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Issue 4
SERVING THE ENERGY CITY SINCE 1903
Wednesday, May 22, 2019
www.estevanmercury.ca
Mailing No. 10769 | Publication No. 40069240
Equivalency agreement signed; Is nuclear power an option for will extend the life of two units Estevan? at Boundary Dam By David Willberg dwillberg@estevanmercury.ca
An equivalency agreement between the provincial and federal governments will extend the life of Units 4 and 5 at the Boundary Dam Power Station. Dustin Duncan, the minister of the Environment and also the minister responsible for SaskPower, confirmed in an interview with the Mercury on Friday that the pact has been signed. It was ratified by Catherine McKenna, the federal minister of the Environment and Climate Change, on May 2. Duncan followed suit the next day. He noted that before the agreement is official, the federal cabinet still has to pass an order in council, which is slated to occur in June, but Duncan said that would be “a formality.” Once that is taken care of, the equivalency agreement will come into effect. If the two sides didn’t reach an agreement, then Units 4 and 5 at Boundary Dam would have come offline at the end of this year. Instead, Unit 4 will be retired at the end of 2021, and Unit 5 will come
Units 4 and 5 at the Boundary Dam Power Station are expected to remain open beyond this year, now that an equivalency agreement has been signed by the provincial and federal governments. offline at the end of 2024. “It’s a big relief, just with a little more certainty that it gives the province and SaskPower, and certainly the affected employees, especially with Boundary Dam 4 and 5, and the associated mining jobs as well,” said Duncan. This agreement has been a long time coming, he said, and he’s pleased they have finally put pen to paper.
“The end of this year is not that far away, and we certainly were not planning to wind down the operations. It was certainly our intent to operate the units out for the next number of years,” said Duncan. The agreement calls for the federal government to recognize the provincially-passed coal-fired electricity regulations as being equivalent to
the federal regulations, based on outcomes. Over the next 11 years, there will be three different stages for emission regulations. The first will cover 2018 and 2019. The next will be from 2020-2024, and the third will be 2025-2029, which is when conventional coal-fired power plants will have to come offline. A2 » AGREEMENT
Meeting will look at the future of ECS The South East Cornerstone Public School Division will host a community open house May 28 to discuss the future of the Estevan Comprehensive School (ECS). Lynn Little, the director of education for the school division, said during the school board’s May 17 meeting that this meeting will provide the community with relevant information regarding the school’s condition and a review of its current situation, including its structure, as well as past and future capital projects that focus on the high school. ECS currently boasts roughly 800 students and 55 teachers, plus several dozen more support personnel. “This will be an open meeting for everyone in the community and nearby,” said board chairwoman Audrey Trombley. “Local organizations are invited to attend, to send representatives, as are all members of the community,”added Little.
The meeting will begin at 7 p.m. in the school’s cafetorium. Little said there will likely be a PowerPoint presentation by the school division, and then those in attendance will have ample opportunity to provide opinions regarding the future direction the community and the school division can take with the 50-year-old facility. It’s expected the meeting will last about 60-90 minutes. According to information from the school division, ECS’s current status indicates there is some significant unused space within the school that was originally designed and built to accommodate up to 1,200 students. The additional space had been used for several years to house the Estevan campus of the Southeast College but when the college moved into the Saskatchewan Energy Training Institute in 2012, that left additional space that has not been fully utilized. ECS has also been
IME T D E T I FOR A LIM
plagued by continuous roofing issues over the past number of years, but is still considered to be an architectural benefit for the community with its unique courtyard concept. Participants at the meeting will be invited to provide their thoughts on the future of the school, probably through open discussions and breakout groups. A special board committee consisting of Estevan trustees Jim Vermeersch and Shari Sutter, Subdivision 4 trustee Kevin Keating and several other school division representatives, was struck late last year and it is expected they will be gathering the relevant information from this open community session to later provide a list of recommendations that can be taken back to the board for future considerations and decisions. “The committee wished to begin the conversation as soon as possible to engage with the community. While this is a long-term conversation, it is
Lynn Little important to move forward,” Little said. The committee has primarily worked on building context and understanding of the current status and capital process for ECS. “It is our intent to share a summary of this information with the attendees,” Little said. Members of other schools have been invited to participate as they are all feeder schools to ECS thus Little said they have a vested interest in the programming at ECS both present and future.
The potential of having nuclear power in the Estevan area was broached during the final day of the spring sitting of the Saskatchewan legislature. The idea was discussed during question period Thursday, and in a scrum with the media later in the day. Premier Scott Moe said the government needs to invest in cleaner sources of power generation, while utilizing the assets in the province. “The conversations as we move forward will continue around how we can continue to provide affordable power for the industries and the people who live in this province, and also how can we continue to support those areas that are ultimately transitioning away from coal,” said Moe. The province is having discussions with Ontario and New Brunswick on small modular reactor (SMR) nuclear technology. “This is a time where we need to have all of these conversations, and is there potential for that type of power supply to operate here, not just in Canada, as we’re doing this with other provinces, but in the community of Estevan,” said Moe. The transmission line infrastructure is already in place in Estevan and Coronach. So SaskPower is embarking on a conversation, not just on nuclear and carbon capture and storage, but for other technologies. “The technology and innovation is moving forward across this nation and around the world,” said Moe. Retrofitting the power supply to have lower emissions is a major investment, Moe said. “We need to look at continued investment in our plants as (some of ) our coal-fired plants … reach their 50-year life span. We have the decisions around do we move forward with carbon capture and storage, or do we replace those with a small modular reactor, do we replace those with a natural gas facility?” While nuclear power was not popular the last time it was discussed in Saskatchewan, Moe said this is a new form of technology that is very different from conventional nuclear power. “They’re small, they’re stackable, and they’re safe, so we’re engaging in that discussion with a couple of other provinces … on is there an opportunity for this type of innovation to be used here in the province,” said Moe. It’s incumbent on Saskatchewan to have this conversation since the province has the uranium stocks. Dustin Duncan, who is the minister responsible for SaskPower, pointed out that the federal government previously asked interested parties, including power utilities, to work together to develop a road map for the development and deployment of small modular reactors in Canada. A report was written and issued back to the federal government. From there, they have kept in touch with New Brunswick and Ontario, and they have met with the Canadian Nuclear Association. “We’re looking at what role Saskatchewan might play in the development of SMRs over the next decade in Canada, and how that might apply to Saskatchewan in terms of is this a way to generate some of our power.” His understanding is the SMRs can be scaled up or down, but would generate a minimum of 60 megawatts of power. They are expandable and they can be moved. “It’s really a question of how much generation are you looking for, so basically from 60 megawatts up,” said Duncan. It’s too early to say how many jobs would be creating by the units. The Tennessee Valley Authority in the U.S. is the furthest along in North America when it comes to SMRs, and they’re in the midst of the regulatory process. It means the first SMR could be constructed in North America in the early 2020s. “It’s a lot sooner than I think people realize,” Duncan said. Duncan believes Estevan could be a location for this technology. The transmission assets are still in the Estevan area. “One of the benefits of SMRs versus other types of technology, including coal, is it made sense to build the coal-fired plants next to the coal mines. SMRs are different. They can be really built anywhere.”
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