Nations cooperating on new nuclear energy | Guest opinion
Canadian and United States nuclear regulators have signed a first-of-a-kind Memorandum of Cooperation that will see our two countries collaborate on the technical reviews of advanced reactor and small modular reactor technologies.
Kristine Svinicki, Chair of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and Rumina Velshi, President and CEO of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, signed the MOC in Ottawa that is specifically designed “to increase regulatory effectiveness through collaborative work on the technical reviews of advanced reactor and small modular reactor technologies.”
The MOC, the first of its kind between U.S. and Canadian regulators on nuclear power development, builds on a joint memorandum of understanding signed by the regulators in 2017.
“Signing of this memorandum further shapes our commitment to open and transformative thinking with our Canadian partners, enhancing our willingness to work together on matters of advanced nuclear power safety developments while increasing regulatory effectiveness,” Svinicki said. “Advanced technologies are emerging at a rapid pace, demanding that regulators keep in step with modernization initiatives and the technologies of the future.”
Benefits of the collaboration, according to the NRC, include increasing the effectiveness of both agencies and allowing for a shared approach to resolve technical questions. This is key as one of the major hurdles to developing, and licensing, new technologies is the lack of sufficient staff to review and understand the new technologies, some of which are quite innovative.
Merging the efforts between both agencies will allow faster review and approval as well as faster detection of flaws that otherwise would slow the development.
Svinicki and Velshi announced in June that the agencies would begin exploring enhanced bilateral cooperation through joint regulatory reviews of developing nuclear technologies, including advanced reactors and small modular reactors.
This development comes on the heels of other nuclear developments in the political world and an apparent uptick in nuclear power worldwide as an essential component of addressing global issues of energy and climate.
Last year, the United States led a similar initiative with several other governments to promote nuclear power and encourage investment in new nuclear technologies. In addition to Canada, those other countries included Japan, Russia, South Africa, the United Arab Emirates, Poland, Argentina and Romania. It remains to be seen whether the present U.S.-Russia relations will lead to Russia staying in the group.
About 30 countries are considering, planning or starting nuclear power programs, and a further 20 or so countries have at some point expressed an interest. Commercial nuclear power reactors are under construction in the UAE, Belarus, Bangladesh, and Turkey.
Canada is probably the best partner in any nuclear endeavor as they are looking to fill their looming energy supply gap, and address climate change, by building a fleet of new super-safe small modular nuclear reactors over the next 20 years.
SMRs offer what they’ve always wanted — an economic, flexible, shippable reactor that cannot meltdown and whose waste is easy to deal with.
With all this activity suggesting nuclear will increase in importance in the future, I just hope it moves fast enough to reach some key level before I die.
Jim Conca is a longtime resident and scientist in the Tri-Cities, a trustee of the Herbert M. Parker Foundation, and a science contributor to Forbes at forbes.com/sites/jamesconca.
This story was originally published November 14, 2019 at 12:44 PM with the headline "Nations cooperating on new nuclear energy | Guest opinion."