Canada has 13 provinces and territories, each decision makers on their own energy mix; increasingly several are betting on nuclear energy. They are led by Ontario, which made the country a global Tier-1 nuclear nation when it commissioned the first of many reactors in 1971. Most recently, Ontario jumped to the head of the triple-nuclear pack with a 15 January announcement for a 10,000 MW station in Port Hope, Ontario at the Ontario Power Generation-owned Wesleyville site.
Over the past decade, refurbishments at Ontario’s Darlington and Bruce Power multi-unit stations have created a Canadian supply chain well-positioned to support domestic and global construction and services. Ontario is also the most advanced OECD country in development of small modular reactors (SMRs), having just completed extensive hearings for its license to construct up to four GE-Hitachi BWRX-300 MW reactors.
Canada is also well on the road to demonstrated life-cycle sustainability with the Nuclear Waste Management Organization’s site selection announcement, 28 November, for a permanent used fuel repository in Ignace, Ontario. The demonstrated advancement of waste disposal is key to the country’s new build licensing. The site agreement with local communities and First Nations was a significant milestone in a public and community consultation process that dates to 2002.
Why Canada is bullish on nuclear
Electrification has become a major strategy for many provinces looking to decarbonize sectors like transportation, buildings and industry while also competing globally to become hubs for data centres, life sciences and the types of manufacturers, like automakers, which have high energy demands. Today, companies come looking not only for cheap power, but also low-carbon content.
The global plans for nuclear expansion do not seem upset by the change in winds on the climate agenda since the return of Donald Trump to United States government. Even with the “drill baby drill” oil and gas position in the US, there remains recognition for the long-term need for vast amounts of reliable (firm), low-carbon electricity supply. A November 2024 US Department of Energy report, Safely and Responsibly Expanding U.S. Nuclear Energy: Deployment Targets and a Framework for Action, lays out a plan to triple US nuclear by 2050. President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to head the U.S. energy department, Chris Wright, confirmed the priority to move forward on nuclear, along with LNG, during his confirmation hearing on 15 January.
Canada arguably has one of the strongest supply chains globally and it is an opportunity the Ontario government has clear plans to capitalise on for both domestic and export.
In October 2024, Energy and Electrification Minister Stephen Lecce said the province’s ambition is to become an energy “superpower” with enough electricity to meet its own rapidly growing demands and to ramp up exports of energy and technologies like small modular reactors (SMRs). In announcing a new integrated energy strategy, the minister stated, “For the first time in legislation the province will prioritize the role of reliable, affordable and zero-emissions nuclear power generation to meet future increases in demand.”
Since then, a series of announcements have backed up those words, culminating with Wesleyville, where construction of an oil plant was halted during the 1970s and never produced electricity. If the government’s plans materialize, it will make up for lost time as potentially the largest single-site generator in the world. The plan is backed by commitments of partnership with the local community and First Nation communities. These include funding and potential equity stakes that could significantly advance social license practices for new builds in a way that may set benchmarks for new nuclear in Canada and elsewhere moving forward.
A snapshot of nuclear across Canada
Canada is a vast country of almost 10 million km2 with a small population (~41 million). That dichotomy, along with its natural wealth of fossil fuels, creates unique challenges. Canada, like other resource-rich countries, will feel greater pain as the world moves away from reliance on fossil fuels. There is simply more to give up in both affordable use and profit from oil and gas. And while it may feel like fossil fuel markets are not going away anytime soon with the return of the Trump government and its ripple effect globally, the longer term requires a parallel low-carbon play.
Decisions on energy policy, especially electricity, are largely the purview of the country’s 13 diverse provinces and territories. They range in size from tiny Prince Edward Island at under 6,000 km2 to the 1.5 million km2 of Quebec. Similarly, populations range from about 40,000 in the least populous territory (Nunavut) to about 16 million in Ontario, representing about 40% of the country’s population with related GDP.
All to say, it is a country of diverse composition, climate, cultures and energy needs, making a national energy strategy complex. Despite a wealth of clean electricity sources, including hydro in several provinces, electricity only accounts for about 20% of energy used in Canada. The remaining 80% of the country’s energy comes primarily from fossil fuels.
For many Canadian jurisdictions, as energy demand rises, that means taking a new look at nuclear energy even as oil is pumped at record levels. Now offered in a range of sizes and designs almost as diverse as the country itself, nuclear designs are gaining interest in corners of the country that had not previously considered the technology.
New nuclear options open possibilities for more of Canada’s diverse jurisdictions
There are several major nuclear vendors marketing in Canada, spanning the size range from a 5 MW micro reactor up to traditional-scale new build. Across the spectrum, they are being considered to support Canada’s biggest economies’ on-grid needs, regional power needs, heat and power to replace diesel in remote communities along with industrial-specific heat and power options for Canada’s resource extraction and heavy industry like steel. By example, a November 2023 report by the Canadian Steel Producers Association (CSPA) and the Nuclear Innovation Institute (NII) calculated that making green steel in Canada would require more than four times the amount of electricity currently used by the sector.
What new nuclear will look like in Canada really depends on the vantage point. Below are some key jurisdictions in play.
Ontario, the birthplace of CANDU technology: Ambitions as an “energy superpower”
Canada has been a Tier-1 nuclear nation dating back to the first half of the 20th Century with the heart of its CANDU technology design, research and generation program in Ontario.
As the country’s most populous province with its large business and industrial base, the use of baseload electricity from nuclear has been a mainstay since the first Pickering Nuclear commercial unit started operation in 1971. In recent years, as much as 60% of the province’s electricity has come from the province’s three nuclear plants: Ontario Power Generation’s Pickering and Darlington Nuclear stations in Durham Region, adjacent to Toronto and the Bruce Power site in southwestern, Ontario.
Chalk River Laboratories, where CANDU (PHWR) technology was developed through a partnership between researchers at federally owned Atomic Energy Canada Ltd. and the province’s electric utility operator in the 1940s and 1950s, is also located in Ontario, a couple of hours outside Ottawa, the country’s capital. Today it continues its role as the lead for Canada’s nuclear research and innovation.
Today, Ontario has 12,844 MW of CANDU generation capacity. One other province (New Brunswick) and six other countries also operate CANDU reactors, helping provide the economies of scale to support research, education and supply chain infrastructure. The sector employs about 89,000 people in Canada’s nuclear industry, many of those jobs based in Ontario. Through the CANDU Owners Group, about C$80m (US$55m) of shared R&D is carried out on behalf of the CANDU operators, annually.
It’s a history the current Ontario government has been keen to leverage for their low-carbon economic strategy as illustrated by the Wesleyville, Bruce Power and SMR new build projects.
But even before that, over a decade and a half, the province has been working through a series of choreographed mid-life refurbishments on the Darlington and Bruce reactors, some of which will operate into the mid-2060s. That work will continue well into the next decade with the latest plan to also refurbish the four newest Pickering reactors that came online in the early-to-mid 1980s. When complete, the refurbishments alone represent about 12,500 MW of extended electricity generation.
Expanding diversity in reactor designs
CANDU is no longer the full story for Ontario. As noted, Ontario is also home to the most advanced SMR project of any OECD country at its Darlington Nuclear site. If completed to plan, 1,200 MW from four BWRX reactors will operate alongside Darlington’s existing (and soon fully refurbished) four CANDU reactors, with the first SMR coming online in 2029. Accomplishing a first-of-a-kind SMR deployment is part of the provincial government’s export strategy.
But refurbishments and the Darlington SMRs were still not enough. In an October 2024 report, Ontario’s electricity system operator said the province’s electricity demand will grow 75% by 2050. It had already predicted at least an additional 17,800 MW of nuclear energy would be needed in that timeframe to meet demand growth. The latest estimates and the government’s “superpower” plans could push that higher. That is largely solved with the addition of the Wesleyville announcement pushing Ontario’s announced new nuclear envelope to about 16,000 MW.
The projections, domestic and global, have caught the attention of large nuclear players. AtkinsRéalis, the license holder of CANDU technology has been ramping up its nuclear division engineering staff and working on the design and marketing of its CANDU MONARK reactor. On the export market side, in November 2024, the company was selected to build two new CANDU stations in Romania, the first CANDU constructions since 2007.
Westinghouse, now owned by two major Canadian energy players, Cameco (uranium mining and processing) and Brookfield (asset management and renewable energy), has also headquartered in Ontario, marketing a range of designs from its micro reactor geared to remote and industrial applications right up to its APR 1000.
Both companies’ reactors are being examined as part of the Bruce C nuclear expansion, now undergoing an impact assessment in consideration of an additional 4,800 MW of nuclear energy. Bruce Power is currently the third and largest nuclear stations in Ontario with eight CANDU units, expected to produce up to 7,000 MW when fully refurbished. If it moves forward with the 4,800 MW at site, Bruce Power could be operating as much as 11,800 MW at their south-western Ontario site, reclaiming the crown for largest site from Wesleyville.
In between micro and massive, sit several other vendors, including X-energy with reactor options that include the 80 MW Xe-100 (with potential for a 320 MW four pack) that could be ideal for regional or industrial uses, as illustrated by its partnerships with both Dow and Amazon in the United States. X-energy signed a framework agreement with OPG in 2022 to explore opportunities for industrial applications.
All of this is supported by one of the world’s most primed supply chains, busy at home but also marketing its expertise, honed by years of refurbishments, to the world.
Saskatchewan
Saskatchewan has long been one of the largest uranium producers and exporters, globally. The business has seen an uptick with growing global interest in nuclear energy. However, until recently, Saskatchewan did not consider nuclear as part of its own energy mix. That changed when the provincial utility, SaskPower began investigating SMRs, including a 2017 memorandum of understanding with Ontario Power Generation.
Most recently, in September 2024, SaskPower announced it was forming a subsidiary company SaskNuclear to advance the province’s SMR project through the regulatory and licensing process. A final decision on whether to proceed is expected by 2029. Earlier this year, the province announced sites in the Estevan area as likely candidates for the first SMR.
Given geopolitical uncertainties, Canada’s uranium industry could get part of the spotlight in 2025 as a secure source for both domestic and international markets.
Alberta
As Canada’s oil and gas capital, Alberta has some of the greatest decarbonisation challenges as it tries to balance the value and need of its natural resources against GHG reductions. Further, it has diversification ambitions that include becoming a data centre hub that will likely require a switch to low-carbon electricity given its current mix of primarily gas and coal. Nuclear reactors, of various sizes and designs, could help both on-grid electricity and industrial decarbonization goals.
Several developments over the past few years have included:
- 2019: A memorandum between Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario and New Brunswick to cooperate on SMR advancement;
- July 2023: A mandate letter to Alberta’s minister of energy includes SMR development, including encouraging oil sand operators to explore SMRs as a decarbonization option;
- January 2024: Agreement between Ontario Power Generation and Capital Power for SMR development in Alberta; and
- March 2024: Alberta announces it is considering conventional scale reactors for on-grid electricity.
New Brunswick
Aside from Ontario, New Brunswick is the only province currently using nuclear in its energy mix. The province, home to about 850,000 people, gets about 30-40% of its electricity from a single 660 MW CANDU reactor. The province still has a long way to go to decarbonize the remainder of its electricity grid and overall energy use. To help achieve this, the provincial utility NB Power was an early proponent of advanced reactor development and continues to investigate SMRs as part of the province’s future.
Federal policies influence outcomes across the country
While provinces may be the traditional decision makers on electricity and electrification, increasingly the private sector is recognising an opportunity to employ stand-alone nuclear alongside other decarbonization strategies in their operations. The federal government plays an instrumental role influencing the decisions of both.
After decades of lukewarm industry acknowledgement, Canada’s federal Liberal government came out with increasing unequivocal support for nuclear energy in the past several years, citing the important role it will play in pushing back GHG emissions and climate change. That support has included investment in research, education and development as well as tax credits and loan guarantees helping to spur investment. With an election looming, it appears the poll-leading Conservatives will continue with industry support.
Internationally, Canada has been a major presence in OECD Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) nation-to-nation collaboration, including an OECD-NEA led initiative where more than 20 countries signed on to triple nuclear by 2050.
As well, Canada has worked bilaterally with both the United States and the United Kingdom on various initiatives to further advance areas like regulation and fuel security. In part, the strengthening of Canadian nuclear policy can be attributed to the US Inflation Reduction Act and new opportunities for nuclear investment south of the border.
The NWMO’s success in landing a site for a used fuel repository along with a federally blessed 2023 strategy to develop national solutions for permanent disposal of the country’s low and intermediate level waste also bode well for the industry’s ability to advance new nuclear. Well understood and supported waste management is considered a key enabler.
This is not to say Canada won’t meet head winds along the way. This level of new infrastructure, whether nuclear or transit will always come with challenges, not the least being financing, regulatory and workforce readiness. But the country, or at least Ontario, seems to have decided to put its chips all in.
