What advantages do you anticipate arising from the new large-scale nuclear build for both the energy industry and Canada as a whole?

It’ll provide clarity around our large-scale baseload energy supply with some predictability and confidence to meet our climate goals. Right now, there are still gaps in the firm commitments that define conclusively where our baseload power generation will come from in the medium to long term. Small modular reactors (SMRs) are happening gradually, but they’re not going to scale up pervasively to meet the growing energy demand by 2035. But a large-scale new build plant provides so much reliable, consistent, low-carbon baseload. It’ll provide a key piece of that foundational energy supply puzzle.

In addition, the more we transition to an electrified economy, the more energy supply demands we’ll have. They’re looking at refurbishing the four units at OPG Pickering B because the energy supply mix can’t afford a large-scale nuclear reactor plant coming offline at this critical time in our energy production supply demands.

Look at climate change, for example. The warmer we get, the more air conditioning demand there is, and the more energy that’s going to be required for addressing the impacts of climate change environmentally and just within buildings and homes and so on.

The large-scale nuclear build gives Canada that stepwise levelling up of low-carbon, reliable, baseload power provision so there’s one less question mark and less uncertainty about what’s going to give us that reliable base load supply mix 10 or 15 years from now.

How will Canada’s work in the SMR space create a significant global impact?

The anchor GE Hitachi BWRX-300 SMR at Darlington was initially sited for one unit, but they’ve now announced that four are planned for deployment. The intent currently is to draw upon this anchor SMR to establish a supply chain infrastructure that can then be leveraged as the engine for global export of other BWRX-300 SMR’s in other interested jurisdictions, such as Eastern Europe, for example.  

Once you build an operating SMR, it unlocks so many things. It also validates Canada’s legitimacy as an environment that’s conducive to incubating and curating an SMR evolution. It shows that we have a technology that can be built, an infrastructure that can deliver it, a regulatory framework that can facilitate it, and a utility that’s willing to host and operate it. All of the needed ingredients to validate and legitimize SMR development become actualized through the building of an SMR.

The SMR evolution is heavily dependent upon a funding strategy as well, and investors are looking for validation gates to keep putting in various tranches of funding. Having a build completed that shows that it can be done, that there’s a supply chain ecosystem and infrastructure that can deliver on it, and that there’s momentum behind it means they’ll be more likely to put money into it. Success breeds success. Having an SMR commissioned and built in Canada will have a catalyzing impact on other SMRs, fueling that momentum forward.

What developments in the radiopharmaceutical space are you excited about?

One is the growing scale of established anchor medical isotopes like Mo-99, Lutetium-177, and so on. The evolution of discovery medical isotopes like Actinium-225 is going to become more pervasive. The more that discovery radiopharmaceuticals become validated as scalable, the more the market grows.

For Promation, it’s a great nexus of production automation experience in our automotive side coupled with radiological experience from supporting the nuclear power generation industry, because you have a production environment that needs radiological considerations. That’s a great opportunity for us.

On the processing side, it’s also CANDU-agnostic, so it’s a global market. Canada is well-suited to facilitate that market because we have a mature, consolidated ecosystem of suppliers that have built their pedigree and are sustained by strong, healthy, robust nuclear utility market demand. It can be leveraged to help support the radiopharma evolution as well, business opportunity-wise.

But generally, just the evolution of advancements and the increased, pervasive access and uptake of radiopharmaceuticals in radiotherapeutics and radiodiagnostics (theragnostics) have transformative impacts on society. People who had either inoperable cancer or very challenging therapeutics previously are now being able to have a much better quality of life through the life-saving impacts of often less invasive treatments facilitated by recent advancements in medical isotopes.

The social license consideration of what we do is amazing, too. Everyone has been touched in their lives by knowing someone who’s had cancer. Knowing that the work we’re doing between enabling low-carbon reliable, safe power generation and helping increase access to life changing medical isotopes has this broader societal benefit that makes our work much more tangible and meaningful.

The other thing is it’s really a win-win-win where the legitimate growth of the radiopharma sector brings a broader awareness to the benefits of nuclear. There are profound, substantial, and pervasive societal benefits to nuclear medicine and nuclear science, so it gives another avenue for people to understand what nuclear means for them in their own lives.

How will these developments contribute to medical advancements in Canada and beyond?

On the one side, the fact that CANDU reactors are uniquely qualified, given their neutron flux profile, to irradiate the raw material for radiopharmaceuticals to produce the radioactive isotope on such a large scale is a game-changer. Historically, it was either cyclotrons or research reactors, which are usually quite small. You’ve now got large-scale power utility-sized reactors that can do this bulk irradiation of the radiopharmaceutical raw material in large volumes, which can then be pushed out into the pipeline supply chain, meaning there’s more drug on the market available, which ideally means more access to it, which means more life-saving treatments and possibly even reduced costs because of supply and demand.

Because Canada has the infrastructure and all these unique variables in place, like the supply chain, regulatory framework, and so on, the government is starting to get behind it as well. There was a motion passed at the federal level to build a pan-Canadian strategy for creating a radiopharmaceutical ecosystem, and a Strategic Innovation Fund was just announced that shows the government’s commitment to facilitate establishing Canada as a global net exporter and industry leader in radiopharmaceutical production.

Why is Canada uniquely positioned to lead in the medical isotope field?

One reason is the power utilities for the new reactors to irradiate large volumes of relevant materials. We have a regulatory framework that helps to facilitate that, governments provincially and federally that have identified and acknowledged the desire to get behind this framework, and a great intersection of universities, research centres, industry, the medical community, and so on.

We have this consolidated supply chain that’s established, mature, and justified because of the healthy nuclear industry in Ontario predominantly, which can then be leveraged to support the medical isotope community as well.

Since your entry into the nuclear industry in 1990, what significant shifts have you witnessed within the field, and what aspects of the industry’s future are you excited about?

There’s been a big change in diversity. There were women in the field back then, but none in the control room or in leadership positions. There was nobody to look up to. That’s definitely not the case anymore.

Today, we have women leading the Nuclear Waste Management Organization and the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, and a female COO at Ontario Power Generation. Do I think we’re there yet? No. I’d like to see that leadership 50/50. But we’ve come a long way.

Another shift: in my 33 years in nuclear, I’ve never seen so many people who are supportive of the industry. It’s no longer just industry people who are singing nuclear’s praises. It’s also those who are affected by and want to do something about climate change.

The other exciting thing is we’re no longer only focused on large nuclear. We’re talking about building small modular reactors (SMRs) and about how we can use our existing reactors and SMRs to make life-saving isotopes — a market that’s growing like crazy in Canada.

We’re also talking to SMR developers who can use our used fuel and reduce waste by around 95 per cent. Many innovative ideas are circulating.

Why is it so crucial for organizations to prioritize board diversity and to ensure representation of diverse groups at the highest levels?

We need to see people who look like us so that we feel valued when we enter the industry. And if we aren’t getting diversity right at the highest levels, then how are we possibly going to get it right in the rest of the company? We need representation at all levels. And really, it starts with the top. The leaders set the tone for the entire organization.

Diversity increases innovation, problem-solving, and morale. It helps organizations attract top talent and creates high levels of staff engagement and satisfaction. It’s also just the right thing to do for society as a whole.

What transformative potential do SMRs hold for clean energy, and how might they revolutionize the industry in Canada and beyond?

SMRs will make nuclear power more accessible to all kinds of different communities, enabling us to power remote communities that are currently powered by diesel.

Unlike diesel generators, SMRs generate excess steam, which can be used to heat buildings, schools, and hospitals, or to grow fresh plants and vegetables in a greenhouse. This improves sustainability on multiple levels.

We’ll need to do a lot more mining if we’re going to electrify the grid, and we’re going to need more uranium in order to power up all these SMRs and large nuclear. Many other processes are going to be positively affected by SMRs’ use.

Canadian SMR companies are also looking for partnerships with Indigenous communities, which is a great opportunity for economic reconciliation and for Indigenous communities to get in on the ground floor with these new builds and be equity partners.

Why is it so important for organizations to integrate Indigenous knowledge into their research, studies, and plans?

I think there’s a need for Western science and Indigenous knowledge to come together in order to make the best decisions for the environment.

For example, many traditional trappers and hunters can predict weather patterns just based on how the animals are behaving. That traditional knowledge combined with Western science can help us tackle national and global challenges.

On top of that, there are a lot of courses that bring these two ways of knowing together that are taught by Indigenous knowledge keepers, who should be given the same recognition as, for example, a professor of geology. Recognizing knowledge keepers as experts in their field gives more credibility to companies, corporations, and governments that are working with both traditionally trained and non-traditionally trained folks.

There’s also this sense of simplicity that we’d benefit from embracing. The International Indigenous Speakers Bureau’s CEO and Co-Founder once told me a story about a First Nations Trapper who was talking to a hydroelectric company that was having trouble figuring out how to divert water in one part of a river. The First Natioans Trapper said, “Let me have a look.” It took less than a day for the leak to be stopped, after engineers from around the world worked for ten days to find a solution, that the Trapper knew the answer to right away. The company asked the Trapper what he did, and he said, “I just picked up a couple of beavers, threw them in that river, and they built a dam.” I love that story because it shows how we overthink, over-engineer, and overdo things. 

How are partnerships with Indigenous communities contributing to the responsible growth of the nuclear energy sector?

The benefit goes both ways. Indigenous communities benefit when we partner with them, and they also come in asking important questions and pointing out things that perhaps we hadn’t thought about.  

When we build things, Indigenous communities want clear answers about the impact on the fish, how many degrees the water temperature will change at the outfall, or what we’re going to do to make sure the surrounding wildlife isn’t affected. They understand how the water flows, so they’ll be able to tell that it’ll affect things many kilometres upstream or downstream. We have to take more into consideration than just our actual footprint.

Indigenous participation is forcing the nuclear sector to be more prepared for thinking broader. For example, in New Brunswick, ARC Clean Technology wants to build an SMR on the Lepreau site, and while there’s not really a First Nation beside the site, they’re getting feedback from all of the surrounding First Nations.

There’s no path to net zero without nuclear. But that path, no matter where it is, is going through a traditional territory. And we’re going to need to have Indigenous people involved in all areas of our sector.

The Indigenous population is growing at four or five times the rate of any other population in Canada, so that’s our future workforce. We want to have good relationships with Indigenous communities and to make sure they are taking advantage of the opportunities in nuclear.  We need all communities and all the knowledge available to fight climate change and make decisions that include the seven generations ahead of us and behind us.

We’re seeing a lot of information of late about nuclear energy in Canada. What role do you see nuclear energy playing in the future?

The nuclear power industry is growing at a rapid pace and is poised to support our energy demands today and into the future as we strive to meet our climate action goals. Today, we’re seeing Canada at the forefront of new nuclear, with the deployment of small modular reactors in several provinces, as well as the plans for large conventional nuclear taking shape. Nuclear energy is critical to our net-zero goals and will provide safe, reliable baseload electricity. It will support and complement other clean-energy sources, such as wind, solar, and renewables. The nuclear industry is innovative and dynamic and poised for growth as we work to meet our clean energy demands in the future. 

Can you tell us about Women in Nuclear (WiN) Canada and the role WiN plays in the nuclear industry?

Women in Nuclear (WiN) Canada is a not-for-profit organization that was established in 2004. Today, we have more than 5,000 members across Canada. More than 95 per cent of our members work in various roles in the nuclear industry. WiN has three key pillars to our mission: to provide factual information to the public about the benefits of nuclear and radiation technologies to society, to provide leadership development opportunities for women, and to promote career paths in all aspects of the nuclear industry to women and young girls. WiN works collaboratively with our membership, the industry, provincial and federal governments, and other organizations to execute these pillars and have an impact on the industry.

What advice do you have for women aiming to rise to leadership positions within the nuclear industry?

Women make a valuable contribution to nuclear, working in all aspects of the industry. From science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) to business, strategic, and operational roles, the career prospects in the nuclear industry are endless, with opportunities to work in exciting and innovative areas. While women are still underrepresented in the industry, representing approximately 22 per cent of the workforce, the industry is committed to striving for gender parity, with most employer organizations being signatories of the Equal by 30 Campaign. We have more women in leadership roles now than ever before, and employers are committed to developing a gender-balanced talent pipeline. 

When it comes to leadership roles in the industry, my advice isn’t gender-specific. It’s always important for emerging leaders to leverage their strengths — find out what you’re really good at and hone those skills. I also believe that mentors play a critical role in professional development and are valuable in all aspects of leadership development. And regardless of your level in an organization, a mentor is always important. We never stop learning, and having a mentor who’s a sounding board for you will always be important. Lastly, and my personal favourite, is to take risks and bet on yourself. I’ve built an entire career on taking risks by taking on new roles, teams, and projects. The opportunity for learning and development is significant when you get out of your comfort zone.

How is WiN Canada actively working to increase diversity within the nuclear industry and to create more opportunities for underrepresented groups?

At WiN Canada, our highest strategic goal is to have an impact on the industry and the communities in which we live and work. WiN Canada has launched several programs to not only support the success of women working in the nuclear industry but also to create a positive impact on the industry in Canada and globally. This includes our leadership development program EmPOWERed Women: Taking the Stage, which enables women to view leadership through the lens of communication — supporting them in developing the skills needed to be seen as strong, confident leaders. To date, we’ve had more than 100 women in the industry complete our program, with plans to run this program through 2024.    

WiN Canada also has a formal Mentorship Program, which offers members the opportunity to engage across the industry to develop both personally and professionally. Our program welcomes members at all stages of their careers as well as students preparing to enter the workforce.

WiN Canada also has a Speakers Clearinghouse — an initiative that enables WiN Canada’s subject matter experts to engage the public and local schools, especially young females, to help them better understand the benefits of the nuclear industry and the careers it provides, so that they have factual information on the role of nuclear and radiation technologies in society today.

We also have some exciting announcements about new initiatives coming later this fall, which will support increasing the representation of women in the nuclear industry and reaching the industry’s goals of achieving gender parity. Stay tuned for more announcements coming from WiN Canada!

How do you believe embracing diversity can lead to innovation and improved outcomes for the industry?

One of our greatest challenges in the industry today is the very lean representation of women in the employee population. Women represent only about 22 per cent of the workforce in the nuclear industry. The fact of the matter is diversity brings improved operational and financial performance, greater innovation, better group performance, and an enhanced reputation for the company.

At WiN Canada, we’re committed to highlighting and supporting women in the industry, providing leadership development programs and initiatives, and being the voice for our members with industry leaders. This includes supporting our members in their pursuit of professional development and helping the organizations within our membership achieve gender balance.

What message would you like to share with the public, and especially with women, regarding the positive impact and significance of nuclear within our society?

As women working in the nuclear industry, we value nuclear energy’s role in a net-zero carbon future. The role of nuclear energy in Canada is critical to our success in reaching our net-zero carbon goals by 2050. The climate change crisis is real, and it’s the single greatest threat the world faces today. Canada’s nuclear industry makes an important contribution to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and its carbon-free power delivers safe, reliable, and low-cost electricity that’s required in today’s advanced economy. There’s no path to a clean energy future without nuclear energy playing a vital role in the energy transition. We owe it to our children and future generations to protect them from the risks of climate change, so that they can experience a healthy and clean environment in the future. Nuclear energy is safe, reliable, and carbon-free, and will support a bright future ahead.

Starting your career as an emergency physician, what sparked your interest in advocating for nuclear energy?

Ontario’s electricity grid used to be 25 per cent coal-powered, and we operated the largest coal plant in North America, contributing to 54 smog days a year in my hometown of Toronto. I grew up with an asthmatic friend who barely left his house all summer because our air quality was so poor. Over the course of my early medical career, we eliminated coal burning in Ontario, something very few jurisdictions around the world have been able to do, but it was only years later that I learned how we got rid of coal. Ontario accomplished this feat by using nuclear energy, which provided 90 per cent of the power required to permanently eliminate coal. 

We take the air we all breathe for granted. Burning coal has numerous health impacts, from asthma and emphysema to heart attacks, strokes, and even cancer. The Ontario Medical Association estimates that a thousand lives per year could be saved, and tens of thousands of hospital admissions could be avoided by phasing out coal. During my clinical practice, I directly witnessed the benefits of clean air and came to understand that nuclear energy literally saved thousands of lives right here in Ontario since it produces no air pollution. 

However, my initial discovery of nuclear energy as something that could be a positive thing came around the time of the birth of my child. I was thinking a lot about climate change and wanted to do something about it. Being a science geek, I started researching the solutions for climate change. I learned that the fundamental solution is to develop an ultra-clean electricity grid and electrify as much of our economy as possible. I learned that right in my backyard in Ontario, we had done just that with our electricity grid which uses nuclear for 65 per cent of its power generation. 

Why nuclear energy? 

Nuclear ticks all of the boxes we should care about in our modern world. It’s an environmentalist’s dream because there’s no air pollution, and you can produce an astounding amount of energy with the least possible mining and the smallest land footprint. The three power plants that provide 65 per cent of Ontario’s electricity are each about the size of a large shopping mall. Nuclear uses a fraction of the concrete, steel, and rare earth minerals compared to other low-carbon sources like wind and solar, which means the lowest disturbance to our natural world.

The Pickering Nuclear Generating Station essentially generates the electricity requirements for most of Toronto on the footprint the size of a Costco shopping centre. This is because Uranium is a million times more energy dense than coal, for instance. The amount of uranium that one of the world’s largest nuclear plants — the Bruce Nuclear Generating Station in Ontario — uses every day could fit inside one oil barrel.

Nuclear power also provides Canada with an incredible economic advantage. Canada has innovated its own nuclear technology and design — the CANDU reactor — with a 96 per cent made in Canada supply chain. This gives us complete energy security and an incredible economic multiplier effect. Every dollar we invest in CANDU generates $1.40 of economic activity. Nuclear is great for the environment and economy, and that’s a rare mix.

There’s also the question of a just transition for fossil fuel workers. Jobs in wind and solar tend to be low-skill, low paying, and transient. There are, after all, no parking lots outside of a wind or solar farm. Nuclear offers fossil fuel workers equally well-paying, high-skilled jobs producing the lowest carbon form of electricity on the planet. These jobs are inter-generational, family-supporting, and mostly unionized. Nuclear truly is the just transition.

Finally, it’s important to consider alternative clean energy sources when asking, “why nuclear?” With wind and solar, the reality is that these power sources don’t produce energy reliably, and they become critically reliant on backup, which must be capable of supplying 100 per cent of energy needs when wind and sun don’t co-operate, which is not a rare occurrence. This means that you simply cannot retire reliable power stations like gas and coal plants, which is borne out by the experience of Germany and California, where despite large-scale investments in wind and solar, fossil fuel plants cannot be retired.

Nuclear energy offers us clean air, a cooler climate, and life-saving medical isotopes. With a supply chain that’s 96 per cent made in Canada and high-quality jobs, we can achieve our environmental goals, a healthy economy, and a truly just transition for Canadian workers.

What about the waste?

People are concerned about the waste, but we produce a vanishingly small amount of it. All of the high-level nuclear waste that we’ve ever produced in Canada would fit in one hockey rink stacked one telephone pole high.

Nuclear waste is very dangerous fresh out of the reactor, and unshielded, it would cause certain death within seconds of exposure. Yet, paradoxically in modern society, we make dangerous things incredibly safe. Consider aviation, for instance. We don’t give a second thought to flying 30,000 feet at close to the speed of sound, above a vast ocean, in a thin-skinned airplane with nowhere to safely land for thousands of kilometres. It’s a lot easier to shield nuclear waste in water-filled pools and then concrete and steel dry casks than to maintain an aircraft with tens of thousands of mission-critical moving parts that must remain in perfect working order. This is borne out by the fact that no one has ever been killed by stored civilian nuclear waste. Despite 4.5 billion passenger flights every year, only several hundred people die annually in aviation accidents.

Nuclear waste rapidly decays. In 10 years 99.9% of the radiation has disappeared. Within 200 years you would get a dose lower than a CT scan by standing next to nuclear waste for one hour. In 600 years you could safely hold nuclear waste in your hand.

The long term solution is either to store the waste deep underground where we can use the rock layers to contain it on geological timescales or reuse it in a type of reactor that can use up the rest of the fuel and produce waste that only needs to be stored for 300 years.

Aside from generating power, how are Canadian nuclear reactors being utilized in health care? 

Canadian engineers have developed and refined the CANDU reactor. It’s a unique reactor in terms of its ability to produce an enormous amount of medical isotopes, which are radioactive elements that we use for cancer therapy and the sterilization of medical devices.  

In Canada, we’ve produced most of the world’s Cobalt-60, which is used to sterilize 40 per cent of the world’s single-use medical devices — from the IV cannula going into someone’s arm to the breathing tubes used in the ICU. Medical isotopes enable modern health care, and modern health care depends on sterile equipment. 

Certain isotopes are also used in Canada as vital cancer therapies. My father is currently being treated with a medical isotope (Lutetium-177) produced at Bruce Power for metastatic prostate cancer. And you can’t just do this in any old power reactor — some research reactors around the world make medical isotopes, but they can’t make the quantities that we can with our CANDUs. So a Canadian nuclear plant is not only pumping out clean electricity and fighting the climate crisis but is also making our air clean and extending my father’s life through this isotope treatment. 

How is Canadians for Nuclear Energy changing the conversation surrounding nuclear?

Canadians for Nuclear Energy is a non-profit, completely independent from the nuclear industry, so we’re able to communicate in a much bolder manner than industry folks. We’ve been very politically active since our founding in 2020. We produced the detailed policy report, “Save Pickering,” which was so influential in the Ontario government’s decision to extend the life of the Pickering nuclear station. This decision will keep five million tonnes of CO2 out of the atmosphere and safeguard our air quality from the smog produced by natural gas plants. 

We’ve started several House of Commons petitions which required formal written government responses. Our activism around Canada’s Green Bond Framework, which excludes nuclear from green financing alongside sin stocks like tobacco, firearms, and gambling, led to the federal government including nuclear within the mandate of the Canada Infrastructure Bank and additional funding to the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission to speed up the regulatory frameworks for Small Modular Reactors. So our efforts have been incredibly impactful, and we are just getting started! American anthropologist Margaret Mead said, “Never doubt that a small group of committed individuals can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”