By Samuel Buckstein

Nuclear power is experiencing a resurgence worldwide and Ontario is no exception. The province has a long history with this awesome and terrifying energy technology, and it is once again turning to nuclear power in response to concerns over national sovereignty, economic growth, electrification and decarbonization.

The persistent shortcomings of nuclear power

Finding pathways out of Ontario’s hydro and climate mess

Looking back over Ontario’s troubled history with nuclear energy, it is concerning to see the Ford government stumbling back to the bar for another round of nuclear cool-aid. Yet Ontario’s plan shows little evidence of having done its homework. Contrary to the government’s claims, it is fiscally irresponsible, incapable of delivering the energy the province needs in the time required, and compromises Ontario’s energy security.

When it should be investing in much cheaper and more easily deployed renewables, the province is recklessly doubling down on nuclear despite the evidence against it.

A legacy mired in debt

To understand Ontario’s nuclear trajectory, it is helpful to reflect on its origins. When civilian nuclear power was commercialized after the Second World War, its advocates promised it would be “too cheap to meter.” Buoyed by encouragement and financing from both provincial and federal governments, Ontario Hydro duly invested in a fleet of 20 CANDU reactors at three nuclear power stations over the course of 30 years.

By the turn of the millennium, Ontario Hydro’s nuclear obsession had saddled it with $38.1 billion in debt — $20.9 billion of it stranded (unsupported by assets). This burden was so immense that it toppled the once proud flagship Crown corporation. Ontarians continue to pay for this nuclear hangover today. As of March 2023, ratepayers were still on the hook for $13.8 billion.

Even as late as 1989, with Ontario Hydro already buckling under its crushing debt, the utility was forecasting the need for 10 to 15 new reactors by 2014. Reality proved otherwise, with peak electricity demand in 2014 lower than it had been 25 years earlier.

After a generation of staggering cost overruns and catastrophic international incidents at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima, nuclear power fell out of favour in much of the developed world. Cheaper, more flexible and faster-to-deploy alternatives took its place, first gas and then renewables.

Today, China is the only country in the world that can bring three to four new reactors online every year while steadily improving cost efficiency and construction timelines. China is also installing nearly 100 times more renewable capacity annually, accounting for more than half the world’s newly added generation.

Lessons from the U.K. and Ukraine

However, Ontario should learn from the United Kingdom, not authoritarian China. The experience of Hinkley Point C, the first new nuclear power plant to be built in the U.K. in more than 20 years, should be a cautionary tale.

At least five years behind schedule and two times over budget, Hinkley Point C will likely be the most expensive nuclear power plant yet. The electricity generated by this colossal waste of rate-payer dollars will cost between two to four times more than renewable energy, which can be brought online in half the time. This is what the provincial government has in store for Ontario.

The scale of Ontario’s plan is immense. In addition to the CANDU refurbishments at Darlington and Bruce, Ontario has announced the refurbishment of Pickering B, one of the oldest and most urban nuclear power stations in the world.

Canada needs to accelerate its transition to renewable energy

Focus on renewables, not nuclear, to fuel Canada’s electric needs

Sovereignty concerns

Ontario has also contracted with GE Vernova Hitachi to build up to four small modular reactors (SMRs) at the Darlington site. It is unclear why the government has committed to building four SMRs before even the first is constructed. The greater concern with this arrangement is GE Vernova Hitachi is a U.S.-controlled company and the fuel supply chain is in the U.S. and France, not Canada.

To understand how fragile such a dependency can become, consider the situation facing Ukraine and its Soviet-built RMBK reactors. After Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea and Donbas in 2014, Ukraine found itself dependent on its aggressor to fuel the reactors. At the time, nuclear power generated approximately half of Ukraine’s pre-war electricity, similar to the proportion of Ontario’s reliance on nuclear energy. Ukrainians are now facing severe energy insecurity, with freezing temperatures and blackouts.

As if this were not concerning enough, Ontarians are subsidizing the first commercial demonstration of an unproven foreign nuclear technology while the government continues to naively claim Ontario will remain the industrial base from which the U.S.-controlled company will scale. Given the trade policies of the current U.S. government, not least of all its efforts to gut Ontario’s auto sector, it is hard not to see this belief as a fool’s hope.

No price tag and no certainty it will pay

Despite these red flags, Ontario’s nuclear ambitions do not stop there. The government is also considering building two new large nuclear power stations at the Bruce site and at a new location near Port Hope. This despite the fact that, like the U.K., the domestic nuclear supply chain has all but vanished. This is precisely the kind of multi-billion-dollar, multi-decade infrastructure lock-in that bankrupted Ontario Hydro.

The government has been silent on how much this plan will cost. No one can predict whether demand will materialize to justify this massive supply expansion, or what electricity prices will be when these reactors finally come online. Committing to decades of investment in such an uncertain environment is sheer folly.

To top it all off, nuclear power is not even operationally flexible. Generation cannot be adjusted rapidly enough to follow demand, and the reactors can only be quickly turned off, but not back on again (it took Ontario more than a day to restore power after the 2003 Great Northeastern Blackout due to neutron poisoning in the reactors).

Renewable options

It does not have to be this way. Much has changed since the last wave of nuclear infatuation. Renewables are now the cheapest source of energy on a levelized basis. While renewables may be intermittent, they are reasonably predictable, and for the first time since the inception of the electricity industry, generation no longer needs to coincide perfectly with consumption. Rapidly falling battery costs have made energy storage a commercially viable reality.

It is true that China currently dominates the supply chains for solar, wind and batteries, but once the equipment is installed it is virtually impervious to foreign interference. Unlike the supply of nuclear fuel, the sun shines everywhere.

Ontario and Canada should be collaborating with other democratic allies to reduce dependence on Chinese suppliers. In the meantime, the fact remains that unsubsidized renewables and batteries outperform nuclear and gas on cost and deployment time. Sadly, instead of embracing this more affordable and distributed future, the provincial government remains stuck in an inflexible and fiscally reckless past.

Nuclear power can provide energy security, but only if it is supported and fuelled by a domestic supply chain, like the original CANDUs. Its unmatched energy density makes sense where land is scarce, but that is hardly the case in Ontario. It may even be a defensible form of industrial policy if you believe in that kind of state interventionism. But above all else, nuclear power is neither nimble nor affordable (outside China) and it’s about time the Ontario government stopped posturing otherwise.

More Policy Options articles on nuclear power:

• Ontario’s nuclear option is the wrong path to meet green energy targets
• Canada’s newest nuclear industry dream is a potential nightmare

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By Mitchell Beer

The federal and Ontario governments have announced a combined $3 billion in new subsidies to support small modular nuclear reactor (SMR) development at the Darlington generating station east of Toronto.

Ottawa will hand over $2 billion to the project via the Canada Growth Fund, while Ontario will come up with the other $1 billion through the Building Ontario Fund.

The Darlington SMR was one of the five major “nation-building” projects on the initial priority list the federal government released in mid-September.

“This is a generational investment that will build lasting security, prosperity, and opportunities,” Prime Minister Mark Carney said in a Thursday morning release. “We’re building big things to build Canada Strong.”

“As we navigate tariffs and global volatility, it’s never been more important to create a more competitive, more resilient and self-reliant province that can withstand whatever comes our way,” said Ontario Finance Minister Peter Bethlenfalvy. “We are investing in this nation-building project that will secure the clean, reliable energy our growing province needs while creating thousands of good-paying jobs for Ontario workers.”

In May, the Globe and Mail priced the first 300-mewgawatt SMR at Darlington at $7.7 billion and the entire project at close to $21 billion, “which independent observers say is higher than necessary to spark widespread adoption.”

The Globe referred back to that history in its coverage of Thursday’s announcement.

“Nuclear reactors have a long record of blowing budgets and taking far longer to construct than promised,” the Globe wrote. “The Darlington SMR, which was originally planned for completion in 2028, has already suffered delays because regulatory approvals from the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission arrived later than [Ontario Power Generation] expected.”

On Thursday, Carney “decried regulatory delays and said the Major Projects Office will ‘fast track’ approvals,” the news story adds.

In May, the Globe said the Darlington project was being “watched closely by utilities around the world,” with potential for follow-on business development in the United States, Britain, Poland, Estonia, and elsewhere. But the estimated cost of the project was “higher than what independent observers argue are necessary to attract many more orders. For comparison, a recently completed 377-megawatt natural gas-fired power station in Saskatchewan cost $825-million.”

Ed Lyman, director of nuclear power safety at the Cambridge, MA-based Union of Concerned Scientists, called the Ontario estimate “an eye-popping figure, but not unexpected given what we know about the poor economics of small nuclear reactors.” That would make the Darlington SMR facility “a boutique unit that’s going to produce electricity for a very expensive price.”

An independent study released in May by the Ontario Clean Air Alliance found that the Darlington SMRs will cost up to eight times as much as onshore wind, almost six times as much as utility-scale solar, and 2.7 times as much offshore wind in the Great Lakes after factoring in federal tax credits.

“It remains unclear how this, and the province’s larger nuclear expansion program, will actually be paid for,” Mark Winfield, co-chair of York University’s Sustainable Energy Initiative, told The Energy Mix at the time. “Putting this on the rate base means higher rates for Ontario electricity consumers, even if the costs are as claimed.”

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By The Energy Mix staff

Although global nuclear generating capacity grew 2.9 per cent to a record 2,663 terawatt-hours (TWh) in 2024, the industry won’t likely be able to sustain that growth in the face of limited investment, aging power plants, continuing project delays, and overwhelming competition from cleaner, more affordable renewable energy, a leading industry analyst concluded this week.

The nuclear industry struggled for real relevance in 2024, with just seven new reactors brought online and four shut down, while solar alone added hundreds of gigawatts of new capacity, Mycle Schneider writes [pdf], in the latest edition of his annual World Nuclear Industry Status Report (WNISR). Energy storage “passed a trigger point,” there are first signs of “a revolution behind the meter,” and low-income countries are starting to leapfrog to renewables.

“Risks around aging fleets, sluggish construction, accelerating system disruption from renewable energy, and China-centred development are expected to impact growth and lead to declines in regional electricity production shares,” Reuters states, citing the report. “To keep global nuclear output steady through 2030 the world would need 44 additional startups beyond those already scheduled, lifting annual startups to roughly 2½ times the past decade’s pace.” [Assuming, against a great deal of history, that a nuclear project scheduled today could begin generating power in just five years—Ed.]

That won’t be easy, with more than one-third of the world’s 63 nuclear construction projects behind schedule, 14 of them reporting increased delays. Meanwhile, “competition from cheaper non-hydro renewables and battery storage is expected to have a broad impact, as investment in renewables was 21 times that of nuclear last year, while added capacity was more than 100 times net nuclear additions,” Reuters says. “Battery costs are also falling, down about 40 per cent in 2024, while nuclear plant costs continue to rise.”

Most of the nuclear growth is in China, the WNISR data show, where capacity grew by 3.5 gigawatts in 2024 while solar added 278 GW. “Between 2005 and 2024, there were 104 startups and 101 closures,” the report states. “Of these, 51 startups and none of the closures were in China. Thus, outside China, there has been a net decline by 48 units over the same period.”

The report warns that it will be increasingly difficult for nuclear to break into a global energy system dominated by renewables. “New energy technologies disrupt markets and systems,” it explains. “Photovoltaics directly produces electricity from solar radiation in harmless, nanometer-thin semiconductor junctions, allowing for ongoing steep cost reductions and performance increases. This is complemented by similar advances in power electronics and batteries. Together, these new technologies are evolving towards a highly flexible, fully electrified energy system with a decentralized control logic, outcompeting traditional centralized fossil and nuclear systems.”

Nuclear energy, it adds, “increasingly has difficulties to survive in this context.”

“The continuous disconnect between public narrative and industrial reality remains very worrying,” Schneider told PV Magazine.

“It is startling to see the breathtaking speed of the transformation of the world’s power systems,” he added. “While the nuclear industry proudly announces—correctly—a new record of nuclear power generation, the event is insignificant in the system context.” The 14 TWh of output the industry added this year broke an 18-year record, but it was only the equivalent of a single large reactor, “or what UK offshore wind turbines generated in the fourth quarter of 2024.”

Outside China, the report states, “nuclear generation in 2024 remained 363 TWh below the 2006 level, an almost 14 per cent plunge.”

Despite the incremental growth in nuclear output worldwide, the industry is still mired at 9 per cent of the global electricity mix, its lowest value in four decades, down from 17.5 per cent in 1996. That share “is likely to erode further…unless project delivery and economics improve markedly,” Reuters writes. The world’s nuclear fleet is also aging—around two-thirds of reactors have been in operation for more than 31 years, and their average age increased slightly from 32 to 32.4 years between mid-2024 and mid-2025, another measure of the small number of new projects going online.

And so far, very few of those projects are the small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs) that have captured the imagination of politicians and pundits in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, and beyond. China is the only country with two designs in operation or built, with limited operational data available. Elsewhere, they “remain largely aspirational, as despite rising public and private funding, no Western SMR construction has begun,” Reuters says.

In September 2020, with nuclear already losing ground to affordable renewables, Schneider tagged SMRs as “PowerPoint reactors, not detailed engineering, and it’s not the first time. They’ve been doing this for decades.”

“Nobody, not even industry, pretends they can produce anything before 2030. That’s the earliest,” he told The Energy Mix at the time. So “it’s already very simple—it’s much too late, and we don’t know if it’ll work or what it’ll cost.”

Only 11 countries hosted nuclear construction projects in mid-2025—two fewer than in mid-2024, and five fewer than in mid-2023—and companies controlled by the Chinese and Russian governments accounted for 44 of 45 of the world’s reactor construction starts between January 2020 and mid-2025, the WNISR states. China accounted for seven of the nine construction starts in 2024. Russia “continues its key role” as a supplier of uranium fuel for its own reactors, and as a provider of parts and service to western nuclear companies, while the Zaporizhzhia site in Ukraine, Europe’s largest, is a “constant cause of concern” due to the continuing occupation by Russian troops.

The nuclear industry may also be running out of the uranium fuel it relies on to run its reactors. Earlier this month, the World Nuclear Association warned that supplies will be tight if the industry ramps up, with existing mines expected to halve their output between 2030 and 2040. The “significant gap” between demand and supply projections would threaten an awaited nuclear power “renaissance,” the Financial Times wrote (although this week’s analysis would appear to solve that problem).

The WNISR also reports that:

• The total of 408 nuclear reactors in operation in mid-2025 was unchanged from the previous year, down 30 from the industry’s peak in 2002.

• Russia dominates the international market for nuclear reactor construction projects, with 20 under way in seven countries. While multiple countries have announced plans to build their first nuclear reactors, only Bangladesh, Egypt, and Türkiye have started construction, all with Russian designs.

• In France, the Flamanville nuclear plant finally went online, 12 years late and at a cost of US$25.6 billion, “a staggering sixfold increase over the original $4.3 billion estimate.”

• At the site of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan, “onsite and offsite challenges remain overwhelming, with an initial removal of fuel debris amounting to around a billionth of the total,” the WNISR states. “A focus on food safety monitoring finds an opaque system that makes it challenging for the government to convince observers it has control over the situation.”

• Of the 218 nuclear reactors that have been shut down worldwide, only 23 have been fully decontaminated, and only nine of been released by regulators and declared safe.

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By Slade Johnson

Five countries account for more than two-thirds of the world’s total nuclear electricity generation capacity. The United States has the most capacity, followed by France, China, Russia, and South Korea, based on International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) data as of June 2025. Globally, 416 nuclear power reactors are operating in 31 countries, with a total installed net generating capacity of 376 gigawatts (GW).

The development of nuclear power plants for commercial electricity generation began in the United States in the late 1950s with the commissioning of the Shippingport Atomic Power Station in Pennsylvania. Most of the operating U.S. nuclear generating capacity was constructed between 1967 and 1990.

Electric utilities in the United States currently operate 94 nuclear reactors, and the country is the world’s largest producer of nuclear electricity. Domestically, nuclear electricity accounted for 782 gigawatthours (GWh), or 19 per cent of U.S. electricity generation, in 2024. U.S. nuclear electricity accounted for 30 per cent of the global total in 2023. The U.S. nuclear reactor fleet operates at a comparatively high capacity factor (92 per cent in 2024) because of increased utility efficiency in managing planned and unplanned generation outages.

France maintains the second-largest nuclear reactor fleet in the world and the largest nuclear reactor fleet in Europe with 57 reactors with a total installed generating capacity of 63 GW. Nuclear reactors in France generated over 320 GWh of electricity in 2023, which was nearly 65 per cent of the country’s total electricity generation. Following the global oil crisis of the early 1970s, developers built 52 nuclear reactors in France between 1975 and 1990 in order to strengthen its energy security.

China has the fastest nuclear growth rate in the world with 57 reactors commissioned since 1991. Another 28 reactors with a combined capacity of 30 GW are currently under construction, according to IAEA data. Once completed, China’s total installed nuclear capacity would surpass that of France. China’s operating reactors produced over 433 GWh in 2023, or 5 per cent of China’s total electricity generation. China has acquired nuclear electricity technology from other countries such as France, Canada, and Russia. Recently, China adapted the U.S. company Westinghouse’s AP1000 reactor design into its CAP1000 design.

Russia operates 36 nuclear reactors with a total installed generating capacity of 27 GW; another 4 units totaling 4 GW are under construction. Rosatom, Russia’s state-owned nuclear energy corporation, is updating the country’s reactor fleet from the smaller, light-water graphite-cooled RBMK units to the larger and more efficient light-water only VVER-1000 and VVER-1200. Russia is currently the world’s largest vendor of nuclear generating technology.

South Korea’s energy policy is driven by energy security considerations and the desire to minimize dependence on imported fossil fuels. South Korea started developing its nuclear power program in the 1970s and currently operates 26 reactors with another 2 reactors under construction. South Korea’s state-backed Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power is an international nuclear vendor; it built the United Arab Emirates’ Barakah power plant and will be the vendor for the Dukovany power plant expansion in the Czech Republic.

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By Katherine Antonio, Slade Johnson

In 2024, France increased its cross-border electricity deliveries by 48 per cent, from 70 terawatthours (TWh) in 2023 to 103 TWh in 2024. France’s electricity exports to Belgium and Germany increased the most, but France also exported more electricity to Spain, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and Italy, according to data from the European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity. Within France’s electricity generation mix, nuclear energy increased the most, followed by hydropower.

Overall, electricity generation in France increased by 45 TWh in 2024, while consumption remained relatively steady. Nuclear energy generation increased the most, followed by hydropower, while wind and natural gas-fired generation decreased.

The rise in French electricity generation reduced the country’s need for gross electricity imports, which fell by 50 per cent in 2024. Among the six countries France imported electricity from in both 2023 and 2024, Spain was the largest source of electricity in both years. However, with France’s increased electricity generation and exports, Spain became a net importer of electricity from France, meaning it imported more electricity from France than they exported to France, similar to the other five countries that trade electricity with France.

Nuclear power is France’s leading source of electricity, accounting for nearly 65 per cent of total electricity production in 2024, according to France’s Energy Regulatory Commission. France currently operates 57 nuclear reactors, the largest reactor fleet in Europe. Nuclear generation increased from 320 TWh in 2023 to 361 TWh in 2024, despite no change in installed nuclear capacity until Flamanville Unit 3 was added in December 2024, bringing nuclear generation more in line with historic output, according to data from nuclear operator EDF.

Nuclear power increased in 2024 as EDF addressed corrosion issues that affected nuclear generation beginning in 2021 and implemented a program designed to make maintenance outages at its reactors more efficient. The French government continues to consider nuclear power as part of its strategy to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050, which involves integrating nuclear power alongside renewable electricity technologies.

The second-largest source of power generation in France is hydropower, which increased from 58 TWh in 2023 to 75 TWh in 2024. By comparison, electricity generation from fossil sources decreased, from 32 TWh to 20 TWh. Wind power decreased from 51 TWh to 47 TWh.

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By Slade Johnson

In 2024, U.S. utilities operated 94 nuclear reactors with a total net generating capacity of nearly 97 gigawatts (GW), the largest commercial nuclear power generation fleet in the world. The next three countries with the largest programs were France with 57 units (63.0 GW), China with 57 units (55.3 GW), and Russia with 36 units (28.6 GW). Nuclear power continues to account for 19 per cent of U.S. power sector electricity generation.

America’s nuclear reactor fleet consists of 54 power plants, each of which has one to four operating units. Plant Vogtle in Georgia is the largest nuclear power plant with four reactors and a total generating capacity of around 4.5 GW. The R.E. Ginna plant in New York is the smallest nuclear power plant with its one 0.6-GW reactor.

After Georgia Power added one reactor in 2023 and another in 2024, Plant Vogtle became the largest U.S. nuclear power plant, with Units 3 and 4 each having a generating capacity of 1.1 GW. Before the recent addition of the reactors at Vogtle, the Palo Verde plant (3.9 GW) in Arizona was the largest nuclear facility in the United States. The two reactors at Vogtle and one reactor at Watts Bar in Tennessee are the only new nuclear reactors to come online in the United States since 1996.

Twelve U.S. nuclear power reactors have permanently closed since 2013. However, plant operators have maintained consistently high annual capacity factors, which measure how much time units are operating. U.S. nuclear capacity factors have increased in part because of shorter refueling and maintenance outages and improved operational experience.

Some newer policies aim to support continued operations at nuclear power plants. In January 2024, the U.S. Department of Energy provided credits to support the continued operation of the Diablo Canyon Power Plant in California. In 2024, the electricity produced at Diablo Canyon (2.2 GW) accounted for 9 per cent of California’s total electricity generation. More recently, the U.S. Department of Energy approved a loan to support restarting the Palisades nuclear power plant in Michigan. If realized, Palisades would become the first previously retired nuclear power plant in the United States to return to operating status.

Our Electric Power Monthly and Electric Power Annual products compile data from multiple electricity surveys of nuclear power and other electricity generation sources in the United States. Our Hourly Electric Grid Monitor provides near real-time information on the operating status of the grid in the Lower 48 states, and our Status of U.S. Nuclear Outages dashboard compiles daily information on nuclear plants’ operating status based on data reported to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Our Preliminary Monthly Electric Generator Inventory compiles detailed information on attributes of operating, planned, and retired utility-scale generators.

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Written by Slade Johnson

Data visualization by Kristen Tsai

In 2023, U.S. nuclear generators used 32 million pounds of imported uranium concentrate (U₃O₈) and only 0.05 million pounds of domestically produced U₃O₈. Imports accounted for 99 per cent of the U₃O₈ they used in 2023 to make nuclear fuel. Foreign producers predominantly supply the U.S. front-end nuclear fuel cycle, but federal policies have been implemented recently to build out the domestic U.S. nuclear fuel supply chain. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) recently received $2.7 billion in congressional funding to help revive domestic fuel production for commercial nuclear power plants.

U₃O₈ is chemically extracted from uranium ore that has been mined and milled. The fine powder is packaged in steel drums and later enriched and processed further to prepare it for use as fuel in nuclear reactors. U.S. production of U₃O₈ in the third quarter of 2024 totalled 121,296 pounds, a 24 per cent increase from production of 97,709 pounds in the second quarter. Production in the third quarter occurred at five U.S. facilities: three in Wyoming (Nichols Ranch ISR Project, Lost Creek Project, and Smith Ranch-Highland Operation) and two in Texas (Alta Mesa Project and Rosita).

In 2023, the United States imported U₃O₈ and equivalents primarily from Canada, Australia, Russia, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan. The origin of U₃O₈ used in U.S. nuclear reactors could change in the coming years. In May 2024, the United States banned imports of uranium products from Russia beginning in August, although companies may apply for waivers through January 1, 2028.

More information regarding U.S. uranium production and sourcing is available in our Domestic Uranium Production Report and Uranium Marketing Annual Report.

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New commercial nuclear reactors can be a significant contributor to achieving net-zero emissions in Canada by 2050. But two distinct problems are undermining nuclear’s potential: cost and policy uncertainty. A report released today by Clean Prosperity called Nuclear for a Net-Zero Canada outlines solutions.

“Ambitious nuclear policy doesn’t make sense without ambitious climate policy,” said Clean Prosperity Director of Policy and Strategy Brendan Frank, lead author of the new report.

“Canada only needs to build more nuclear reactors if we plan to achieve net-zero by electrifying our economy. Federal and provincial governments need ambitious climate policies to convince the market that growing demand for electricity will support the economic case for new reactors.”

“Ambitious nuclear policy doesn’t make sense without ambitious climate policy.”

Clean Prosperity Director of Policy and Strategy Brendan Frank

Nuclear power has valuable attributes for provinces seeking to electrify their economies and decarbonize their grids: nuclear reactors are long-lived, large-scale, high-capacity assets that produce zero-carbon electricity with low land-use requirements and manageable risks.

But nuclear energy has a problem with cost: commercial reactors have high upfront capital requirements and a global track record of cost overruns. At the same time, they face weak demand signals in electricity markets.

Electrification of Canada’s economy isn’t inevitable, which points to the second problem facing nuclear: policy uncertainty.

“Canada needs stable climate and energy policies at the provincial and federal levels to drive the levels of electrification that would justify significant nuclear buildout,” said Clean Prosperity Director of Federal of Government Relations and report-co-author Etienne Rainville.

Ontario is already home to 18 of Canada’s 19 commercial nuclear reactors, and has also progressed the furthest towards building new nuclear generation. The province is on track to complete a first-of-kind advanced nuclear reactor at the Darlington Nuclear Generating Station by 2029, and is proposing three more to follow at the same site, along with new reactors at Bruce Nuclear Generating Station. Alberta, New Brunswick, Quebec, and Saskatchewan have all expressed interest in building new commercial reactors.

“The on-budget and ahead-of-schedule refurbishments of existing reactors at the Darlington and Bruce stations offer promise that nuclear’s cost problem can be solved in the Canadian context,” said Clean Prosperity Director for Ontario and report co-author Kaisha Bruetsch. “But Ontario and other provincial governments need to do more if nuclear energy is to play a significant role in achieving net zero.”

Recommendations

Clean Prosperity’s report makes three recommendations to provincial and federal policymakers to address the problems of cost and policy uncertainty.

• Ambitious and stable policy: First, governments should commit to an ambitious and stable package of electrification and decarbonization policies that extend beyond 2035. In particular, provinces should set target dates for achieving a net-zero grid. They should also set clear timelines for fully exposing electricity generation to the industrial carbon price so that nuclear generation can compete on a level playing field with emitting sources of electricity.

• Reward results, not effort: Second, governments should, over time, shift away from financial supports for nuclear energy generation that reward effort — like investment tax credits — and towards supports that reward results. Results-based instruments include power purchase agreements, production tax credits, and contracts for difference.

• Fleet-based approaches: Third, governments should prioritize fleet-based approaches to nuclear power development that seek to build as few reactor types as possible, in large quantities. This will help new advanced reactors to become progressively less expensive to build over time. The first and best chance for a strong start to a potential nuclear renaissance is the successful completion, on time and on budget, of the advanced reactor under construction at Darlington.

Clean Prosperity’s report also looks at other challenges associated with nuclear energy buildout, like operational safety, waste management, and security. The report argues that these challenges are manageable, and secondary to the imperative of decarbonization.

Read the report

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By Nicholas Palaschuk

As we watch negotiations at the COP29 climate change conference and mark the one-year anniversary of Canada’s pledge to triple its nuclear capacity by 2050, the reality would appear to be clear: there is no feasible net-zero future without the deployment of new nuclear power.

This pledge signals a shift for a country that just three years ago excluded nuclear from its clean energy funding programs. Nuclear power, historically controversial, is increasingly viewed by leaders across the political spectrum as key to helping reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

On the public front, SaskPower’s creation of SaskNuclear and the federal government’s $13.6-million investment in small modular reactors (SMR) research are setting the stage for regulatory advancements. In parallel, the private sector is demonstrating confidence in the industry’s economic potential, as evidenced by Cameco and Brookfield’s Westinghouse acquisition and GE Hitachi’s ground-breaking project in Ontario.

This commitment is not only evidence-based and supported by clear science, but also comes at a crucial time when Canada has become a net importer of electricity for the first time, as reported by Statistics Canada in April.

The importance of new nuclear energy

In its 2022 report, the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) highlighted the clear role of nuclear power in the mitigation of climate change. By mid-century, global investments in nuclear are projected to exceed $100 billion per year. Coinciding with this global trend, Ontario’s Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO) has forecast a significant increase in provincial electricity demand, projecting it to reach 263 terawatt hours by 2050. To put this in perspective, one terawatt can power 70,000 homes for a year, so Ontario’s forecast is equivalent to enough power for more than 18 million households annually.

Numerous studies highlight the necessity for increasing nuclear energy. They include results of an International Energy Agency   report which indicated that global nuclear capacity must double by 2050. A joint analysis by the Nuclear Energy Agency and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) goes a step further. It says tripling current nuclear power capacity by 2050 is necessary if we are to reach global net-zero emissions by then.

Recent developments in the United States show the growing global momentum behind nuclear energy. These include the Biden administration’s $1.5-billion loan to restore the Palisades plant and Constellation Energy’s partnership with Microsoft to restart Three Mile Island.

What does this mean for Canada?

While the Biden administration has made concrete plans to expand nuclear power (something that could change under Donald Trump’s second term), Canada’s pledge lacks formal commitments for new nuclear plants. This policy gap creates uncertainty for investors and industry stakeholders. It’s crucial that we match today’s ambition with more decisive action so as to provide a clear direction and maintain our position as a nuclear technology leader.

Addressing concerns and risks

Expanding nuclear generation raises fair questions that governments must address. Plants are capital-intensive with benefits often not realized for 10 to 15 years. Waste management strategies, although they have advanced, still have gaps.

These are genuine concerns, but there is progress. The $26-billion geological repository project in Ignace, Ont., is an example of how communities can benefit from such facilities while ensuring safe, long-term storage of nuclear waste.

But with Ontario’s grid requiring three times more generating capacity by 2040, Canadians must move beyond traditional framing of the energy transition as an “either-or” debate.

We can no longer afford to rank our clean energy options, favouring renewables like solar and wind, while treating nuclear as a backup plan. The scale of our energy challenge demands that we deploy all low-carbon technologies simultaneously.

A call to government for action

Canada’s first clean electricity strategy is slated to be released this year, and the federal government has signalled that expanding power capacity will be a top priority.

But to do that the country must place nuclear at the forefront of all energy conversations and policy decisions. We need our policymakers to make an increase in total power capacity of large-scale nuclear reactors a priority.

Our allies in the U.S. and United Kingdom are similarly on their own nuclear energy journey. Their work on regulations, funding and innovation can provide a blueprint for Canada’s plans to safely and efficiently advance the country’s nuclear infrastructure.

At the Climate Insider, we recommend the federal government:

• Launch an advanced nuclear technology demonstration program similar to one in the U.S. and create an innovation hub.
• Create a framework that shares project risks between government and industry, combined with production-based tax incentives making it easier to secure financing.
• Modernize regulations — including staged licensing and upfront industry guidelines — to speed the delivery of new nuclear technologies.
• Establish a public-private partnership for information on the nuclear market to enable decision-making among investors and innovators.
• Build on Energy Minister Jonathan Wilkinson’s comments earlier this year on faster approval for nuclear projects. A working group of federal and provincial representatives could develop an approach that would prioritize a project’s efficiency and responsiveness to provincial needs, while maintaining the integrity of environmental assessments.

Canada has been a leader in nuclear energy and research since developing the Candu reactor in the early 1950s. It is also a major supplier worldwide of medical isotopes. We have an opportunity to expand our global status, but this requires overcoming years of policy inaction while other nations have modernized their nuclear strategies. To triple our nuclear capacity by 2050, we need clear priorities and unwavering political commitment.

The path to a net-zero grid begins here.

The post Evaluating Canada’s pledge to triple nuclear capacity appeared first on Thoughtful Journalism About Energy's Future.

By Mitchell Beer

Ontario’s newly-minted energy minister Stephen Lecce is coming under fire for recent musings about turning the province into a “clean energy superpower”, with analysts scorching his decision to include nuclear generation in the mix and calling for some coherent system planning before making that decision.

In an interview with the Globe and Mail’s Adam Radwanski not long after he took over his new portfolio June 6, Lecce “touted initiatives he inherited, including the country’s largest investment to date in grid-scale battery storage, and a coming procurement of wind and solar power,” Radwanski wrote late last month. Those words “might come as a relief to people who worried his appointment to the job last month might signal a return to the anti-decarbonization positioning of Premier Doug Ford’s early days in office.”

But Lecce also “signalled an enhanced focus on nuclear power,” Radwanski added. “That means not just refurbishments and construction of a small modular reactor (SMR), which are under way, but also building new large-scale reactors—all of which he framed as essential to domestic needs and export opportunities.”

At a Canada-U.S. nuclear meeting on the sidelines of last month’s NATO summit, “energy security was at the core—an issue that overwhelmingly unites Democrats and Republicans in the U.S.,” Lecce told Radwanski. “There is an acute awareness that, now more than ever, we must decouple our dependence on despotic regimes abroad.”

He said that meant an “opportunity to emphasize that, among nations who share democratic values, Ontario has the technological expertise and capability to build, refurbish, and expand nuclear, on time and on budget.”

“It really underscores both Canada and the U.S.’s national and economic interests—that we work together to harness this capability to produce clean energy,” Lecce told The Canadian Press, adding that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine had cast a light on Canada as a reliable supplier of uranium.

Lecce’s “superpower” language wasn’t very different from the line of argument he would have used in a former job, after then-prime minister Stephen Harper hired him out straight of university to serve as his deputy director of communications, then his director of media relations.

Here We Go Again

While the refurbishment project now under way at the Darlington nuclear station east of Toronto has been making headlines by apparently running on time and on budget, that’s precisely because it’s so unusual for nuclear plants of any kind to avoid serious delays and cost overruns.

Last year, Corporate Knights Research Director Ralph Torrie recalled the more than C$10 billion in written-off costs for the original Darlington construction project that essentially bankrupted Ontario Hydro, then the second-largest power utility in North America—based on projections of future electricity demand that never materialized in the real world.

“History continues to outrun electricity planning in Ontario, as it has been doing for decades now, and we all pay for the overshoots and malinvestment that result,” Torrie wrote at the time. “We cannot afford another round of ill-conceived commitments to multi-billion-dollar megaprojects that will be left half-built and stranded just as technology, market forces, and common sense converge on a smarter, less expensive, more distributed and renewables-based energy system.”

Energy system analysts Mark Winfield of York University and David Schlissel of the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis said they see no prospect that an expanded nuclear program in Ontario will stay within budget, compete with more affordable renewable energy and energy efficiency options, or deliver in time to meet a rapid decarbonization deadline. (Mark Winfield and Evan Pivnick, quoted below, are both members of the community sounding board for The Energy Mix’s Heat & Power edition.)

Experience with recent conventional nuclear projects in North America and Western Europe “points to a continuing pattern of massive cost overruns and delays on the time scales of decades,” Winfield told The Energy Mix in an email. “One of the core problems with nuclear is that it does not see a significant learning curve—costs just keep going up, unlike renewables and storage, where you see performance improve and costs fall as experience is gained, and supply chains and project management and construction become more efficient.”

A ‘Rational Approach’

Given serious uncertainties around Ontario’s path to decarbonization and how much electricity the province will eventually need, Winfield said a more “rational approach” would deploy “lower-risk, lower-impact, and more flexible and scalable options” like demand-side management, energy efficiency, distributed energy resources (DERs), and renewable energy with energy storage, “and only consider higher-risk, higher-impact, high lock-in resources after that.”

But he said that won’t happen in a province that has “no planning process within which these options can be assessed in an open and independent manner.”

“You want to do the cheapest thing first, right?” Schlissel agreed in an interview this week. “And you want to have flexibility if the big, future demand that is being projected today is not realized.”

By contrast, while Ontario is being “very closed-mouthed” about the small modular nuclear reactor (SMR) under construction at Darlington, costs elsewhere are already rising, making the technology far more expensive than renewables.

“It’s clear the cost has gone up dramatically, and there’s no reason to expect the future will be any different than the past,” he said. “Is it possible? Yes, it’s possible that some (SMRs) will get online. Is it possible that they’ll be cheap? Yes. But what standard of proof do you have? Yes, it’s possible, but there’s a lot of evidence arguing against that happening.”

While nuclear proponents have been talking about their technology co-existing with renewables, Schlissel said new nuclear capacity would be more likely to crowd cheaper, cleaner renewables out of the system.

“Nuclear plants are not economical unless you run them flat out,” he explained. Given the high cost of those projects, and the need to protect ratepayers from higher electricity rates to the extent possible, “there will be none of this about supplementing wind and solar, that when the sun doesn’t shine or the wind doesn’t blow we’ll crank up the nuke.”

Where the Rubber Hits the Road

Evan Pivnick, clean energy program manager at Clean Energy Canada, said Lecce is sending the right overall message. But that’s not the same thing as delivering results.

“In general, I think the ambition and the rhetoric around positioning Ontario as a clean energy superpower and highlighting the role of clean electricity for households or industry is actually what we want to see more and more provinces do,” he said. But “where the rubber hits the road, Ontario has a little bit more of a mixed record.”

While Ontario’s Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO) commissioned a pathways assessment to map a cost-effective energy future for the province, “it’s unclear how many of those scenarios centred net-zero by 2050,” he said. And since then, “despite some meaningful and truly credible forward steps on clean electricity, they still haven’t connected the dots between climate targets and energy.” So the same province that launched Canada’s biggest-ever energy storage procurement and committed to 5,000 megawatts of new renewable energy capacity also overturned an independent regulator’s bid to protect new homeowners from the long-term cost of building new gas infrastructure.

The 40-year payback on those gas lines “takes us well past 2050,” Pivnick said. “This is where we’ve been pushing for quite a while for an energy strategy that features net-zero by 2050 at the very least. Then we know what we’re aiming for and we can hold the decisions we’re making against that. Rather than relying on rhetoric that is quite positive, we get to make sure those actions are actually supported.”

Pivnick said there’s “no question nuclear will play a role, and possibly an expanding role,” as electricity demand increases. But those decisions begin with what amounts to a least-cost energy strategy.

“In other jurisdictions around the world, the approaches that best protect affordability and cost start out with maximizing the role of energy efficiency, distributed energy resources, and renewables,” he said. “Where those are unable to meet energy or reliability needs, long-term and cost-effectively, we then start to move up the list of other, more costly sources.”

Through that lens, he said it’s fine to experiment with SMRs that might have a future role to play. But “predicating our future on making nuclear the first tranche or approach? That has potential risk to it, and we’ve been pretty clear that if this government is going to centre nuclear as they are, they need to have a backup plan.” That would mean developing the ability to “build out renewables, focus on energy efficiency, demand-side management, DERs, that will actually bring down the cost for consumers and offer new ways to drive affordability. And then we’ll see” what the system needs.

The future Ontario should want to avoid, he added, is the one where the need for electricity rises so fast that consumer demand competes against industrial uses for the available electrons.

“In that scenario where you have room for real take-off (of demand), there’s going to be room for everything,” and if SMRs can be cost effective “then, yeah, they may very well play a role,” he said. But that will make it all the more important to sequence the various options, with first call on the ones that cost the least. Last year, analysis by Clean Energy Canada concluded that solar and wind farms with battery backup were already cheaper to build than new gas plants in Ontario and Alberta, much less nuclear projects, with the cost of renewables expected to fall sharply this decade.

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