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Canada to focus on small modular reactors
With focus on new nuclear age, looking at installation in Ontario; also in discussions with France on European small reactor model Gary Park for Petroleum News
Shunned for years by the world's environmental elites, Canda has decided the time has come to assert its role as a nuclear power by promoting its homegrown reactor technology.
Taking the stage at the World Nuclear Exhibition in late November, an event called the sector's Super Bowl, Canada was joined by Ontario Power Generation, OPG, the world's largest owner and operator of Candu reactors, announcing it had entered discussions with Electricite de France to explore the possibility of building a European model of the Candu known as the EPR. The objective is development of a new age of nuclear power, one that supplants coal, oil and natural gas, but the partnership surfaced too late for COP28 to be included in the mix of energy solutions needed to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by mid-century.
Call for tripling of nuclear But the atom's role as a vital ingredient in the quest for a net-zero world came close to receiving a major boost in the final days of COP28 when 22 countries, including Canada, called for a tripling of global nuclear power capacity by 2050.
"We've seen this incredible shift from ideology around technology to pragmatism," said Canadian Nuclear Association President John Gorman.
The pro-nuclear advance at COP28 was led by French President Emmauel Macron, who told delegates that "no credible strategy neither nationally nor globally allows for exiting fossil fuels based only on renewable energy," he said, echoing the thoughts of U.S. climate envoy John Kerry.
Small nuclear reactors Canada is at the front of the pack developing small modular reactors, with OPG joined by uranium and oil-rich provinces Alberta and Saskatchewan planning to install North America's first small modular reactors, SMRs, at the Darlington nuclear facility in Ontario.
OPG already has an agreement, signed in November with provincially owned Saskatchewan Power, to buy factory assembled SMRs with generating capacity of about 30 megawatts.
That move qualifies nuclear power projects for federal clean-energy investment tax credits. Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland announced in her fall economic statement that the federal green bond framework would be updated this year to pave the way for proceeds from sustainable finance bonds to be invested in new reactors.
Meanwhile OPG has entered discussions with Electricite de France to explore the possibility of building a European model of the small reactor.
Ken Hartwick, OPG's CEO, said earlier this year that his utility, while it "loves the Candu" technology, believes it "has not kept up to date" to the extent that Canada's once-vaunted reactor technology has not found a single paying customer in more than 20 years. "Some observers say it may be too late to reverse the situation. If they're right it may be that our technology has reached the end of the road." he said.
Canada's International Trade and Economic Development Minister Mary Ng said her government is now willing to work with France on processing, treating, recycling and disposing of nuclear waste as the two countries work together across the nuclear supply chain.
The development of SMR technology is part of the drive for decarbonization, Ng said, although she did not give a timetable for developing SMR technology.
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