34:00 From Derek Paul to Everyone: The government made nuclear power possible for Ontario by means of huge subsidies, which didn’t benefit many provinces, but its successor governments were never willing to subsidize renewable energy. At present, there are opportunities to make wind energy even cheaper than it is already, but the government seems to inserted only in nuclear. This likely occurred because very pro-nuclear senior members of NRCan have had influence with government while NRCsn restricted itself merely to keeping an eye on renewable energy development elsewhere. In about 2000, a Science for Peace working group came up with 10 objections to Nuclear energy, which have never been satisfactorily answered. To the ten, one could add the dangers of the vulnerability of nuclear reactors to terrorism. [See the section added at the end. Ed.] 14:34:10 From Peter Meincke to Everyone: Would it help to use thorium? 14:41:38 From Ann McAllister to Everyone: Liquid sodium reactors like ARC's are vulnerable to core collapse due to steel corrosion by the sodium. This may be a design flaw. Molten salt is also highly corrosive and according to a 2018 U of C Berkeley study reduces vessel and components' life to 7/8 years. All this creates more waste, raises waste management costs, and this will add to electricity costs. 14:43:32 From Ann McAllister to Everyone: A 2020 UNC study concluded that the cost of electricity from SMRS for remote northern communities and mine sites could be up to 10 times that of diesel. [I suspect the reference is to a study that can be found at this link: < https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S030142152030327X >. The title is: Too small to be viable? The potential market for small modular reactors in mining and remote communities in Canada. However, there's a paywall. This article discusses the paper: < https://policyoptions.irpp.org/magazines/august-2020/small-modular-reactors-arent-the-energy-answer-for-remote-communities-and-mines/ > Ed.] 14:45:25 From Ann McAllister to Everyone: Mass production of SMRs and export across Canada and the world is to increase radioactive waste production, spread it all over the world, and to increase risks of nuclear weapons proliferation. All reactors, including SMR, produce plutonium, the explosive in atomic bombs. 14:50:49 From Ann McAllister to Everyone: Last May, nine American non-proliferation experts warned Trudeau in an open letter that pyroprocessing, the nuclear fuel waste technology beding developed by Moltex Energy, is at least as susceptible to nuclear weapons proliferation as PUREX, the standard reprocessing technology. 14:52:02 From Ann McAllister to Everyone: Pyroprocessing also produces highly-radioactive liquid waste that will be extremely difficult to manage. 14:54:25 From Myles Flaig to Everyone: Per Dr. Rao, the biggest polluter is not fossil fuels, but rather is INDUSTRIAL MEAT AND DAIRY AGRICULTURE, but the masses are being sidetracked to only look at fossil fuels. Why is this true? Because of the amount of deforestation that has occurred to make a unit of food that is meat, requires sixteen units of plant food to make, and the cost of this deforestation is not accounted for in the UN IPCC models, excepting Goodland and Anhang report. [This article discusses the Goodland and Anhang work: < https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Livestock%27s_Long_Shadow >. Ed.] Also, the priority should not even be global warming, but rather BIODIVERSITY DESTRUCTION. If we protect the BIODIVERSITY, the global warming will correct to a stability. Now everyone, including Justin Trudeau and almost all at the COP26, need to understand the planetary system crisis to define the problem accurately. Then the solution is really quite obvious. Stopping fossil fuels, including coal, MINDLESSLYESSLY will actually “kill the baby in the CO2 bathtub” a lot faster than doing nothing! This is because there is significant aerosol masking effect. 14:56:38 From Peter Ottensmeyer to Everyone: Regarding siting a nuclear reactor, most of us do not realize that a 5 MW reactor is sitting right in the middle of the McMaster University campus in the middle of the city of Hamilton, creating medical isotopes and looking at the soundness of virtually every blade in the rotors of commercial jet engine in North America. 14:59:01 From Ann McAllister to Everyone: Medical isotopes can be produced using particle accelerators and cyclotrons. Nuclear reactors are not necessary. 15:04:02 From Peter Ottensmeyer to Everyone: Ann, the neutrons have the penetration capabilities to "x-ray" the metal of the engine rotor blades, X rays do not. The medical isotope production are a sideline that helps keep the facility profitable, simply because the neutrons are there and would otherwise be unused. 15:15:58 From Zack Jacobson to Everyone: Just saying, not a question: I hope that at least one of the selected three designs will be a fast reactor for the obvious reason that it can re-use the high grade waste from other processes (e.g., from US reactors). 15:28:28 From Zack Jacobson to Everyone: A serious commentator on TVO said about the climate, "we're out of perfect solutions." She's right. 15:33:45 From Myles Flaig to Everyone: Email me at mylesflaig@gmail.com for Dr. Sailesh Rao’s position paper ANIMAL AGRICULTURE IS THE LEADING CAUSE OF CLIMATE CHANGE and a video press conference at COP26. [Here is an article about Dr. Rao's work: < https://janeunchained.com/2021/01/20/vegan-news-new-report-animal-agriculture-is-leading-climate-change-cause/ >. Here is another article debating the point: < https://clear.ucdavis.edu/explainers/fossil-fuels-vs-animal-agriculture >. Edf.] 15:35:52 From David Pollock to Everyone: Chris Hatfield?? 15:45:26 From zack jacobson to Everyone: Medical isotopes = bananas? [Mentioned during the presentation was a set of ten questions about nuclear energy that had been raised in the past. Derek Paul managed to find the document in his files that contained those questions. Here they are. The list given here, originally due to the Working Group on Energy of Science for Peace, is gathered from all the objections that are sometime voiced, and to which the nuclear power industry and governments do not really have adequate answers. 1. A risk of a very serious nuclear accident, such as the 1986 accident at Chernobyl in the Ukraine, which was in fact explosive, part of the reactor having gone prompt critical. Other accidents, such as loss of coolant, leading to serious levels of contamination of the surrounds, even though the reactor may not have reached prompt criticality. 2. Gravely inadequate liability provisions in the case of a serious accident harming property and life, as legislated in Canada through the Nuclear Liability Act, which is Federal. 3. Unnecessary additional risk of radioactive contamination through war or aggravated terrorism. 4. Failure to obtain widespread acceptance for any form of permanent high-level nuclear waste disposal. 5. Small leakages of radioactivity into air or water in the vicinity of a reactor, even during normal operation. 6. High cost of decommissioning once the life of a reactor is over. 7. Likely loss of useful land where the reactor was originally built, even after decommissioning. 8. The feature of delayed costs of nuclear waste disposal and decommissioning, which fall heavily on a later generation than that which used the power generated. 9. The dubious nature of nuclear exports. 10. The inevitable link with nuclear weapons, not always a weak one. NOTES 1. The Chernobyl accident is said to have caused damage and harm equal to many billions in dollars. The three official reports on it and the health effects resulting from it are all underestimate considerably the negative health effects stemming from the accident. An independent investigation found much more serious health consequences than the official reports. See . . . It is important to recognize that the International Atomic energy Agency has three conflicting mandates: to inspect nuclear establishments, so as to prevent clandestine development of nuclear weapons; to promote nuclear power; and to set the standards for safe radiation exposure levels. [There was no text regarding question 2.] 3. A serious amount of radioactive contamination could result from the use of conventional weapons and explosions in the neighbourhood of a reactor or temporary spent-fuel storage at ground level. A nuclear attack against a nuclear reactor could in principle create a huge multiplication of the radioactive contamination ascribable to the bomb itself. 4. Deep burial is strongly favoured by the Canadian establishment, but no site has yet been approved. Many citizens disagree with the concept and the necessity of transporting nuclear high-level waste to permanent storage sites, but they don’t like aboveground storage either. In fact they don’t like nuclear waste, and consider that prolonging the time that nuclear remains a portion of the electrical mix can only worsen the magnitude of the waste problem. In the United States a similar situation exists with regard to Yucca Mountain as a storage site. 5. The harmfulness or otherwise of low-level nuclear radiation in still controversial. There is evidence that it influences the development of brain cancer and leukemia. For the latter, there is no threshold level of dose below which the radiation is harmless to leukemia-prone people. The radiation advances the date at which the leukemia symptoms appear. It is thus analogous to an aging effect. [There was no text regarding question 6.] 7. This matter is rarely even pointed out. 8. An ethical question. 9. Canada’s supplying uranium to European customers, especially Britain and France, and its supplies to the United States indirectly or directly facilitate the continuation of nuclear weapon programs in the three stated countries. Though the supplies are primarily intended for commercial nuclear power programs, they establish a connection between nuclear power and nuclear weapons programs. 10. A manner in which any nation can acquire a nuclear weapon legitimately is by acquiring nuclear power and technology under the terms of the Treaty on Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), and later withdrawing from the Treaty——which requires three-months notice (article X of the Treaty)——which would free it from its international obligations under the Treaty. Article X nevertheless demands that such a State Party to the Treaty should state when it announces its withdrawal “the extraordinary events it regards as having jeopardized its supreme interests.” Ed.]