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blue-sky (verb)
: to offer ideas that are conceived by unrestrained imagination or optimism.
Hosted by Erin O’Toole, President and Managing Director of ADIT North America. Erin is the former Member of Parliament for Durham and former leader of the Conservative Party of Canada. The Blue Skies political podcast explores issues facing Canada and the world in a format that brings together thought leaders for an informed and engaging conversation.
Erin OToole (00:02.827)
Welcome to the Blue Skies podcast. Wow, the Blue Skies podcast still exists. Yes, it does. This is the first one in over seven months and the Blue Skies podcast used to be hosted by MP Aaron O'Toole, the MP for Durham. I'm no longer the Member of Parliament for Durham. I missed parts of it. I missed Durham. Missed some parts of Parliament, but boy, is it nice to be also out. The important thing with Blue Skies, it was always meant to be an informed
intelligent long form of discussion of issues impacting Canada, issues impacting the world. In an age of Twitter and swiping and 30 second sound bites, we need more thoughtful long form discussions and that's why Blue Skies was created. That's why I have my Blue Skies sub stack, trying to make sure that we have smart discussions about everything from the economy, the war in Ukraine, climate change, public policy on everything from addiction.
to mental health supports, to our veterans, to the military. So Blue Skies is back. And I'm really thankful for the people that I ran into airports and shopping malls who would say, look, I like your podcast. Are you still gonna do it? And I said, yes. Once Stefanie and I figure out how to do it outside of politics. So we're here now. And I can't think of a better person to be the first guest in this new Blue Skies 2.0, we might call it, than Dr.
Dr. Chris Kieffer is the head of the Canadians for Nuclear Energy Advocacy Group. I invite you to check them out. They're probably one of the most interesting advocacy groups I've ever seen. And I've seen a lot in my time in public life and as a lawyer. And you would think in atomic energy and climate change and energy production that the doctor might be a PhD. No, Chris is an emergency room physician.
Lefty who came to become one of nuclear energy's strongest and I would say smartest Proponents, so we're going to talk a little bit about that evolution But for the RMC crowd that listens to my podcast, you know I force my RMC classmates to listen to this podcast including Sabel who works with me at add it He is kefir a name you might recognize in the old 18 Harold
Erin OToole (02:26.723)
Waldorf Kieffer was number 17 in the old 18 that we had to recite those names as we did chin-ups as we did push-ups So I'm gonna welcome you to blue skies Chris and ask you who was the number 17 Kieffer and why didn't you go to RMC?
Chris Keefer (02:46.318)
I've got to spend more time on genealogy.com, but you know, my dad was the real family historian. You're right. Every male in my family up until my generation went to RMC. We have an illustrious background in my family as engineers. My triple great grandfather built the Hamilton Waterworks in response to the cholera epidemic there, which is a major feat of engineering. There's these big footings on I think it's the Champlain Bridge in Montreal. Those are called Kiefford's Shoes.
And if you see me, you know I'm a tall guy, I've got size 16 feet. There are these kind of boat-like footings on the bridges that serve as icebreakers so that bridge doesn't wash away. So we've got a kind of long, illustrious career here that we're very proud of on the Kiefer side of the family. But yes, I am not an engineer, as you mentioned. I went into medical school. And I guess there's moments where I think, oh, it would have been pretty cool to get chin-ups and call it my ancestor's name, but there you have it, different path in life.
Erin OToole (03:43.459)
you've done okay, doctor. Not many people get that moniker. And but let's talk about you and that and that path to founding Canadians for nuclear energy, your own, you know, progress on this, you know, I've called you one of the most effective advocates I've seen for public policy issue. But how did you come about it, you kind of tripped in it and then used use that scientific method that sort of
analytical approach for problem solving you have to turn yourself from a skeptic to a convert. Walk us through that.
Chris Keefer (04:21.342)
Yeah, I mean, so as you were mentioning in your introduction, I do have a background on the political left, not really in a partisan way, but the sort of causes that I've championed have been things like refugee rights in my medical practice. I've served on overseas humanitarian missions. I co-founded one of Canada's first medical clinics for seasonal agricultural workers down in Leamington and Simcoe counties to serve, you know, Jamaican and Mexican migrant workers that were being underserved. I've also been a champion of the underdog. And
My son was born about five years ago. My activism took a really unexpected twist. I started thinking a lot more about climate change. I think his parents do in this generation. Our time horizons are extended quite a ways out. We start going looking at the charts and seeing the degrees of warming that are projected and thinking, hey, that might affect my little one. Being scientific and empirically trained through my medical education, I started delving into the science. I became a bit of a doomer at parties. My ex-wife at the time would tell me.
just stop talking about it and do something. And what she meant was, you know, sort the recycling, take out the compost. I started looking around and I discovered, much to my surprise, that I was living in Ontario, which is actually a clean energy champion. We have one of the cleanest electricity grids on the world, and that's very unusual if you're not blessed with endless hydroelectricity, as Quebec and British Columbia and Manitoba have been for us up until this time period. And I was really curious as to why, and the answer was there.
you know, staring us in the face, if we'll actually look for it. And that is nuclear. And we have this incredible story here in Ontario, um, of building out this large nuclear fleet. It provides, uh, about 60% of our electricity needs. It does so essentially carbon free. Um, and really importantly, it powered, uh, what has been called North America's greatest greenhouse gas reduction, which was the phase out of coal, which used to form 25% of our grid and tying that back into my medical career.
I started my practice at the beginning of the Ontario coal phase. We had 54 smog days a year here in Toronto where I'm broadcasting out of today. And 1900 premature deaths per year related to air pollution to which coal was a strong contributor. And it's pretty hard to get rid of coal once you got it. Most places that are doing it are doing it with natural gas, which is cleaner burning but still high emissions. We did it with nuclear. It was a fascinating story. I got hooked. Started reading a lot. And that led to...
Chris Keefer (06:43.062)
making friends on Twitter with some other Canadians that were passionate about the issue, a road trip, and next thing you had, Canadians for Nuclear Energy.
Erin OToole (06:52.435)
and becoming a skeptic to a convert, to a leading advocate, and the formation of a group that might be the only positive thing I've heard come out of Twitter in some time is the formation of your advocacy group. But another interesting thing about your group is you're huge proponents of the industry and the technology, but your technology and really your corporate agnostic, like you don't...
take money, you're not a champion or a chamber of commerce. Talk about that, because your mission really is public education and hearts and minds, right?
Chris Keefer (07:31.502)
Absolutely. Yeah. So, you know, in terms of the back of our organization, we're almost exclusively volunteer. I'm volunteer. I don't take any money for the work that I do. And unfortunately, it is quite a lot. I find myself putting in 40 hour a week sometimes on this topic outside of my medical practice. So yeah, we take no industry funds. And that's a real blessing, both because it allows for, I think, a much more effective communication strategy, the nuclear industry appropriately is very risk averse.
But unfortunately, that's affects its communications culture and there's a lot of missed opportunities there. So we've been real champions. You know, some of our talking points are really common sense and based on back of the envelope math. I mean, here's one fact that really blew my mind. One third of Canada's all sector national CO2 emissions are offset by Canadian uranium. That uranium used in our domestic reactors and nuclear reactors around the world instead of natural gas or coal, displaces one third of our national emissions.
Canadians don't know that we are already clean energy champions and that the most important, we're talking a lot about critical minerals, the most important critical mineral that Canada contributes to this energy transition is uranium. There's a whole bunch of other facts like that, that unfortunately the industry is just a little too tepid to communicate around that I think we've done a good job of. And I think we've had an impact in our popular campaigns, in our media appearances to really drive home some messaging, which I think is starting to really shift the dial publicly. But
The other benefit of being industry independent is that we're able to be fiercely independent in terms of our campaigns. And so, you know, we spent the last four years fighting hard for the refurbishment of Pickering. That was broadly understood as being an impossibility. The decommissioning plans were a done deal based on our values. We decided for reasons of climate, air pollution, medical isotopes, good union jobs that we were going to, we were going to fight for the impossible. And slowly the facts on the grounds changed.
You know, the arguments, the rhetoric and the high quality policy reports were there that we produced and we had a wonderful decision just last week on, on Pickering. So that's really been our signature achievement so far, but Aaron, we're just getting started.
Erin OToole (09:39.527)
Truly are. And I think you stepped into a bit of a vacuum because as you said, you have the industry had kind of gone silent. You know, there had been challenge with the refurbishment of Pickering years ago. We saw Fukushima, even the Chernobyl mini series. And I like to say the 30 years of the Simpsons making the operators look stupid when we actually have some of the best in the world. There was kind of a malaise for the industry. And I did a series of
of essays and podcasts in my last year as an MP talking about the nuclear Renaissance, because I started becoming an advocate representing Darlington, but doing electricity regulation as a lawyer in the private sector. When I got to Ottawa, nobody promoted the industry, save the one MP who represented Chalk River. And, and so I started a caucus, started driving awareness, um, you know, help push for funds to promote the can-do sales internationally, these sorts of things.
and nobody wanted to talk about it. Even as we were making these massive commitments at Paris, you know, the Trudeau government actually finalized the emissions plan that the Harper government that I was a part of had prepared, but Minister McKenna would not talk about this technology as being key. Now we are there. So I think your group stepped into that advocacy role at a critical time. And I'm gonna use an example of when you did that. When you first came,
Chris Keefer (10:54.242)
Mm-hmm.
Erin OToole (11:06.071)
on my radar was your appearance in 2021 at COP26 and your conversation with Minister Guy Boll when he left a presentation where it wasn't a gotcha moment. You just asked for a little chat. He chatted, but he came out of an event talking about shutting down coal and you pointed out to him the absurdity really of his position saying that we can make this transition happen without nuclear. We're going to play that clip right now.
Erin OToole (11:38.639)
What was that clip like for you that conversation where you really showed to him the IPCC thinks? Nuclear is key to all pathways forward. Why don't you talk about that interview with the minister?
Chris Keefer (11:52.726)
Well, you know, I've been to three of these climate conferences now and they're absolutely fascinating. I mean, most recently in Dubai, there were close to 100,000 people in attendance, NGOs, politicians, activists, media. And it's an incredible place to have these sort of surreptitious meetings, if you will. There was a event happening at the World Wildlife Forum called Powering Past Coal that tweaked my interest, given what Ontario had accomplished. And I saw Minister Guy Baud will be presenting there. And I knew he had a...
long storied history. I mean, he's been called green Jesus by the media. He repelled off the CN tower at one point, I forget over what cause exactly, but he's opposed nuclear energy every single chance he's gotten, including attempts to try and close down the Pickering Nuclear Station. And so, it was a little bit of a gotcha because we sort of planned it out. We were hoping to ask a question. I had a cameraman with me, but as you know, in these things, politicians are busy and there's often limited opportunity for Frank.
open discussions with the media and the public. So, you know, he exited the stage in a bit of a hurry. I opened the door for him very courteously and I said, minister may I have a moment of your time? And, and that led to a conversation where again, I was challenging him. All four of the principal decarbonization pathways of the IPCC suggest we will need between 100 and 500% more nuclear to stay within our Paris climate goals of 1.5 degrees. And I asked him would this cloud his judgment? And you know, he was very evasive.
But it did lead to a big moment in the Canadian media. A lot of the coverage around COP in Canada turned nuclear at that point. There was coverage in all the major spreadsheets, it made a lot of radio appearances afterwards. And I think that was a real shift in the conversation because up until that point, anytime that we talked about nuclear, there was a impulse in media to have a fair and balanced approach and bring on an anti-nuclear activist. And I think we're starting to see just how unrigorous a lot of those activists are and how...
really kind of unprincipled they've been over the years. And so the discourse is maturing and there's this new phenomenon now of civil society, pro-nuclear voices, which are emerging which I think are providing an important form of balance on their own in the media landscape.
Erin OToole (14:02.327)
And I think your advocacy right from the start as has been informed and thoughtful and that exchange Went viral a little bit and maybe led more people to know who you guys were, but your really big win So far was in the last few weeks with the extension of life of the pickering generating station something that your group has not only advocated for on social media and public appearances, but
you introduced a position paper, you really inserted yourselves into the debate, which I found very interesting because I had been one of the proponents of the life extension of Pickering of another four or five years. I even appeared at the safety regulatory hearings to make the case as an MP from the region, but that was just granting a bit of a life extension. Talk about what the refurb of one of our
older plants will mean, how it's going to be done safely, and really what it means for our lower emission clean energy future.
Chris Keefer (15:08.434)
So, yeah, candor reactors are quite special. There's really three reactors that have endured and proven themselves to be economic and to have excellent operations and maintenance. One of those is the Canadian technology, the other two are American. So we've done something truly incredible in this country in developing that technology. And that comes out of our wartime investments in nuclear research, you know, partially as Manhattan Project North.
But that was transitioned very rapidly into peaceful uses of the atom. Canada had no intention to become a nuclear weapon state. And we thought, let's take advantage of these enormous investments that we've made as part of this war effort.
We decided we wanted to have our own reactor technology for a variety of reasons. We wanted to have all of the industry be here in province, in country, we didn't wanna have to import heavy forgings or do things that were beyond our capacity. Energy security was very important and we're seeing that kind of re-emerging as a theme. So suffice it to say, we have a reactor where we can swap out the core. It's a little bit like a engine swap out or another great analogy I've heard is a major home renovation where you're gonna be swapping out your furnace and maybe you're plumbing an electric.
And what that does is it gives the facility, which already has the transmission connected and all of the civil works and concrete pour, the structures are there. It gives it another 30 years of safe operations. And that's not controversial. That's happening at Can-Do plants all around the world. We've completed eight of these refurbishments, domestically and internationally, and we're knocking out of the park with these mega projects at Darlington and Bruce right now. So Pickering had been assessed for refurbishments.
It had gone through an environmental assessment. It looked like it was going to be refurbished. But unfortunately, we had the global economic crisis, demand really fell off. And so the decision was made to move towards decommissioning. Our group, based upon an assessment, looking at the Ontario Chamber of Commerce reports on Pickering, I'm sure you did as well in preparing for your testimony, the life extension. I mean, there's 7,600 full-time equivalent jobs supported by this plant.
Chris Keefer (17:08.918)
There's 7.6 million transatlantic flights worth of CO2 averted by its ongoing operation. The plant produces enough medical isotopes to sterilize 20% of the world's single use medical devices, things I use every day at work, IV cannulas, blood tubes, endotracheal tubes, that kind of thing. And so based upon that, we thought, listen, I know that demand is flat right now, but we're talking about climate change. We're talking about electrification. We're seeing population growth. We think demand is going to pick up and it makes no sense to retire a power plant.
produces more carbon free energy than all of Ontario's hydroelectric potential at Niagara Falls. So that's why we stepped into the battle and it's been amazingly rewarding. We had, you know, we were quoted sort of a one in a million chance four years ago of winning this. We persevered. I remember going to Queen's Park with hand painted placards and some brochures that I did myself, which is quality was not very good, Aaron.
But we've come a long way. We've professionalized and as you said, produced I think a really solid policy report, which was helpful for decision makers when they were analyzing Ontario's energy needs and how to meet them. And ultimately I think they made the right decision last week.
Erin OToole (18:16.015)
I think they did as well and you helped show them that this wasn't a political decision. Obviously the jobs are critically important and they're highly trained, highly technical, well-paid jobs. This is about making sure the refurbishment can be done well. There's been reports on pressure tubes wearing out, these sorts of things. A refurbishment, as you said, is kind of replacing the skeleton of the home and then having a second life. So it's pickering.
2.0 and I think your advocacy was key to that. Let's quickly talk about another win that you've had over the last six months and that was the federal government finally after us pushing politically for years, but I think your advocacy one-on-one with some MPs was particularly helpful. You got nuclear included in the Green Bond program. Talk about the importance of that and how you advocated because I think you
You probably spoke to more MPs for a few weeks than most Canadians did.
Chris Keefer (19:16.414)
Yeah, that was a really interesting one. So yeah, I mean, after returning from Glasgow, this issue of green bond finance has been coming up in countries all over the world. The EU put out a taxonomy recently, and Canada was putting together its framework. Minister Guilbault was in charge of that alongside Chrystia Freeland. And they came up with a document which was pretty inflammatory. So nuclear was excluded.
That's not unique. There are other taxonomies around the world that have excluded nuclear, but it was excluded in an inflammatory way that I think was quite insulting towards the 76,000 men and women that work in the sector as climate, clean air, medical isotopes, heroes. And it was labeled as a sin stock. Uh, it was excluded alongside tobacco, gambling, firearms.
I'm not sure if they had trading in endangered exotic species or something like that, but it was an interesting choice and it was a real sort of middle finger to the sector from Minister Gilbo. And I was casting about because I like to be efficient. I don't want to reinvent the wheel. And so I ended up seeing a Sierra Club action, an anti-nuclear action, and it was a House of Commons petition. And I thought, this is really interesting. Let's learn some more about this. So it turns out if you have a sponsoring MP and enough signatures, you can...
have your petition read on the floor of the House of Commons and it mandates a written response from the government. And I thought, well, this is a great tool. And Minister Gilboa has offended some really fine working men and women in this province. Let's see if we can get them active. Building a grassroots pro-nuclear movement, you've got to think, what's your base? Is it environmentalists that you've converted? You don't convert many? Or is it this large group of people, these very talented professionals, very well-educated and intelligent people?
who have been a little bit marginalized and perhaps not been out in the public as much as they as they could and So we mobilized over 10,000 signatures was one of the most popular petitions that hit the house in that sitting of Parliament And it had a real impact and you know I went to Ottawa for a press tour of Corey Tucker was the sponsor of that petition And I met with liberals and conservatives alike and you know, it's really interesting looking at federal politics on the liberal side
Chris Keefer (21:24.482)
There is a capture by what I'll call pseudo environmentalist because I don't think you can be an environmentalist and be anti-nuclear, but a capture of certain offices, the prime minister's office, mostly staffed by former World Wildlife Fund staffers, obviously, Gilbo's office to a certain degree. And there's a conflict there between those sides, the environmentalist side and a number of MPs who represent.
writings in vote rich Ontario where there's a lot of high quality nuclear jobs. And this isn't just in running the stations, but this is in the entire supply chain, the refurbishment supply chain, producing all those parts for that engine swap, but we described as a refurbishment. And so it was very interesting going to Ottawa and saying, you know, you got to have to make up a bit of a decision here guys, because this is an important constituency that you're insulting. And you know, in those conversations, what came up was, you know, we can't really lose face on this.
Is there something else we can do to show support for nuclear? And we looked at the Canada Infrastructure Bank. Nuclear was not included in that mandate. And so it was interesting because they didn't lose face. They kept nuclear excluded for some time. Well, that was just reversed at the end of last year. But that billion dollar loan for the world's first, the West's first grid scale SMR at
is because nuclear was included in the mandate of the Canada infrastructure bank. So I'm very proud of that. It was called a lobbying spree by one of Durham's journalists. But I'm very, very proud of that outcome. And we've continued. We had another petition on the clean tech investment tax credits. Only SMRs were included in that in the initial language. And we lobbied for CANDU, for large nuclear, for refurbishments to be included as well.
and to get the same sort of tax credits that are being offered to what I will call far less viable sources of energy. So I hope I didn't take too long to answer your question there. But yeah, the green bond victory was great. And the province just followed suit last week. So I mean, the good news just keeps rolling in, rolling in, rolling in our wishlist, all the boxes are really getting ticked there. And so, you know, this is a kind of triumphant moment, but I'll tell you, we're just getting started.
Erin OToole (23:14.741)
Oh, that's good.
Erin OToole (23:32.007)
That's why I wanted to restart the Blue Skies podcast with you, Chris. No, look, I think that was great advocacy. Cory Tucker, when I was leader, he wanted a role. He knew I was very passionate about nuclear and he knew connecting Cameco and the fuel from Saskatchewan with what Ontario is doing. You saw provinces like New Brunswick, Ontario, Saskatchewan, Alberta starting to talk about it. I also think Mark Carney's support was...
critical and changing a few more minds within the Liberal Caucus. I tend to agree with you on how the PMO has been captured. I'll let you be the political one on this on this podcast, Chris, I'm out of politics now. I'm an elder statesman, although I'm not that elder. And but I think you're right. I think there's been a sea change. I've given credit to Seamus O'Regan. I mean, he was natural resources ministry was the first minister that really talked about it as a government. And I think
Chris Keefer (24:25.623)
Absolutely.
Erin OToole (24:31.183)
Your advocacy talking to individual MPs and letting them know that working Canadians support this in this form of energy and Any realistic plan? I like how you say it's pseudo environmentalist if you want a real plan rather than just virtue signaling and rhetoric If you like you did you look at the data and you'll see that this is fundamental so I want to transition to the next piece now because You alluded to it. I'm gonna put this a little
forward in the podcast, I was going to end with it. I'm very proud the SMR at Darlington, I've been supportive of for many years when I first started mentioning SMRs years ago, people didn't know what I was talking about. We put a billion dollar commitment in our 2021 election campaign platform and urge Trudeau to do the same. So I was very proud to be a part of that discussion. But the SMR forecast
Chris Keefer (25:11.216)
Mm-hmm.
Erin OToole (25:26.983)
is also not as eminent as some people believe. You know, I was at the Arctic 360 conference this week and of course, Arctic communities and Arctic mining and industrial sites and security and military sites, they would love to deploy SMRs or micros there to eliminate the shipping of thousands and thousands of drums of diesel to the Arctic. So the promise of SMRs
is incredible and Darlington is licensed for four now and the GE Attachee going in at Darlington will be the first commercial SMR in North America. But what is your take? You know, there's been a few setbacks in the last year. You know, I really enjoy Peter Zahan as an analysis. He was talking a few months ago about, you know, SMRs are not on the timeline we were
Erin OToole (26:27.003)
What do you think about the SMRA? I think there's great promise, but what do you think the timeline is?
Chris Keefer (26:31.89)
I think it's a terrible term, frankly, because it's a basket that has way too many different types of reactors inside of it. It's not a very precise term. I think language is very precise. We see that with renewables where you'll have wind and solar included alongside cutting down forests in North America, turning them into pellets, shipping them across the ocean and burning them in converted coal plant. Precision of language is very important. And so when people think about SMRs...
I think the way that the industry has communicated is saying, hey, listen, we're just going to build these little things in factories. We're going to truck them to you and we're going to either assemble them like Lego or we won't even talk about assembling them. We're just going to plug them into the grid. There you go. That description is fitting for what you're talking about for applications in the far North with what are called micro modular reactors. So these are reactors that could power, you know, 500 to a thousand homes, um, could be very useful and slightly, and slightly larger, still micro scales in terms of powering mining.
You know, I practiced medicine next to Canada's largest indigenous reserve for three or four years. And on that reserve, they had a greenhouse. And, you know, this was during some of these really harsh polar vortex winters that we were having. And you had this beautiful heated space. It felt like you're just walking into the Caribbean. It was lush verdant. There was all sorts of community activities that went on there. It was natural gas fired, but it was a beautiful space. And when you start thinking about energy abundance in the North and what's possible, you know, what those communities could gain from
Again, not having the enormous expense, you know, none of it spent more than a quarter billion dollars on imported fossil fuels for a pretty tiny population in the last few years. They're very exposed to price swings, as I'm sure you're very well aware. But that's just the micro side. So when we talk about different scales, the next one up would be grid scale SMRs, which is what we're talking about at Darlington. That's about 300 megawatts. That's about a, you know, one third to one half the size of our larger candle units.
And, you know, nuclear economies of scale are very real. We have deployed small units. We did that with CanDo. Douglas Point was only 200 megawatts. We moved to Pickering, 500, Bruce, 800, Darlington, 900. That's the natural sort of tendency. And I think the industry, and this is where it will be different than what you'll hear coming maybe from the industry associations. We have a bit of an independent analysis. I have no duty to represent SMR developers. They are absolutely required for.
Chris Keefer (28:45.334)
the size application that's needed. So you can't put a big candy up in a Caloweed for instance. Even Saskatchewan, the grid is too small right now, where they're at with electrification to fit a candy. So we're gonna need a 300 megawatt size reactor. My personal position on Darlington is that we should have built large candy reactors there. That's what the site already has. It's a great reactor, it's very economic. And so I think we're running into a little bit of a situation of potentially over-promising and under-delivering. I certainly wish OPG well.
I think they're doing an amazing service to some of the smaller provinces who can't fit a big candle on their grid, like New Brunswick or Saskatchewan or Alberta, and even our European allies were struggling after the Russian aggression to shore up their energy systems in the face of a cutoff of Russian gas. But I do think there's been a little too much hype on this hype train. And again, that's a little bit of a controversial thing for me to say. But you know what? I make my living in medicine. I'll say whatever I want. There you have it.
Erin OToole (29:46.019)
You're not you're not going to get your volunteer salary docked for saying that. No, look, there's been no bigger proponent of SMRs and the industry than me in Ottawa in the last decade, but I also want us to be really open and realistic with the discussion because look, I was speaking with Indigenous and Inuit leaders at this conference this week.
Chris Keefer (29:49.656)
Exactly, exactly.
Erin OToole (30:12.691)
And Agnico Eagle, for example, their mines in Nunavut is one third of the GDP there. And you could locate an SMR or micro and power the mine, you know, power the communities with very easy and minimal transmission. And I don't think Canadians in the South realize, you lived in Yukon, you get it. If there's a bad shipping season.
Chris Keefer (30:39.63)
Mm-hmm.
Erin OToole (30:41.147)
food and items and things don't get up there. So most communities keep two years worth of diesel stored on site and then they're burning diesel and the air quality in some of these communities, be it Caliweed or Rankin Inlet or wherever, Joe Haven is pretty low. So if this technology was within grasp, I think it would be great. When we did an Arctic study in 2018,
I pushed for inclusion of discussion of SMRs, and even the NDP was willing to put aside their longstanding opposition to nuclear to say SMRs hold great promise. It was important for us at the time to have an all party consensus on the Arctic sovereignty report, and the NDP even saw the benefit. My friend Daniel Blakey, but it's important for us to put this in context. We may not see commercial scale
Chris Keefer (31:12.64)
Right.
Erin OToole (31:35.899)
assembly line SMRs like we've heard for another decade, eight and a half. And so I think talking about SMRs, promoting it, and then watching and learning from the Darlington experience will be key.
Chris Keefer (31:52.027)
Absolutely. Yeah.
Chris Keefer (32:18.2)
And these are just fast things to look at from an energy perspective. But there is a huge use case. And I certainly don't mean to come across as someone who doesn't think we should be pursuing it. And there's actually really exciting opportunity that may happen at my alma mater, my medical school McMaster. We have a nuclear reactor there that produces an amazing amount of medical isotopes and is a great education program. It's been on site for over 60 years.
And what they're talking about is now deploying a micro modular reactor there on campus, setting up kind of a net zero type of village, you know, doing some of the district heating, providing electricity, running greenhouses, a sort of model community. And that's where it needs to happen because indigenous people are rightly a little bit skeptical and saying, are you experimenting with us? You know, we're not too trustful. There's a reason why there's distrust by indigenous people of, you know, big industries coming in and making promises.
And so I really hope something like that happens at a university, I think McMaster would be a great spot for it and we can bring indigenous people down and say, hey, this is an amazing opportunity. We think it's safe, we live in it, we work in it. What do you think? Would you like to try one of these? I think it is gonna require a certain amount of shepherding from the Canadian state to make it happen. This isn't gonna happen purely driven by the private sector. So we have to see if there's that kind of vision and that sort of national industrial or national energy policy that is gonna steward these things along.
Erin OToole (33:38.055)
Great idea. Maybe RMC could be the place because RMC has a slow poke reactor like the one at Mac as well. So you never know. There'll be a competition between our alma mater's for that location, Chris. But let's move to new build. So let's get out of the SMR sphere and into new build. And I don't think a lot of Canadians understand the discussion about decarbonization, the energy transition.
Chris Keefer (33:41.931)
Right?
Erin OToole (34:07.191)
industry and politicians have used rhetoric that's almost impossible to attain, given what we have as tools right now. So if we're going to electrify the economy, including EVs and all these sorts of stuff, we're going to have increased demand on our system and on our grid. So when you're planning energy and mega projects like the new build at Bruce.
That's to anticipate the needs of the economy 10, 15, 20 years from now when the population's larger, the economy's grown, but also that we've electrified by taking out a lot of gasoline cars, these sorts of things. Right now we couldn't meet the EV needs or the EV ambitions of the country because we don't have the generation capacity. But this, I guess, is the goal of the provincial
the new build at the Bruce site is to meet that future electrification needs. Talk a little bit about this and what you see the demand being in the future.
Chris Keefer (35:13.842)
Yes, you're absolutely right. You know, electricity is only 20 to 25% of our overall energy use. And that makes sense. We live in a big country. People drive a long ways to get to work or between their different communities. We have to heat our houses when it's cold outside, we have to air condition them when it's hot. Air conditioning is currently electric, but heating is mostly natural gas or propane or even heating oil out in the Atlantic provinces. And so, you know, there is a lot of electrification that would need to occur if we're really serious about electrifying everything and
And I mean, this again, not to go too off track with your question here, points to the need for nuclear, because if we are to electrify everything, if your transportation, your heating become dependent in that way, if our hospitals are dependent that way, it needs to be ultra reliable. We can't have fair weather friend energy. And that's really what I think of in terms of wind and solar. We saw those grid alerts out in Alberta just a few weeks ago where the grid was teetering on the edge despite a massive investment in, you know, in wind.
which just didn't show up and we see that in Ontario as well. You know, in terms of that EV fleet that's coming, Pickering, that nuclear station that we played a big role in saving, produces enough electricity to charge an electrified Ontario light duty vehicle fleet. So seven million vehicles is what could be charged by that Pickering station. So that gives you another sense of, you know, why it might have been a bad idea to close that down if we really are serious about these electrification policies.
You know, even with saving, saving Pickering, we're only saving four of those six reactors, two of them are going to be decommissioned. And that means that we are just treading water with refurbishing the larger part of that plant and then building the SMRs at Darlington. Those SMRs will make up for the two reactors at Pickering, which are not being refurbished. So we haven't made any progress at this point. You know, so I'm excited about nuclear. This is a great moment. But let's be honest, we're not in a great place. We're just keeping up.
And that's where this new bill that Bruce Power comes in. And that's a fairly substantial addition to the fleet. Currently we have about 12 gigawatts of nuclear that'll add almost five more. And it's very exciting. And they are talking about wanting to do large nuclear and that makes a lot of sense. Economies of scale are real. You have a certain amount of license capacity on a site and you wanna squeeze out every kilowatt hour that you can. That's just good business and it's good for matching the demands that are coming.
Chris Keefer (37:30.558)
So I'm very, very excited about that. And I think it's visionary. You know, I had a discussion with Todd Smith around the time of this decision. And I said, listen, you know, this is gonna sound cheesy, but if you're part of a government that lays the foundation for a nuclear plant that's gonna be there for 80, 90, maybe a hundred years, gonna provide jobs, high quality intergenerational jobs to three or four generations of a family, I'm gonna stimulate the economy in this way.
I mean, that is a serious accomplishment, a signature accomplishment, I think, should bring great pride. So it's kind of this like, I bring a lot of think of authenticity to this. You know, I'm not a kind of paid lobbyist. And it was just something that kind of came to me, but I'm very excited about that prospect at Bruce. It's an excellently run facility now, and it already is the largest operating nuclear plant in the world. It's going to hold that record for quite a while if we add those five gigawatts up there.
Erin OToole (38:26.247)
Absolutely. And for our listeners outside of Ontario, Minister Todd Smith is the Minister of Energy. Todd and Premier Ford, that government is the most pro-nuclear we really see in North America. The expertise that OPG and Bruce have built up really make us the epicentre for the industry in North America at the moment. And that new build will be pretty exciting, pretty fundamental, because as you've said, we're treading water.
But the electrification of the economy, there's going to be demand in the future of much more than we have now, like something like 60 terawatts. And so we're going to need that new bill. And of course, all of our reactors in Canada are CanDo. CanDo now have the Monarch system. You know, CanDo now owned by Atkins Realis, formerly S&C Lavellon. They are producing more with the...
with the Monarch. But there's also the Westinghouse Cameco submission. There's probably the European pressurized reactor. There's probably going to be two, three, four competitors for this. Talk a little bit about each of them and what you think each of them offer.
Chris Keefer (39:44.666)
Yeah, it's an interesting situation. I think a competitive bid is a good idea from the perspective of trying to get everybody honest and delivering the best price. That being said, from a national interest perspective, you wouldn't have the French going, you know what, let's build a different kind of reactor or the Koreans for that instance. Once you have a well-established competitive reactor technology and a supply chain that's built up around it, it is a bit of an odd choice to say, let's go with a foreign tech.
where we might only capture 30% of the supply chain. Where currently we capture 80, 90%. And again, that is really the story of the Candid Reactor. We developed it as a pure energy security play. We found uranium up in Elliott Lake. We weren't able to do those heavy forgings required for the American style designs. So we took advantage of a modular core. And that's meant that the benefits are massive. We have Ontario Chamber of Commerce data looking at the refurbishment at Darlington.
And it says for every dollar we spend on Canada, we get a dollar 40 back in GDP growth. And why is that? Well, we're paying people who are doing really high skilled work, great wages. They go home, they can afford to buy a house. They can spend money in their local communities and the economic multiplier there is absolutely massive. And so we have something that I think we take for granted. Canada is amazing at being humble and taking for granted some of its greatest accomplishments. We talked about, you know.
the Canadian uranium's incredible contribution to reducing emissions in Canada and around the world. What it can do is that. So other technologies that are being looked at, the AP1000 being offered by Westinghouse, and of course, Westinghouse is now owned between Cameco and Brookfield. And so that's an interesting one. The case is being made, well, that's now a Canadian reactor because the company is owned by Canadians.
Nuclear is a little more geopolitical than that. And Westinghouse has gone bankrupt a few times over the last couple of decades. And there's a consortium of UK interests that owned it for a time. I don't think it was a British reactor. And if it was, it wasn't for very long. Toshiba owned it during the Vogel builds where there was another bankruptcy. And it wasn't a Japanese reactor at that time. So nuclear is just, it's very geostrategic. The export controls for that reactor are held in the US.
Chris Keefer (42:02.754)
Even in terms of who can work on the engineering in that project. Canadians who were born in certain countries or who maintain a dual citizenship from certain countries, I think it's about 40 around the world, would not be allowed to actually work on any of the engineering because of U.S. national security regulations. So there's a lot that goes into this. You know, you mentioned earlier Canadians from Nuclear Energy were independent from industry. We're tech agnostic.
That doesn't mean that we don't look and set a series of goals. So if I'm looking at local economic development, if I'm looking at, you know, harvesting the economic activity we have in terms of getting those taxes so we can fund things like healthcare, but, uh, you know, other essential government services, um, I'm with the home team on this one. So, um, there are other vendors, as you mentioned, the French are in there. The Koreans are in there.
Interestingly, the Koreans are making a major investment with that battery plant. Sometimes nuclear exports are sort of tied to other projects. So it's going to be a fascinating process to see it all play out. And it'll be fascinating to see sort of what each player brings to it. It's.
Erin OToole (43:03.719)
What's the timeline? What's the timeline? I know Minister Smith talked about it and there was an announcement last year, but is it... I don't even think it's at the RFI stage. It's really just an intention to build, but did they even give a date on the RFP and where this is going?
Chris Keefer (43:23.746)
So this brings up a really interesting part of nuclear, which is fundamentally, this is about human beings and human resources and the institutions that those humans create. And so what we've done here with our refurbishments coming in six months ahead of schedule, ahead of budget in the last one at Darlington, despite a COVID pandemic and doing very well at Bruce as well, is a testament to those human resources. Those are becoming scarce. Demography, as you know from following Peter Zahan, is crushing us in the West.
And everyone's been learning to code, not learning how to weld. And so Bruce, I think, very intelligently wants to take advantage of finishing up his refurbishments and then moving those skilled workers, retaining those skilled workers, moving them straight over onto their new build project. So I've heard things as ambitious as Bruce wanting to start pouring concrete and getting the civil work started in 2027, 2028, and start doing electric and HVAC work with some of the refurb workers as they finish up on their refurbishment units in 2030 or 2031.
So this is a very tight timeline. You mentioned, Kandu has the Monarch. It has it as a blueprint right now. So there's work that needs to be done to modernize that design to get up to the gigawatt scale. Kandu, that's not particularly complicated, because we're looking at taking essentially a carbon copy of the Darlington core and putting it into a reactor design that was developed called the Advanced Kandu Reactor and using that as the kind of package. But it will take investment.
And it will take, I think, federal investment to support that. And so there's going to be an interesting decision point here that the federal government will have to make either under Trudeau or potentially Poliev, depending on the way things go in the next few years, as to whether to, to play that home field advantage. And that's a big question. I mean, the degree to which the government should be involved in supporting national champions is interesting. I think people would think maybe both ways, with a company like Bombardier, for instance.
But to me, it certainly was a shame that we sold off, you know, what I think was the preeminent jet aircraft, the C series to Airbus for the value of maybe six or seven units of that plane. When we did all the hard work, you know, batting so high above our average as a small nation, I would hate to see the same thing happen to Kandu as they happened to the Avro Aero, to really dig in there and hit a raw nerve in terms of our Canadian psyche.
Erin OToole (45:43.943)
Okay, we should really be wearing hunting jackets and drinking Tim Hortons. You're talking about the Manhattan Project North, the old 18, C.D. Howe, you know, the economic nationalism. I respect that, Chris. And look, I think, you know, competition, we need a healthy competition. We need good and we need more Canadians to understand the benefit of the technology and the differences. And that's what your group does so well. You hit on a key thing that
you know, Zahan talks about, but you know, I've talked about a lot for years because we saw this in the oil sands years ago when, you know, 10 years ago when the economy was rocking, is skill shortages. We are going to have major ones and the Darlington refurbishment, I remember talking to Tom Mitchell when he was the CEO of OPG and they built a training center just to train in a mock-up.
Chris Keefer (46:24.386)
Yeah.
Chris Keefer (46:40.385)
Yes.
Erin OToole (46:41.627)
for the refurbishment because they had lessons learned from Pickering that when they actually did it, there were problems doing it in the reactor area themselves. So they spent well over $100 million preparing a center just for the training, but he said to me, we're gonna be ready, but I'm just hoping we have enough skilled trades. And so they worked with Durham College, with Ontario Tech, and all the...
Chris Keefer (47:07.967)
Yeah.
Erin OToole (47:11.747)
the unions, because that was the biggest concern, labor shortages. They knew everything else could work. And so it's been great to see, as you said, the Darlington refurbishment done early and on budget. It shows that we've got the can-do approach and the roll up the sleeves, get-er-done approach. So look, we're gonna end here.
Chris Keefer (47:15.987)
Yeah.
Erin OToole (47:38.115)
because I can't think of a better first guess. You know, I had a series on the nuclear Renaissance before I ended. I had Rurio Sullivan from Moltex. I had James Skonyak from Bruce and my good friend Bill Walker who runs the industry association. Your passion for this subject, I think, is what more people need to see and to learn, to realize that we can have an energy transition that-
keeps the lights on, that keeps emissions down, and keeps Canadians employed, and actually has a realistic approach to electrification. So what is your vision for the next 10 years? You know, what is your group going to do? What do you think Canada needs to do to make sure that we have nuclear at the center of this transition?
Chris Keefer (48:27.766)
Well, you know, I think we've had, as I mentioned, a lot of great victories. Our sort of federal lobbying checklist has come true in terms of Green Bond, the Clean Tech Investment Tax Credit, the loan for the SMR at Darlington, Pickering, and the Green Bond as well here. As you mentioned, I think Ontario in particular is the best equipped jurisdiction in the Western world to lead on nuclear. Now that we have federal, provincial, municipal buy-in, we have those human resources that you mentioned.
have rejuvenated the skilled trades like nothing else. That's been absolutely vital. We are well prepared to take advantage of this. Obviously, we have a candy reactor that's been mothballed in Quebec. It's interesting. We think of wind and solar as being intermittent, and they absolutely are. They're fair weather friends. But hydroelectricity is proving itself to be very vulnerable to climate change. The big droughts that were part of the wildfires in northern Quebec.
and BC mean that the reservoirs are low. Quebec couldn't meet some of its export obligations because it had to hold back water because it uses hydroelectricity to heat in the winter and they can't let their people freeze. So even in Quebec where there's, they've had a proud nuclear history, but there's some, less popular than Ontario, they're looking at potentially restarting that reactor. Chris Keefer (00:01.894)
So there's also some really incredible opportunities opening up in the West, Saskatchewan and Alberta. SAS Power has now chosen their technology, which is the same technology which OPG is so generously doing the first of a kind work on. That's going to be of great service. I think OPG is a national champion now and will be looking at helping other provinces create some of the success that we've had here. Alberta, Capital Power just signed an agreement there as well.
We'll see what happens in BC. Their hydroelectric resources are also constrained right now. So I think this is a big moment. If we're serious about getting off of fossil fuels, we don't just need clean energy. We need to replace fossil fuel services. And that is reliable power. And that's what nuclear provides in a very environmentally friendly way. And I hope to see a lot more of it. So as I said, Aaron, we're just getting started.
Erin OToole (00:52.577)
outstanding. You're just getting started indeed. One of the most passionate, effective advocates I've seen in some time. Dr. Chris Kiefer, father, physician, advocate, patriot. It's been great having you on the Blue Skies podcast. Thank you, Chris.
Chris Keefer (01:10.758)
Thank you for having me, Aaron.
Erin OToole (01:12.343)
And thank you for your patience. This is the first Blue Skies podcast in about seven months. It's the first one done in my post -political life. So if you like this, make sure you like and share it and subscribe. If you have ideas for topics to have smart, informed, longer form conversations about issues affecting Canada, issues affecting the world, let me know. I wanna thank my tiny but mighty team, Stefanie, to help me get this back on board.
but it's been great getting the blue skies going again and continuing to talk about the nuclear renaissance. We are at the center of it. It's exciting. Canada has a huge role to play in it. And it's been great to blue sky that issue with my friend, Chris Keefer today. Thanks for tuning in.