SOVEREIGNTY AND SELF-SUFFICIENCY UNDER ATTACK. DISPELLING THE SACRILEGIOUS NET ZERO MYTHS.

Joseph Fournier, Ph.D. Chemical Physicist, former Alberta oil sands research scientist. Andrew Nellestyn, Ph.D. Nuclear Engineer, former Executive Vice President Atomic Energy Canada Limited (AECL).

We are sick and tired of being told that math is racist and that it is immoral to use our natural resources to power our every day lives. If you are like us and wish to see a return to energy and climate realism in Canadian public policy, this article is written for you.

Here in this article, we dare to declare the seven central tenants of our energy-climate thesis, which we believe represent fundamental self-evident truths supported by history and science.

1. Energy Use & Human Progress

Number One: We reject the ideology of energy efficiency and conservation as substitutes for expanding the per capita supply of affordable and readily accessible primary energy. Instead, we must massively expand supply and incentivize per capita energy consumption as the path to elevated productivity and to ending energy poverty.

History is rife with evidence showing that there is a rapid rise in human happiness and overall well-being as per capita consumption rate of energy increases. Just a few examples of these simple facts from history are as follows:

• Life expectancies increase and infant mortalities decrease as per capita energy use increases.

• 10 to 15 calories of energy is used for every calorie consumed in modern non-agrarian societies.

• Achieving optimal states of air quality and sanitation in modern societies is very energy intensive.

• Canadians consumption of primary energy per capita is one of the highest in the World. Our cold climate, large landmass, agricultural and energy industries all act to drive our energy use to the high end of the per capita consumption distribution curve.

Forward looking, we can expect per capita energy consumption rates to increase. Here are but a few examples of factors that will be require a massive expansion of the supply of affordable sustainable energy:

• The Fourth Industrial Revolution or the rapid growth of digital economies.

• The Space Age (e.g., Space X) is upon us and the long term survival of our species and sustainability of natural resources on planet Earth require that we colonize the Solar System.

• Adaptation to future warming or cooling climate changes.

• Terraforming global deserts (e.g., Saudi Arabia) and massive expansions in desalination and potable water production capacity.

The over emphasis on energy efficiency and conservation results in higher rates of non-renewable material use (e.g., critical INPUTS) that are in limited supply relative to primary energy sources such as uranium, coal and natural gas. They are by their very nature inflationary as they promote artificial scarcity.

2. Energy Conversion Technology Sovereignty

Number Two: Energy conversion technology sovereignty as a national security strategy must become a NATIONAL goal in Canada. SINE QUA NON, participatory democracy must prevail.

Historically, Canada’s massive 20 year apolitical, national investment (1945 to 1965) in developing its CANDU nuclear power generation technology base at Chalk River and at Douglas Point Ontario was in large part influenced by the recognition that Ontario’s coal resource was rapidly depleting.

Energy sovereignty over emissions was the overriding consideration. Today, 60% of Ontario’s power comes from its fleet of 19 large CANDU reactors and its supply chain is entirely contained within Canada.

Historically, CANDU technology has afforded Canada substantial geopolitical leverage in international relations.

Presently, there are numerous advanced nuclear energy start-ups in Canada that are working to commercialize small to micro modular reactor (SMR / MMR) technologies with applications extending well beyond power generation.

We only need the political will power.

In view of the fact that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) utterly dominates the global wind, solar and net-zero critical minerals supply chain, I argue that these technologies are a Trojan Horse for their ultimate geopolitical objectives.

With the increasing prospects of military conflict with the CCP in the Indo-Pacific region and the existential threat imposed on Canadians by their reported encroachment on our electoral sovereignty, we must reject any further dependence on the CCP in the space of power generation.

Our grid is our life support system.

3. Canada’s Primary Energy Resources

Number Three: All Canadians have a fundamental right and obligation to utilize the massive primary energy potential contained within Canada’s uranium and hydrocarbon resource base.

Canada’s yet to be fully quantified hydrocarbon resource within the Grosmont, Athabasca, Grand Rapids, Duvernay, Montney, Mackenzie River Delta, Horn River and Bakken geological formations represents centuries of production potential at current rates of exploitation or in excess of 2.2 trillion barrels of oil and over 1,700 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

While Canada has currently turned its back, save for export, on its massive 200 to 2,000 billion tonne coal resource, it is important to highlight that this energy resource represents the equivalent energy base of its entire oil and gas sector.

The uncertainty represents the fact that historically, resource estimates often scales with exploration, which is still in its early stages.

Additionally, Canada’s uranium resource is currently estimated at 580,000 tonnes, which is largely contained within Saskatchewan and is the second largest in the World. At current rates of production and resource utilization, this primary energy resource will be depleted within 50 to 75 years.

4. Intelligent Uranium Resource Utilization

Number Four: Canada must move past its current archaic one-through fuel cycle and deep geological repository (DGR) design philosophy and embrace a closed fuel cycle fuel cycle as part of its long term uranium resource management plan.

With only 50 to 75 years of production left in Canada’s high grade uranium reserves, it is crucial that its once-through fuel cycle technology gives way to a closed fuel cycle based on the combined use of conventional CANDU reactors, fast breeder reactors and spent fuel reprocessing technologies. Ultimately, a closed fuel cycle produces a much lower radio-toxicity waste stream than a once-through cycles, by eliminating trans-uranic (TRU) elements in waste materials and by using them as integral ingredients in engineered nuclear fuels.

Canada’s current uranium resource utilization strategy is based upon a mere 1 weight % conversion of the inherent fuel potential in the unenriched uranium fuel passing once-through a CANDU reactor. After which, this barely utilized fuel is set aside for eventual long term storage in a DGR.

After 30 years of stakeholder engagement, no long term storage site has been built and it is estimated that a DGR will cost rate payers over $10 billion.

Canada must reject the DGR concept by developing a closed fuel cycle.

A closed uranium fuel cycle will expand the long term energy potential of our conventional uranium resource by factors of 10 to 100. Russia, India, France and Japan are rapidly advancing this technological capability.

Fission by-products from closed fuel cycles could potentially be stored in simple low cost Class C waste facilities that will have a radiological signature on par with background in a couple of centuries versus a few hundred thousand years with once-through fuel cycle waste.

Do Canadians spend $10 billion on a DGR, or $10 billion on a the technology mix required to recycle / repurpose partially spent fuel for reuse in our nuclear fleet? If the latter approach expands our 50 to 75 year uranium resource into a +1,000 year supply of energy, the answer is straight forward.

Note that at current rates of global energy consumption, conventional and unconventional reserves of uranium represent a near limitless source of primary energy.

5. Advanced Nuclear Will Make Hydrocarbons Limitless

Number Five: Advanced nuclear technologies will allow the economic production of synthetic fuels from the uranium, carbon and hydrogen contained in sea water.

Hydrocarbons are so critical as building blocks of modern life, that if they did not exist, we would have to invent them. As global hydrocarbon resources are eventually depleted, sometime over the next few centuries, humanity must replace them with synthetic analogs. This is where nuclear energy technologies comes into play, by converting energy stored within the nucleus into energy stored in chemical bonds.

There is 1,000x more uranium dissolved in sea water than in known geological reserves on land and the oceans contain 50x more dissolve inorganic carbon than the atmosphere. Therefore, it is correct to say that synthetic Sea-Fuels are our ultimate collective future.

It only requires engineering innovation to economically harvest and refine this potential energy, carbon and hydrogen from sea water to create a near infinite synthetic hydrocarbon resource base.

The scientific know-how exists and is historically been called Fischer-Tropsch fuels.

Imagine a future, where large ocean going nuclear powered refineries produce all our hydrocarbon feed-stock for fuels and plastics. Thus, Sea-Fuel represents a scalable and a truly circular economy concept, with minimal environmental impact.

6. Maintaining Legacy Hydroelectric Facilities

Number Six: With so many Canadian communities living within historic flood plains downstream of legacy hydroelectric facilities, it is crucial that these structures be maintained through sustained capital reinvestment, such that they continue to protect against large flood events, while continuing to provide base-load power for generations to come.

We wish to impress Canadians with the idea that with effective management, the ultimate lifespan of Canada’s World-class 80 GW hydroelectric fleet can be on on the order of centuries. Best practices suggests that power generation systems (electrical) require replacement every 40 to 50 years and concrete surfaces (civil) commonly require reworking, every 80 to 100 years. The keystone of effective management is sustaining capital reinvestment in both civil workings and electrical systems.

It is critical that Canadians understand that 70% and 15% of Canada’s hydroelectric fleet is over 60 and 100 years of age, respectively.

Ottawa Ontario’s Chaudière Dam and Generating Station (above) is a prime example of the dual role played by so many large Canadian hydroelectric facilities.

While refurbishment efforts have begun over the past 15 years, its rate does not match the pace by which the nation wide fleet is aging. The perception is that there is a power supply and inflation risk emerging unless the pace of reinvestment in Canada’s rapidly aging hydroelectric plants is quickened.

The absolute cost to fully renew the national fleet, of which 50% is located in Quebec, ranges between $33 billion to $219 billion. This estimate is based on press release data of the approximately 10,000 MW of refurbishment investments announced by the hydro sector in Canada over the past 15 years. The uncertainty is suggested to reflect the variability from facility-to-facility in the scope of upgrading work focused on power systems versus structural workings, where the latter has a higher specific cost.

Federal legislators must focus on making legacy hydroelectric refurbishment a higher public objective than Net Zero 2050 and that they focus on changing incentive frameworks to favor reinvestment in renewal, reliability and long term affordability of Canada’s existing hydro capacity over low CO₂ emission generation expansion.

7. Planning for Climate Change

Number Seven: With ever increasing evidence that climatic changes, past and present, are largely due to natural processes, our best strategy is to invest in adaptation as a long term strategy.

Approximately 1,000 years ago, stream-flow of the North Saskatchewan river was greatly reduced relative to the last century and was quite possibly a seasonal event. Winters were warmer and a near perennial state of drought existed over much of western North America and the Prairies were much more arid. Then the Little Ice Age developed in Western Canada and while the regional environment has warmed over the past couple of centuries, eastward streamflow out of the Rocky Mountains remains a near perennial state.

The recent snow drought in the Rocky Mountains, together with last year’s near potential state of emergency being declared on water supply in Alberta, it is obvious that our existence is precarious in view of our ever changing climate. Imagine a scenario, where the modern warming trend continues and regional water supply in the Canadian Prairie region becomes similar to that seen in Utah as it was 1,000 years ago during the Medieval Warm Period.

With the Canadian Prairie region’s rapid population growth, a long term strategy on water supply should include a serious consideration of diverting fresh water from Great Slave Lake and Lesser Slave Lake to South - Central Alberta and Saskatchewan. Thus, we advocate that adaptation to climatic changes becomes the focus and that all wasteful futile efforts to control the climate stop.

Conclusion

Our hope is that this simple act of defiance and alternative vision of our collective energy future will serve to catalyze a reformation on matters relating to energy and climate policy. We must reject the underlying thesis of Net-Zero as the lever by which Homo Sapien can control global weather patterns, for at its core is a dangerous naivety of the realities of high energy consumption per capita as the path to true societal progress.

In its place, we must embrace Energy Humanism as the anti-thesis of Net Zero.

These 6 precepts are our “95 Theses” and long term vision for energy policy.

Recall from history how the Protestant Reformation and Age of Enlightenment organically evolved following Martin Luther’s 95 theses that he published in defiance of the Holy Roman Catholic Church’s sale of Indulgences.

As Martin Luther rallied against the sale of indulgences as a false path to achieving a state of righteousness in the eyes of God, we reject the notion that carbon credits or climate taxes will green-wash our carbon sins or save us from the perils of climatic changes.

In summary, we must not and cannot permit mythical, unscrupulous net-zero energy policies to unduly and dangerously assault our national sovereignty, energy independence or impair our economic development and social well-being.

Nuclear energy and the technological evolution of advanced fuel cycles, as well as small mobile nuclear reactors balanced in concert with our other plentiful supply of natural energy sources will pave the way to responsibly and sustainably power Canada’s future for many centuries to come.