Brian Zinchuk is editor and owner of Pipeline Online
In late January, Crown Investments Corp. Minister Jeremy Harrison announced that SaskPower would begin the process of technology selection for large, 1,000 megawatt-scale reactors.
That’s a fancy way of saying Saskatchewan is in the market to pick a big reactor design and quite possibly build them.
Pipeline Online will be digging deep into this, which could be the most expensive and consequential decision the Government of Saskatchewan makes in decades.
Two models in particular are under consideration. One is the CANDU Monark. In 2011, the Government of Canada under Stephen Harper sold the Crown corporation Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL) and the intellectual property license of the Canadian designed CANDU reactor to Quebec engineering firm SNC-Lavalin. In 2023 SNC-Lavalin changed its name to AtkinsRéalis.
The second model is the US-designed Westinghouse AP1000 reactor. In 2023 Canada’s Brookfield Asset Management bought 51 per cent and Saskatoon-based Cameco bought 49 per cent of Westinghouse out of Bankruptcy.
On Feb. 16, the Pipeline Online Podcast featured Carl Marcotte, senior vice-president, Marketing & Business Development at CANDU Energy, to discuss why Saskatchewan should consider buying the CANDU reactor.
There were a lot of significant points brought up in that podcast, which you can watch in its entirety above. Pipeline Online will be breaking out several stories from that podcast, starting with this one, about security of fuel supply. In this story, the important of a “fleet approach” is discussed.
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Fleet approach
Right now new nuclear generation is being discussed four provinces. While New Brunswick is doing its own thing with small-scale small modular reactors (SMRs), large-scale, 1,000 megawatt class reactors are being considered in Ontario, Saskatchewan and Alberta.
And everywhere they’re being discussed, a big issue is local businesses getting in on the action of some of the largest financial expenditures seen in this country in generations, with the exception of the oil sands, LNG Canada and the Trans Mountain Expansion.
Brian Zinchuk: This is not just as Saskatchewan decision, but really it’s a Canadian decision.
We’re not talking about just two reactors here. I mean, Saskatchewan will likely be looking at two large reactors. I can’t see more than that. We are currently talking about two small, 300 megawatt reactors, which will likely be built either six or 12 miles from my house. But then, it comes to the point of where we’re looking at large ones beyond that, and I get the suspicion that we might just punt on the small ones and just go straight to large ones. That might delay the nuclear thing a little bit, but it’s there.
And I guess, can you please explain the fleet-buy dynamics between Ontario Power Generation, Bruce Power, SaskPower and Energy Alberta, all of which are looking at building 1,000 megawatt-scale reactors?
Carl Marcotte: Maybe I’ll start with a quick line from a history lesson: Canada built or commissioned 22 CANDU’s in 22 years, the first time around. So ’71 to ’93 the first fleet was built domestically. So, from a standing start, an entire industry was stood up across three provinces. It was an amazing, amazing result. And so, 22 reactors commissioned in 22 years is astonishing, quite frankly.
And so, we think we’ll do that again. And so, it’s obviously not a standing start. The industry is roaring along, and the opportunity is for it to expand. And so, the supply chain touches on three provinces today; not quite as much in Ontario or Quebec or New Brunswick and Quebec, as you can imagine. It’s largely concentrated in Ontario. But if we plan dozens, two dozen new reactors across the country, a good number in Ontario, a couple in Saskatchewan, a couple in Alberta, maybe four or five six in Alberta, I think Quebec will join the club again, and I think New Brunswick will want to build more.
And other provinces, Manitoba and BC probably have sufficient resources with hydro, so there’s probably other options for them. But really, you’re looking at 20 to 25 in Canada, over the next 25 years, there’s absolutely no reason why not.
So if we’re going to do that, where does the supply chain localize itself? It’s going to have to grow. It’s going to have to invest in new factories to build more components, double the number of components being built today, etc, etc. So, I think there are tremendous opportunities to sort of shift the supply chains to a couple of other provinces and concentrate skill sets in different areas. Alberta and Saskatchewan, have all the right skills. You know, in Saskatchewan, you have tremendous industrial skills that would allow for the easy localization of some of these factories, to build some of the components, and that gives you a really great economic development boost as well.
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Zinchuk: So what happens if, for instance, OPG goes one way, Bruce goes another way, SaskPower is not going to go independently of whatever Ontario does. So we’re going to follow whatever the Ontario lead is. But I mean that could possibly split between Bruce and OPG. If both of those go, let’s say with Westinghouse, the chances of Saskatchewan going the Monark is zero. They will follow Ontario if they both go the same way. So really, this is for all the marbles in Canada here.
What happens if we don’t do a fleet approach, if we split it somehow, if Bruce goes one way and OPG and SaskPower go the other way, what happens with that? Do we benefit having two supply chains? Go ahead and explain that.
Marcotte: I’ll tell you from my 13 years in the industry, I will tell you there is really no other choice than to have one large reactor technology; lots of different SMR or in the future, MMR technologies. No question whatsoever. I think that’s a great idea, and Canada needs some of those.
But it makes perfect sense to have a fleet approach, going with CANDUs, because the intellectual property the IP is owned by the Government of Canada. It’s owned by the people of Canada. So, we all own the IP. We ,as a company, add to that IP every single day, from our own pockets, and it goes back. So the Government of Canada benefits from that. There is a CANDU Owners Group, which is a scientific organization called Conexus today. It’s funded by the utilities. It invests in new science every year. It’s great organization, does amazing work, the Sylvia Fedora center, Canadian National Labs, all kinds of organizations all across the country work on and further advance the can do IP, and all that IP is owned by every one of us, all, 41 million of us.
So, I think it’s been the very natural way to go. And as I described before, because of its inherent advantages, it was designed for Canada. It was designed to make sure we had energy security, and I can’t think of anything much more important than that today.
So I think it’s the natural, obvious choice, and then I think SMRs are a fantastic compliment to that, because I had a conversation with an energy executive in Iqaluit one day, she said they bringing in $150 million a year of diesel fuel to power the generators to produce electricity for seven, 8000 people in Iqaluit. That’s crazy, right? That’s hard. That is not easy to do. It’s very expensive, and it’s very hard on the environment.
There are so many communities all across the country, 10 provinces, 3 territories, would all have small reactors of one kind or another; in the long run, that’s got to be the way to go. So investing in SMRs, all different sizes of SMRs, we need it all. And we need, I think, a large fleet technology like CANDU. It will do us very well. It’s one of the best performing reactor types in the world, the highest capacity factors of any reactor type. The best, the winningest reactor every year, is a CANDU that runs in Romania. It achieves the highest capacity factor, meaning the uptime or runtime, which produces tremendous electricity output and profit for its utility in Romania. And it’s the best in the world. So it’s not an accident. The CANDUs run so well.
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Bronwyn Eyre: I just wanted to ask, well, two things. But first, just that, that’s why, further to your question, Brian, I asked earlier about the SMR procurement, because it is relevant in terms of that fleet approach. And I thought the SMR procurement, I thought those decisions had been largely made in Saskatchewan, Ontario.
Zinchuk: They have
Eyre: Okay.
Marcotte: Yeah, the first steps have.
Eyre: All right. So to that point then, I guess then and your question, Brian, what do you think the impact is on that fleet approach when some of those preliminary decisions have been made, and I guess you were wanting to be part of the mix in terms of the CANDU a technology, and in that first phase, haven’t been as much in the mix on the SMR procurement, right?
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Marcotte: Yeah. So we are an architect engineer supporting GE Hitachi in completing, or help them complete the SMR design and get it licensed in Canada. And we, and AECON and GE are working together to build the four SMRs at Darlington.
And so, if SaskPower completes and finalizes its procurement decision on the SMR, and I guess it’s not complete now, you would think they would want to do exactly the same thing, replicate what’s being done by OPG, at Darlington. That actually reduces Saskatchewan’s risk.
So we would hope to be chosen. We and our existing partners would hope to be chosen to build the reactors in Saskatchewan, if that’s ultimately the decision. And I think there, I think there’s plenty of room, actually, Brian for both large and small in Saskatchewan. I know it may not seem that obvious at the beginning, but the current size of your grid is going to have to about double, to about 10,000 megawatts in 20 years. And a lot of your existing sources are, of course, carbon emitting and or just needing to be replaced because they’re hitting end of life.
And so I think you could easily when you do the math, that’s 5, 6, 7, 8000, megawatts of new electricity generating capacity that’ll be needed. That’s a handful of CANDUs and a handful of SMRs. You’d have opportunity to to look at all sorts of things over the course of time.
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Former Ontario Premier Mike Harris will be the guest on the Pipeline Online Podcast at 10 a.m. on Tuesday, March 3. You can watch live on X here https://x.com/Pipeline_Online.
The Pipeline Online podcast is now on Apple Podcasts, available in both video and audio. You can find it here. Please follow.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/pipeline-online-podcast/id1791695209