Development of new autonomous analytical tools to track the environmental impact of SMR in remote regions

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There have been significant efforts deployed in Canada and worldwide in envisioning strategies to produce electricity from portable and small modular nuclear reactors (SMR) as one of the alternatives to reduce carbon emissions. Such strategies would be particularly beneficial in remote and rural regions that still actively rely on diesel, natural gas and heavy fuel oil to generate off-grid electricity. Yet, installing SMR in such remote locations poses technical and scientific challenges for several reasons. As for any project that could impact its surrounding environment, social acceptance of SMR projects in rural and remote population will be based, amongst other things, on the assurance, for local communities, that such projects have 1) limited environmental impacts, 2) proper monitoring programs, 3) mandatory tools are available and deployed in the areas surrounding the nuclear installations, and 4) results are promptly reported to local communities.For this project, we are proposing to develop monitoring platforms for two sentinel species (uranium and its isotopic signature, beryllium) that are relevant to SMR in terms of novel fuels and primary coolant, respectively. Monitoring platforms based on magnetic extraction coupled to Photon - Electron - Rejecting - Alpha Liquid Scintillation (PERALS) and fluorescent capture probe are expected to yield efficient and field-deployable units able to autonomously report sentinel species concentration at the environmental level.This project would benefit both regulators (providing real-time and reliable data from remote sites for two sentinel species as well as data for post-explotation site remediation) and concerned citizens/communities (monitoring both natural and anthropogenic sources in the environment, prior, during and following the exploitation of SMR on their territories).