Dr. Chris Keefer, C4NE

There's a way, a way such a better way today Today, the nation flies till the world There's a better way, today there's a better way Hey, this is Rod Adams and it's time for another Atomic Show Today, I have one of my favorite voices in nuclear Chris Keefer or Dr. Chris Keefer as some of us like to refer to him Chris is an medical doctor who has decided that his avocati has got to be doing whatever he can to save nuclear plants and to blaze the path to enable new nuclear to happen Welcome Chris Rod, it's great to be back and I can hear your theme music playing in my head There's a way, there's a better way, it's a theme song for me You've been a huge influence throughout my journey So it's an honor to be back on your podcast Thank you, and there are some, there's two versions of that intro music And one of the ways, the Adam's way Which is supposed to be pronounced AT-OMS But given my last name, some people refer to the thing I think I'm being a little vain by saying my way is my way the highway But it's not really true, I do embrace the fact that there are other ways that work in certain parts of the market But when it comes to large bulk base load and the adjustable on demand electricity There are a few ways that are better splitting atoms I do think, just to take off on that Rod, I do think that doesn't avail a really crucial point Because, you know, this idea that there are multiple ways And we should really discuss and reflect and have a full some conversation So that we do select the best way finally Because there's a lot of people with different expertise and opinions And I do find that the nuclear world often, that tends to be kind of a party line that is taken And that's kind of more in the industry side, I think amongst advocates We have lots of different disagreements, and Isabel Bemicki, you know, who I don't think we need to introduce The Brazilian fashion model, turn nuclear influence, which is always saying that there's more petty factions Within nuclear advocacy, there's more drama than there is within the fashion industry But I'd say, you know, I'm probably touching the spit today, but within the industry itself There's a real sort of, you know, this is the path, and button-button down the hatches and get on board So, you know, just to reflect again on, you know, there being a few ways to look at things And taking advantage of all the different perspectives that we have, I think we can arrive at the best possible outcomes One of the things I like about the nuclear advocacy world is it is so opinionated and independent thinkers It's hard for anybody to reasonably say that we are industry representatives or as the Some people like to say shills We have independent thinking, we have people who have done a lot of research and done a lot of analysis and want to share that with others So you are one of the independent thinkers in this business What is it that made you a big fan of nuclear energy so much to the point where you started several different enterprises and advocacy groups Yeah, I mean, just to clarify on the shill front, my entire income comes From the Ontario Health Insurance Program, which is our version of Medicare basically So I've never taken a penny for any of the work that I do And you write it, it has become a real focus of my life I've scaled back my medical practice slightly to about three quarters time And I probably put about 20, maybe 30 hours a week into the podcast and all of the advocacy that I'm up to So why on earth would I do that? And I mean, that entails a certain amount of sacrifice On behalf of some of my loved ones, you know, my girlfriend that comes along on trips to give talks Around the sites of potential deep geologic repositories amongst them But you know, I've told the story a few different times The kind of on ramp was climate concern And you know discovering that, you know, beyond hydraulic Tristy nuclear really is the other key enabler of deep decarbonization But then, you know, the further I've traveled down this road, I've been developing a lot of other thinking And you know, fossil fuels are, you know, we live in a fossil field civilization as a bus lifts Smil famously says, you know, concrete steel plastics and fertilizer There's a lot of naive, naivety, and I probably shared that in the early days of my activism Where, you know, it's just kind of keep all the fossil fuels in the ground Unless just go bonkers on a global Mesmer plan, you know, realizing that half the world's population could not be supported If we didn't turn some natural gas into fertilizer And coming to the understanding that it's not just about, you know, building clean energy But building clean energy that is a functional replacement for fossil fuel services It's going to be a long road But again, to try and get back to your question, why am I doing this? You know, other angles, obviously, I'm a medical doctor, the air pollution angle Where I live, we use nuclear for 90% of the power to phase out coal that's had just massive health impacts Hundreds of premature deaths avoided tens of thousands of hospitalizations Enabled by nuclear energy people forget that nuclear saves lives You know, and also, you know, I have a young child growing up in Canada I care deeply that he has a society that is fruitful and bountiful and able to offer him all the opportunities that I've had And I think we do really stand on the precipice of, you know, making some poor energy choices, you know, as we're seeing in Germany Which can condemn the country to losing its source of productive wealth, losing its industrial sector Which is in turn what creates the value to prop up a generous welfare state with lots of opportunities for education, for the arts For everything that we sometimes take for granted and, you know, rich developed countries So there's my long, long answer to your brief question, Rod, but you're going to find that I've got a lot to say And I'll try and be a little more brief probably That's all right, it's a brief question with a complex and varied answer, many aspects to it One of the things I'd like to congratulate you on in your efforts Seen to have made at least an impact, a nudge, to encourage the Ontario Power Generation Company, OPG To reconsider a decision made somewhere in the neighborhood of 2006 to 2008 About whether or not it should retain the services of the Pickering Nuclear Station And to enable it to operate for another 30 years by refurbishing it Can you talk about there, I guess it's only about three days ago that they made the announcement to extend the plant for at least another year And reconsider that refurbishment decision Yeah, I mean, Rod, this is such a significant event that it is now referred to in our circles as Pickering Day And that historic day is October 29th And this really does signal I think September 29th, because I'm a little under slept as you've detected Let it be known September 29th, Pickering Day And this has just absolutely massive, massive ramifications It really does signal a change in direction, I believe, for the Canadian nuclear industry You know, and in terms of the role that I played and that my organization played I don't want to overstate it, but at the same time, I don't think it should be understated We were the sole advocates for the refurbishment at Pickering, going back a number of years We did run into some, how to put it the right way, some friction with elements Even resistance, yeah, from elements of industry, you know, and they're entitled to their opinions in the way they saw things But we were told, you know, trying to save this plant is bad for nuclear energy This battle is done, it's a done deal, the decision will not be changed, you know, you're wasting your time I mean, Isabelle Bemicky, I think, heard very similar things when she started looking around for allies In the saved Diablo Canyon struggle, and you know, we always think of Pickering as Diablo Canyon's sister power plant But we faced a real uphill battle there, and again, not just against anti-nuclear environmentalists But, you know, some challenges with elements of the Canadian nuclear industry And they had their reasons, you know, there was a decision made, as you mentioned, in 2009 There was a regulator approved plan to refurbish the Pickering Nuclear Station Your listeners may or may not know that can do's have at least a life of 60 to 80 years As long as they get a midlife refurbishment, the key part that needs to be swapped out is the pressure tubes Just kind of like the reactor pressure vessel, but we decided to break our up into a bunch of tubes And a number of reasons which I'd love to talk about later, because it's such a cool reactor design that's so suited to Canada In any case, if those are swapped out, you get an extra 30-40 years of operation And that means a whole lot, because Pickering was, sorry, is about 15% of Ontario's total power generation in terms of electricity And again, the decision in 2009 to not pursue the regulator approved refurbishment Had a lot to do with the prevailing economic conditions, we'd just come out of the global financial crisis The Man 4 casts were flat, you know, given the deindustrialization that had occurred because of that crisis And some energy efficiency elements like LED light bulbs that were rolling out Natural gas was still cool, not just amongst the environmentalists, but this idea that we were still burning coal That time, natural gas is cleaner, hey, it's dirt cheap now because of the fracking revolution that played a part of it And so that led to a decision not to do their refurbishment Pickering is a smaller set of reactors, I say they're small mods of reactors, they're 500 megawatts Compared to our 8 to 900 megawatt fleets and our other nuclear sites But, you know, the conditions changed as we move forward in time with electrification, Ontario's, you know, a big driver of investment to Ontario Is our deeply decarbonized grid enabled by nuclear and a bit of hydro We've got steel companies that are switching over to electric arc furnaces, we've got a big uptake in electric vehicles So demand is skyrocketing Natural gas is obviously no longer cool, particularly in a jurisdiction that no longer uses coal And lastly, natural gas is expensive these days, I mean, we've seen it as much as quintuple on the Henry hub and the states We do get some of our gas from Western Canada, but a large part comes from Pennsylvania oil fields Leave that some more cellus fields And so the arguments really started to change And we were lucky enough to have been the ones that had kept the faith over the years as the global energy crisis occurred As those natural gas prices spiked as electrification continued to become a major priority And this idea of taking 15% of your electricity generation offline in the midst of those converging forces It's almost as ridiculous as Belgium shutting down, you know, well three in the midst of their crisis Taking 10% of their electricity offline Obviously, we've got a strong nuclear system backing it up, but you know, the governments was convinced And it's not just convinced by the arguments we've been making, you know, pitching little folding tables in Dundas Square, one of our big cities, center squares, but as an organization We built ourselves up and became capable of producing an amazing policy report authored primarily by Dylan Moon And it's an incredibly high quality report, fully referenced, you know, with peer review from experts throughout the industry in the field And we delivered that policy report straight into the hands of the Premier, the highest, you know, essentially the governor of Ontario and to the hands of his key ministers of labor of energy And We did that at the right time. And two months later, the decision that was made is essentially the template laid out in our report. So again, I'm very aware of the follies of hubris and of ego. But I do think in terms of a real detailed analysis of the factors that came together to make this happen, that C-4ney played an indispensable role. And the folks on my team, like Dylan Moon, like I'm just going to name drop a few people, because they're very important. Chris Adelom, like Tom Hess, like Steve Applin, the people that capped the faith when things looked really dark, we prevailed. And I think it's really changed the outlook for nuclear and Canada massively. Well, you know, it's not really vanity or hubris when you are able to give those kinds of credits to the team that you've built. It's not bad for the leader to recognize that his team has done something really amazing and has made a significant contribution to not just Canada, but to the rest of the world. So I want to give you props for that. And your team, all of the names that you just mentioned, I recognize some of them as being active in the social media area, but I'm sure others are more active in the physical area, which is just as important, and not more important in this kind of advocacy. One of the other factors that you might not know much about, because it's just recently, I'm intrigued by the coincidence of Monday Ontario Power Generation, and last Monday, Ontario Power Generation announced a deal with Microsoft for Microsoft the purchase clean energy credits, which is a direct analog to what's been available from at least the last 15 or so years, something called renewable energy credits. And by doing so, Microsoft said very clearly that nuclear is part of their clean energy strategy and that matching power demand with power supply on an hour by hour basis, or even later on, even more fidelity than that using their Azure data platform, is going to be important. And by doing so, that single announcement made nuclear plants potentially significantly more valuable because of the additional income stream that can come from selling renewable energy credits. This lot of work still would be done, but that announcement was made on Monday, and the announcement to save Pickering or Retain Pickering was made on Thursday. So there has to be something related in those two. Yeah, I mean, we're seeing massive shifts globally as well as domestically, but this has, I think, particular significance. The major tech companies Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, they all have these net zero commitments in terms of their company's operations. Apple's been as bold to suggest that already 100% of its energy is supplied by renewables. Of course, I mean, these are companies that run massive server farms and infrastructure that needs to be running around the clock. I understand that Silicon Valley is peppered with large diesel generators to ensure that that server and computer infrastructure does have power even with the flex alerts and the other challenges of renewable, whether dependent energy generation. Microsoft, I believe, did commission, I think Google as well, a large study looking at how they could power all their servers credibly around the clock, not just with fairly imaginary maneuvers, in terms of certain financing tools, like certain forms of credits. And nuclear did come up in some of those documents. It wasn't, I think, sufficiently prioritized. But listen, I mean, we're in a situation particularly in deregulated electricity markets where nuclear is disadvantaged. Who's getting top dollar? It's folks that are providing that peak power during peak demand. And I mean, clearly there should be some. We need to incentivize that because we need the grid not to crash. But what's been really neglected is that base load all was on power that underpins the reliability of our grid. And so moves like this by Microsoft, I think start to retilt the balance back towards something that's needed where we value that base load production that all was on production. And of course, base load is exactly what a server firm is doing. It's got a 24 seven drawn the grid. So this is, I think, really positive news. It's also very relevant because I believe in the explorations of using nuclear as part of this way to assure truly 24 seven carbon free electricity for the operations of these large tech companies prior they had not included existing nuclear. And I think that's just so important. You know, we've had good news around the world recently with the EU sustainable finance taxonomy, including nuclear, the South Koreans just a week and a half ago also included nuclear. But you'll notice that existing nuclear just isn't good enough for them. Even the South Koreans to qualify for that spending you need to be using accident tolerant fuels. There's a few pervisos in the EU as well. I think that there is a, they need to have an operating deep geologic repository in order to qualify for that funding. And it's yet another hurdle that's being put up for a technology that is delivering, you know, the majority of the EU's low carbon electricity, right? That is, you know, that is deeply decarbonized Ontario that has done so much for South Korea in terms of energy independence and affordable energy. I mean, Koreans for God's sake, have been able to build nuclear power plants cheaper than what they pay for coal. So it's an encouraging move. And I think the dominoes are starting to fall rod. And, you know, I think I always talk about, you know, as an advocate who arrived on the scene four years ago that I stand on the shoulders of giants and, you know, not to put too much of a blush on your face. You're someone who's been keeping the faith back from the beginning of the internet in one of the first websites I'm aware of, right? So, you know, just to, you know, further kind of share that the love and the credit around, you know, this has been a long haul. It must be exciting for you. I think you were around before the kind of nuclear renaissance of kind of peak oil in the early 2000s. You saw those hopes dashed and you're seeing another nuclear renaissance. It's got to be exciting for you as well. I like to remind people that the real renaissance, one that we name the nuclear renaissance after, took about 50 years to get going. And if you look back in history and listen to various historians, they'll give you various starting dates of that renaissance. So things major changes don't happen overnight. It does take a while. And as you mentioned, the, one of the big things that derailed or delayed the nuclear renaissance was that period of very low natural gas prices that I believe is pretty much over for a number of reasons. Yeah. Not the least of which is affected investors in natural gas infrastructure during that dozen years of exceedingly low gas prices. Never got any money back. And they put about $300 billion into building new infrastructure. And it all came online to appear to very low prices for their product. So they lost a lot of money. And they're more disciplined as the business phrases these days. So they're investing as necessary, but they certainly are over investing to drive prices to an unprofitable level. So I mean, I think something that's so interesting is that in times of plentiful cheap fossil fuels, nuclear sufferers, renewables tend to be quite advantaged because of course they rely on that fossil fuel backup. Not just cheap fossil fuels, but accessible fossil fuels. And Europe is in the midst of a fatal trifecta crisis of over reliance on whether dependent renewables over reliance on just-in-time natural gas and over reliance on imports. And that pattern we've seen, it's sort of been almost the, I mean, unofficial, but it's been the energy plan that's been rolled out in wealthy countries around the world. South Korea, Japan, Europe, the United States, Canada to some degree, parts of Canada. And it's exciting to see a bit of a reversal on that, but nuclear has historically experienced those renaissance at times of increasingly unavailable fossil fuels. Because again, nuclear doesn't just produce carbon-free energy, it produces energy, which supplants fossil fuel services. I can't emphasize that enough. So we're seeing reverberations now of the build-up that we saw after the OPEC crisis, talks of renaissance, a curd-wimmer thinking about Picoil before the fracking revolution on low-cheap natural gas. But to bring it back to Canada and Ontario, I've just been having some very interesting discussions. We're working on a report on the past, present, and future of Canada. But in one of those conversations, it was really emphasized to me that the Canada program in Ontario was particularly an energy security and economic development play. And that's because we had uranium actually right here in Ontario that we were mining. We had a lot of engineering, discipline, and expertise. We had been developing this reactor, which this technology came out of heavy water, which was sort of the French and English programs that came over to Chalk River, the world's second largest site of nuclear research at the time of the Second World War. And we had this reactor concept that we quickly developed. We ended up having a supply chain. That's basically entirely domestic because we didn't have the heavy foraging capacities. We didn't have the uranium enrichment capacity. So we developed a reactor, again, with those pressure tubes, instead of a great big pressure cooker containment, so reactor vessel. And that's really led to some really remarkable advantages. And it's given us this clean energy infrastructure that has paid off for decades and decades in which we're sustaining into the future. And here we are finding ourselves in a similar situation of disrupted supply chains of skyrocketing fossil fuel prices. And it's exciting in Ontario to see a maiden Canada solution with these refurbishments. And I think a move towards new can-do as well as being the world's or the West's first mover on the SMR at Darlington. So I think with this pickering announcement, Ontario really takes the crown as the most pro-nuclear jurisdiction in the Western world, really. And we're poised to be absolute leaders. We have a government that seems to be 100% committed to nuclear. And they had a choice between a path dependency, a sleepwalking into just using natural gas to replace pickering, which was the plan. And they chose to go the nuclear route because they wanted to keep the economic development here in the province. Every dollar that we spend on can-do or can-do refurbishment generates a dollar, 40 in economic return because we have the entire supply chain here. And that money is just recycled. High wages played to skilled workers who spend it in their local communities. It's, yeah, as you can tell, I'm pretty excited about it. One of that brings up a question you talked about feeling lonely in the early days of trying to save pickering. I assume that fairly early on you are able to develop some allies within the unions of the people who work at Pickering. Am I right there? Yeah, I mean, listen, my theory of change in starting a non-industry grassroots organization. You start looking around as a bit of a tactician or strategist. You ask yourself, well, who's my base? I'm a lonely voice out here. How do I make some friends that have similar values and want to see the success of the sector? And at first, I think there's a real temptation to you're kind of drawn like a moth to the fire, to the people that will argue back against you, the strongest. And that can be an incredible waste of your time. But I did spend probably a year trying to convince environmentalists, green party members, et cetera. It was good because it was a wet stone that really sharpened the blade of my arguments, because I was forced to reexamine. lots of different assumptions to look at every criticism of nuclear, to investigate the veracity of those claims, to refute them. There was no, it wasn't time wasted, but I quickly pivoted to again this idea of like who is the strategic voting bloc? Who is the kind of core group of individuals I can build up into a movement that can then draw in more of the Canadian public because they see the social license of not just one crazy physician nuclear advocate, but hundreds or maybe thousands or maybe tens of thousands of people who are involved in this movement. And you know very quickly it came to me that hey I live in Ontario we have 76,000 people working in the nuclear sector. They're a potent vehicle of change. They're not particularly politically active, maybe they're a little bit stigmatized. They're used to sort of just you know being the elephant in the room pumping out those clean electrons, medical isotopes, cleaning up our but let's even get them mobilized and activated. And so yes absolutely that began reaching out to the unions. Nuclear energy has got the highest union density of really any sector in Canada. Those 76,000 workers are basically all union. And that means that there's email listsers. That means that once trust was built you know reaching out and establishing you know my values and my credibility and what I was fighting for I was able to earn that trust. And you know for instance one of the big successes we had was a House of Commons petition. So in Commonwealth countries colonial countries of Great Britain there's a neat mechanism where if you get enough people to sign a petition at sponsored by an MP it's red on the floor of the House of Commons or essentially red on the floor of the House of you know your House of Representatives so I was to make an example there. And the government has mandated to provide a written response within about two months time. I learned of this tactic by surveying what the anti nuclear folks were up to because I say hey they've got years in this game. You know they let's learn from them. And they build one in so far. Yeah so they did a House of Commons petition I said what the House of Commons petition. So I started investigating it figured out what it was and said well let's swap in some good pro nuclear language and get this petition going. And our first petition got about 6,000 signatures and I think a lot of them came from within you know every day working people within the sector. Our second petition on the green bond got over 10,000 signatures it was the number two petition in the economy and finance in the 41st sitting of our House of Commons. That's over 10% of the 76,000 nuclear workers and people in the sector who participated. And now with having played such a decisive role in saving pickering I think that base is even more energized even more aware of their power. And you know our further campaigns on getting nuclear into the green bond provincially and federally are going to see a lot of success because we really have started a movement. And it's dynamic. It's exciting and it's really achieving things and we're really bringing a breath of fresh air I think into nuclear advocacy here in this country. Well there's a reason they use the word movement because when you have successes it builds on on the previous successes and you end up getting momentum. Yeah that's what that's what the movement ideas all about. I want to go back a little bit to your discussion about the beauty of the Can-Do heavy water pressure to reactor design. One of the real advantage it has is it is fuel flexible. Another is that it uses online refueling which is a reason why you're able to produce such great medical isotopes using that design. You talk a little bit more about the fuel flexibility. Yeah I mean absolutely they say Can-Do can burn dirt basically. We actually have some uranium deposits. You know like we have the richest uranium deposits in the world. We have a mine close to 20% or grade but within that or grade you can find areas that are 60-70% pure uranium. And conceivably you could make that into a pellet and put that straight into a can-do. Now you could dig up dirt and put it into a can to reactor and it would make power. It's incredible. There's an incredible neutron economy because of that heavy water. It slows down those neutrons without absorbing them and enables other fissions to occur. You know online refueling was a big selling point for the Can-Do particularly back in the day when pressurized light water and boiling water designs had long outages for refueling. Our ability to just keep putting these small fuel bundles the size of logs into these tubes and put some in one end and take them out the other. You know helped with capacity factors. Of course, particularly in the states, nothing, not going to bring up France right now but in the states you guys have gotten absolutely incredible with your outages and achieving capacity factors that are just incredible, 92-93%. So we've kind of lost a bit of that advantage. The other advantage that Can-Do had was again we didn't mean to enrich uranium, enriching uranium, pre-centrifuge required a lot of energy. And that was an advantage of Can-Do. So those things have diminished as big, big advantages of Can-Do but still a really remarkable reactor. And one of the things you mentioned is that online refueling a relatively low pressure, heavy water environment around the pressure tubes enables us to put things in like cobalt 59 and have it absorb some neutrons over a couple years and turn into cobalt 60. And so our reactor is right here in Ontario. Pump out enough cobalt 60 to sterilize 40% of the world's single use medical devices. But that's sinking for a second. So if you go to a hospital, the PPE, anything that if you put an auto-clave, which is high temperature, high steam environment, anything that would melt essentially is not appropriate for an auto-clave. So the breathing tube we use in the ICU, the IV canula that's putting your arm for a blood draw, those blood tubes, you know, just it's remarkable how much is sterilized with cobalt 60. And that is, you know, something that we produce here in absolutely staggering volumes. And that's possible in a power reactor in a way in which it's very difficult within a research reactor. You know, also we have issues where we don't have as many, I still put producing reactors around the world as we probably should. We had one in in Choc River, not a power reactor. And when it went offline, there was a global shortage of, I believe, molybdenum, which is really essential for medical diagnostic imaging. And so we're building more capacity, not just with cobalt 60, but also Lutyshim 177, you know, I keeping asked about what are my reasons for being so passionate about nuclear power. Well, my father, who has a metastatic form of prostate cancer, was actually treated with Lutyshim, which is now being produced in large quantities at Bruce Power. There's a new isotope, each rim, I'm going to forget on that isotopic number, but it's being looked at for liver tumors. So, you know, can do is just it's incredible. You know what, I was asked by the media, you know, what do you say to people who oppose the life extension and refurbishment of pickering? And I said, I just shake my head, I can't understand it because, you know, we're going to be saving five million tons of CO2 every year, the equivalent of five million transatlantic flights. We're going to be keeping an enormous amount of smog produced by natural gas out of the air. We're going to have an incredible economic stimulus impact, again, every dollar spent on refurbishment generates a dollar 40 in returns. You know, where do I stop here? And then on the health front, you know, not just all those clean air benefits, but also the medical isotopes, you know, we take for granted largely that you go to a hospital, you're not going to get a hospital acquired infection. They still occur, but imagine if we couldn't sterilize things as simply as an IV canula or a breathing tube, or, you know, those other single use medical devices, trust me, Rod, we use a hell of a lot of single use medical devices. You don't want to be able to be, you don't want to be reusing some of the stuff in terms of where we put it in your body. Yeah, I believe that I also believe that there's an awful lot of uses for sterilization that are not being done today. Perhaps as people get more and more understanding of the value of radiation and the lack of risk associated with low levels of radiation, they will become more accepting of sterilized food and other sterilization activities. And that cobalt six uses an amazing source of that. Of course, the other one would be kind of cool. The use would be season 137, which would be available from recycling use nuclear fuel. But that's another topic, because it really doesn't apply too much to what we're talking about today. You mentioned in Richmond, I know that one of your major suppliers of uranium that the chemical is also investing in some advanced enrichment technology, because they want to expand their contribution to the entire or their participation in the entire fuel cycle. That's something to be thinking about, at least from my point of view. Canada's got some incredible uranium resources and a lot of junior miners that are coming into the field. And one of the cool things about your financial system is you have a system in place that enables junior miners to raise funds is much more easy for a junior mine to go public in Canada, almost any other place in the world. Interesting. Yeah, I mean, Canadian uranium is a game changer. I did some back in the envelope calculations when we were drafting one of our petitions, because uranium is such a miraculous fuel, obviously. We have the oil sands here in Canada, which are sort of what we're known for in terms of climate impacts. It's something, you know, as an OECD country, Canada has essentially not reduced their emissions since 2005. Little ups and downs and blips there. The oil sands coming online was actually compensated for by interrogating rid of coal. It's pretty fascinating. That's what's kind of held the guard. So nuclear has played a huge role there already. But the oil sands contribute about 80 million tons of CO2 every year, 80 megatons. Well, the uranium produced by Cameco, and right now, you know, we're not producing at anything like what our potential is. You know, as of, I believe, 2019 when I crunched the numbers, we were offsetting 230 million tons of CO2 by using that uranium in the domestic and international fleet. That's fully one-third of Canada's total national all sector emissions being offset by, you know, a fairly underdeveloped uranium sector here. We've seen, obviously, with the sanctions against Russia, a major producer of uranium more of, you know, finished fuels and enriched fuels. There is an enormous opportunity for Canada step to the forefront. And absolutely, we should be pursuing enrichment capabilities and really expanding our mining sector. I mean, with the sort of boom and bust cycle of uranium, it certainly seems like there's still a lot of room for that sector to grow. And, you know, this is one of the things as well that I talked to federal politicians about. Because in Canada, unfortunately, we have a very two-faced approach to nuclear. The government just can't make up its mind. Nuclear is classified alongside sin stocks, like gambling, smoking, manufacture of arms. I don't believe pornography is in there, but it's excluded from our green bond financing mechanism alongside those sin stocks, right? And, but at the same time, we get occasional bits of funding for advanced nuclear innovation. We did manage to get nuclear included within the mandate of the Canada infrastructure bank. I think do a lot to our activism around the screen bond mechanism. But in any case, there's enormous opportunities for Canada. And I think we're on the cusp of politicians coming to their senses on that. Again, as part of this global return and renaissance that we're seeing for nuclear energy. Yeah, the small mods are reactor interest in Canada. It's been pretty exciting. Number of our companies here in the US have gone to Canada to get their first of a kind system license because they like the more technology neutral process that the CNSC has. Can you talk a little bit about Ontario Power Generations small and micro-mause of the reactor program? Yeah, I mean, I'll share what I know. So there was a competitive bidding process at the Darlington site. Again, Darlington is the site of four large-candy reactors. That's Darlington A. There's a Darlington B site. We tend to always build our nuclear facilities in four or eight packs of large-candy units. So there's this can-do B site. And it's licensed for 4800 megawatts of new nuclear. It's been grandfathered in to our new environmental impact assessment. So it is a site which is permitted and ready to build. That is incredibly rare and difficult to find within North America where we have so much regulatory obstructionism for really building anything new but particularly nuclear. So it's a incredibly valuable site. And OPG has elected to be a first mover with SMRs which is very exciting. There's a competitive bid process between the G. Hi-tachi Bwrex 300 terrestrial energy and I believe X energy. In the end, OPG did select I think the most technologically conservative of those designs, the Bwrex 300, the 10th iteration of their boiling water reactor. And this is hugely significant because again, China has been banging out some small mods that reactors recently. Russia certainly both obviously in their Navy but also to power remote communities. But really in the West, OPG will be the first mover. And there's a lot of interest particularly in other areas of our country with smaller grids but also in Europe, the fins, the poles, you know, people that are coming to their senses over energy security issues and maybe don't have a nuclear program up and going yet. This is a good size to get started or maybe they're a small country with a small grid. So, you know, it's very, a very exciting opportunity. There is a micromodger reactor that's being developed as well. I'm going to have to confess that I absolutely hate the name of the company that's developing it. It's called the Ultra, the Ultra Safe. What is it again, Ultra Safe, nuclear cooperation, US and C? I just, you know, I'm going to rant here for a second rod. But imagine that, you know, Boeing came up with the Ultra Safe jetliner. How do you think Airbus would feel? How do you think all of the other jets in their fleet would be judged? You don't call something ultra safe. That's just, I don't know, it may be nice marketing for you individually. I think in the end it hurts the entire industry. And in the end it's, it's not really even good for your own design. Of course, this thing's Ultra Safe. It's absolutely tiny. The core is minuscule. Anyway, rant over. This is an exciting piece of technology because, you know, we have enormous fuel costs shipping mostly diesel to very remote communities. I mean, Canada is an enormous country from coast to coast, but particularly in our north coast. And we have these scattered indigenous communities. You know, like, it calleweet would be one of them. We have mining sites that have pretty large, you know, base load demand for electricity. And currently they ship diesel. And the cost of shipping diesel, believe this was back in about 2016 up to Nunavut, which is one of our big territories. Population, I think, is around $30,000. Was it quarter billion dollars? Right. And it's tricky. You got to ship this stuff in before the ice freezes over. If there's delays or, you know, there's issues, it can, you know, or if there's spikes in fossil fuel prices that can really eat into their budgets. And so it's very exciting that we're developing, you know, nuclear reactors, which can again replace fossil fuel services. And, you know, that's another exciting thing here. So I hope I'm giving you a little bit of an overview there. But, you know, lots and lots of exciting things. And, you know, Rod probably from interacting with me on social media. I'm not when it comes to all the clean energy sources. I'm not a, you know, why not both? I'm a why not the best kind of guy, right? So, you know, when it comes to the use of weather dependent resources, I am utterly unconvinced on a whole different number of causes such as deep decarbonization potential, such as the true economic costs, the ratepayers, such as the just transition implications of building all the stuff in China and workers in America and the in Canada being, you know, reverting to just being temporary construction people putting up these installations with very little job protections. I could go on and on. But when it comes to, you know, what we're doing in Ontario, I really am an all of the above because I think each of these, each of these strategies, new large can do, you know, experimenting with this X300 SMR and the MicroMOS reactor all very valid pursuits that have a very good sort of end-use business case. Yeah, I am a all of the nuclear above, except I should say all of the nuclear fission above. I'm still a skeptic about nuclear fusion and I have to take a quick break and give a little disclosure here. USNC, which is full name is Ultra Safe Nuclear, is a portfolio company of nuclearation capital, which is my current endeavor in trying to do what I can to or do what we can because it's not me by myself. Do we can to enable new nuclear to come to fruition. We're working real hard to both invest in some of the great companies that are developing great products and also to make it interesting and exciting for others to invest trying to create a little FOMO. But USNC is part of that portfolio. We also have a few others and I can certainly talk about that to anybody who's willing to listen. So contact me, Rod at nuclearationcapital.com. Okay, commercial over or disclosure over, which is which is I think you managed to sneak in both quite eloquently in the rocket time. Yeah, you know, Chris, we're coming on the time when I normally closed down my podcast because I figure I like to be a drive time and accepting some really unusual conditions like Washington DC area. I'm just over the average drive time. So let me give you a chance to kind of conclude and then we'll say goodbye to the audience. Yeah, I mean, you know, Rod, it's as I'm mentioning it's a really exciting time for nuclear around the world and for nuclear advocacy. We really are in a David and Glide struggle. Nuclear advocates, the kind of work that we've been putting in on absolute skeleton budgets or even no budgets and the fruit that we are bearing is absolutely incredible. You know, never forget that the so-called shills here, these nuclear advocates working on shoe strings are up against large environmental NGOs like Natural Resource Defense Council. You know, the friends of the Earth, etc. who, you know, in the US alone have an annual operating budget of $1 billion. So it's I just want to point out how incredible that is because we are up against some stiff opposition. It's very unfortunate that it's coming from people who are apparently climate concerned or apparently pro environmental. We had a really beautiful thing happen here with the announcement of the life extension refurbishment at Pickering. As McKenna came out and endorsed the life extension and exploration of refurbishment. Now, our largest, our largest anti nuclear organization Ontario is ironically called the Ontario Clean Airlines. They have a demonstrated background up until 2013 of accepting fairly large donations from natural gas companies. They advocated for coal to be replaced by gas, not nuclear. So, you know, we're really seeing the bankruptcy of the anti nuclear arguments and their people are seeing through them. They're old. They're outdated. They're not keeping up with people's concerns and with the challenges that we're facing. So I just encourage listeners, figure out who your local nuclear advocates are and find ways to support them because David is rising. If you want to, if you're in Canada or you want to support what we do, we're at c4ne.ca, that's the number sign for. So c4ne.ca, we do have a donate button. But I think we have a really world class website again credit to Dylan Moon, who does so much great work for c4ne. Again, if you want to get inspired and see a good example of nuclear advocacy and what we're capable of, that's my promo over, Rod. Are you still involved with doctors for nuclear energy? Yeah, that is an organization that I founded. You know, I do have the decouple podcast, which keeps me quite busy. Canadian's nuclear energy has really taken a lot of my attention recently as well. Doctors nuclear energy exists as a website. We were starting to form chapters around the the world. Doctors are really tricky to get organized, probably as you can. The analogous to hurting kittens, absolutely busy people, lots of priorities. And so that organization is, you know, a little bit in the deep freeze. But I think really important that it exists and we do have an membership base of several hundred physicians around the world. You know, very recently, I organized a doctor or a physician's panel on nuclear waste. We went and visited the community where, which has the best geology in Canada and where we're considering putting our deep geological repository and I gave a talk as a physician about nuclear waste, about radiation, about the risks and benefits. You know, just as you make an informed decision before a medical treatment, I think is very important that informed consent is obtained and that, you know, a scientific account of the risks and benefits are explained. So, you know, still very much active as a doctor for nuclear energy. But just as you can tell, wearing a lot of hats, a lot of a balls in the air for this juggling doctor. Well, I'm glad to hear those that your new girlfriend will accompany you to nuclear waste sites and other activities. I hope that you in the audience and becoming maybe a nuclear grouping. We call it nukepelling. But yeah, she's wonderful and supportive and thank goodness for that. All right. Hey, for everybody out there, just a reminder, I've been talking to Dr. Chris Keifer, the founder and voice that you'll hear on the decouple podcast. He's also got decouple media that has some video that's done by Jesse freston. I mean, freston, Jesse freston. And he's famous for having accosted a few ministers within the Canada at COP 26, I think. And anyone at the doctor, Chris Keifer, I really enjoyed your conversation. And this is Rod Adams from the Atomic Shell. Take care. Great joining around. Hope you enjoyed this episode of the Atomic Show. This is Rod Adams. And I've been your host for the Atomic Show for more than 15 years. Along with the Atomic Insights, I've been speaking with experts in analyzing nuclear energy for more than three decades. While I'll continue to produce new content, I am also actively investing in advanced nuclear and related ventures. As a managing partner of Nucleation Capital, I'm expanding my access and getting to dig even deeper into nuclear energy companies. We're working hard to select ventures with extraordinary promises success. They're building the advanced nuclear sector and helping expand our clean energy options. 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