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. In this story, how much would big reactors cost, anyhow?

  • 0116 IBEW 30
    0116 IBEW 30
  • 0115 SaskPower SASPO_2817_PLT_Recruitment_DIVERSITY
    0115 SaskPower SASPO_2817_PLT_Recruitment_DIVERSITY
  • 0114 Prospera Bold Vision
    0114 Prospera Bold Vision
  • 0113 Miller Epic Cinematic Hollywood trailer
    0113 Miller Epic Cinematic Hollywood trailer
  • 0111 2026 SK Oil Show booth promo 01
    0111 2026 SK Oil Show booth promo 01
  • 0085 Turnbull snow removal call office
    0085 Turnbull snow removal call office
  • 0102 Lori Carr Coal Extended
    0102 Lori Carr Coal Extended
  • 0100 Turnbull Project Manager
    0100 Turnbull Project Manager
  • 0099 Mryglod Steel 1080p
    0099 Mryglod Steel 1080p
  • 0097 Eagle Sky Ventures LTD
    0097 Eagle Sky Ventures LTD
  • 0095 Fast Trucking nearly 70 years good at it
    0095 Fast Trucking nearly 70 years good at it
  • 0092 Turnbull projects big and small
    0092 Turnbull projects big and small
  • 0046 City of Estevan This is Estevan Teaser
    0046 City of Estevan This is Estevan Teaser
  • 0077 Caprice Resources Stand Up For Free Speech
    0077 Caprice Resources Stand Up For Free Speech
  • 0061 SIMSA 2024 For Sask Buy Sask
    0061 SIMSA 2024 For Sask Buy Sask
  • 0051 JML Hiring Pumpjack assembly
    0051 JML Hiring Pumpjack assembly
  • 0049 Scotsburn Dental soft guitar
    0049 Scotsburn Dental soft guitar
  • 0041 DEEP Since 2018 now we are going to build
    0041 DEEP Since 2018 now we are going to build
  • 0032 IWS Summer hiring rock trailer music
  • 0022 Grimes winter hiring
  • 0021 OSY Rentals S8 Promo
  • 0018 IWS Hiring Royal Summer
  • 0013 Panther Drilling PO ad 03 top drive rigs
  • 0002 gilliss casing services
    0002 gilliss casing services
  • 9002 Pipeline Online 30 sec EBEX
    9002 Pipeline Online 30 sec EBEX
  • 9001

 

How much will big reactors cost?

No one has built an AtkinsRéalis Monark reactor yet. And the first AP1000s put Westinghouse into bankruptcy, which is why Brookfield Asset Management and Cameco were able to buy it for cheap in the first place.

Brian Zinchuk: We’ve got to talk dollars. Like, what are we looking at for price here? For SMRs, for large reactors, for Monarks? I’ve been saying this will be the most significant, most expensive decision this province makes for this generation. The coal decision was the most important decision made over the last 10 years. But going forward with large reactors, this is the big one?

Carle Marcotte: Yeah, absolutely.

Well, you’re asking the $64,000 question that nobody ever wants to answer.

It’s a rough one. So I’ll start with the SMRs. So, as you as I’m sure you’ve read, the Government of Ontario has announced that the final budget for the four SMRs will be about $21 billion Canadian, to build the four SMRs at Darlington. The first one is more expensive than the fourth one. Of course, costs come down over the course of time, as you get better and better at what you’re doing, and as you as you build up a supply chain to build the components. So the fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, GE Hitachi SMR built in Canada, should be even cheaper than the fourth one at Darlington.

AtkinsRéalis launched the CANDU MONARK reactor on Nov. 28 2023, a 1000 megawatt design. AtkinsRéalis

 

So you can do some math from there and give a rough idea of what the per reactor cost would be. A CANDU, which is larger than that, of course, is more expensive.

If you Google it, I’ll answer it this way: It’s a three-to-four year process to do a class five, then a class four, then a class three estimate of what it would cost. And obviously, it’s the sum of the cost of the components. How many cubic metres of concrete are we pouring? How many pumps, how many valves, how many metres of two inch pipe? How many of four inch, you know?

  • 0116 IBEW 30
    0116 IBEW 30
  • 0115 SaskPower SASPO_2817_PLT_Recruitment_DIVERSITY
    0115 SaskPower SASPO_2817_PLT_Recruitment_DIVERSITY
  • 0114 Prospera Bold Vision
    0114 Prospera Bold Vision
  • 0113 Miller Epic Cinematic Hollywood trailer
    0113 Miller Epic Cinematic Hollywood trailer
  • 0111 2026 SK Oil Show booth promo 01
    0111 2026 SK Oil Show booth promo 01
  • 0085 Turnbull snow removal call office
    0085 Turnbull snow removal call office
  • 0102 Lori Carr Coal Extended
    0102 Lori Carr Coal Extended
  • 0100 Turnbull Project Manager
    0100 Turnbull Project Manager
  • 0099 Mryglod Steel 1080p
    0099 Mryglod Steel 1080p
  • 0097 Eagle Sky Ventures LTD
    0097 Eagle Sky Ventures LTD
  • 0095 Fast Trucking nearly 70 years good at it
    0095 Fast Trucking nearly 70 years good at it
  • 0092 Turnbull projects big and small
    0092 Turnbull projects big and small
  • 0046 City of Estevan This is Estevan Teaser
    0046 City of Estevan This is Estevan Teaser
  • 0077 Caprice Resources Stand Up For Free Speech
    0077 Caprice Resources Stand Up For Free Speech
  • 0061 SIMSA 2024 For Sask Buy Sask
    0061 SIMSA 2024 For Sask Buy Sask
  • 0051 JML Hiring Pumpjack assembly
    0051 JML Hiring Pumpjack assembly
  • 0049 Scotsburn Dental soft guitar
    0049 Scotsburn Dental soft guitar
  • 0041 DEEP Since 2018 now we are going to build
    0041 DEEP Since 2018 now we are going to build
  • 0032 IWS Summer hiring rock trailer music
  • 0022 Grimes winter hiring
  • 0021 OSY Rentals S8 Promo
  • 0018 IWS Hiring Royal Summer
  • 0013 Panther Drilling PO ad 03 top drive rigs
  • 0002 gilliss casing services
    0002 gilliss casing services
  • 9002 Pipeline Online 30 sec EBEX
    9002 Pipeline Online 30 sec EBEX
  • 9001

 

How many metres of four inch pipe, all of these things? That was very Canadian. How many metres of four inch pipe? Every one of us does that, eh?

You just add up all that material, and you have to go and price it, and you have to price it at a certain period of time. And you get quotes, and you add it all up, and then you come up with your class five estimate, and then you improve and refine from there.

If you Google it, you know, based on megawatts, the price of any large reactor is somewhere on or about $10, $12 billion for 1,000 megawatts. And that rough, rough, rough range. If you Google that, that’s what, that’s what Chat GPT or Google will tell you.

But the real number depends on that site specific refinement, and it’s a two to three year process for doing the localized, site specific engineering that will tell you exactly get based on the conditions and the ground you’re situating it on, what has to be done, how many cubic metres of concrete will be poured in, what way, and so on and so forth.

So that really is no good answer to say, how much does it cost? You know, the rough ballpark is the only useful way to start, I suppose.

  • 0116 IBEW 30
    0116 IBEW 30
  • 0115 SaskPower SASPO_2817_PLT_Recruitment_DIVERSITY
    0115 SaskPower SASPO_2817_PLT_Recruitment_DIVERSITY
  • 0114 Prospera Bold Vision
    0114 Prospera Bold Vision
  • 0113 Miller Epic Cinematic Hollywood trailer
    0113 Miller Epic Cinematic Hollywood trailer
  • 0111 2026 SK Oil Show booth promo 01
    0111 2026 SK Oil Show booth promo 01
  • 0085 Turnbull snow removal call office
    0085 Turnbull snow removal call office
  • 0102 Lori Carr Coal Extended
    0102 Lori Carr Coal Extended
  • 0100 Turnbull Project Manager
    0100 Turnbull Project Manager
  • 0099 Mryglod Steel 1080p
    0099 Mryglod Steel 1080p
  • 0097 Eagle Sky Ventures LTD
    0097 Eagle Sky Ventures LTD
  • 0095 Fast Trucking nearly 70 years good at it
    0095 Fast Trucking nearly 70 years good at it
  • 0092 Turnbull projects big and small
    0092 Turnbull projects big and small
  • 0046 City of Estevan This is Estevan Teaser
    0046 City of Estevan This is Estevan Teaser
  • 0077 Caprice Resources Stand Up For Free Speech
    0077 Caprice Resources Stand Up For Free Speech
  • 0061 SIMSA 2024 For Sask Buy Sask
    0061 SIMSA 2024 For Sask Buy Sask
  • 0051 JML Hiring Pumpjack assembly
    0051 JML Hiring Pumpjack assembly
  • 0049 Scotsburn Dental soft guitar
    0049 Scotsburn Dental soft guitar
  • 0041 DEEP Since 2018 now we are going to build
    0041 DEEP Since 2018 now we are going to build
  • 0032 IWS Summer hiring rock trailer music
  • 0022 Grimes winter hiring
  • 0021 OSY Rentals S8 Promo
  • 0018 IWS Hiring Royal Summer
  • 0013 Panther Drilling PO ad 03 top drive rigs
  • 0002 gilliss casing services
    0002 gilliss casing services
  • 9002 Pipeline Online 30 sec EBEX
    9002 Pipeline Online 30 sec EBEX
  • 9001

 

Bronwyn Eyre: I noted there was a Report on Business article from a few weeks ago, and you’ll probably have seen. “Will soaring electricity rates kill Ontario’s nuclear expansion?” and it cited the numbers you’ve just raised.

Steven Lecce, Energy Minister of Ontario, announced the government would spend the $20 billion to build the four new small modular reactors in Clarington. And then in November $26.8 billion was announced for the overhaul of the four old reactors at Pickering. A

And the thing I wanted to ask you about or get your comment on is on the electricity rates, on the power rates part of this, because, I mean, obviously massive, massive dollar figure for the building. But then there’s the rates part of this. And apparently, Ontario’s electricity rate shot up 29 per cent in November, it says in Report on Business, driven in part by rising nuclear generation costs.

And obviously this is relevant to any province which wants to go down this road. We’re relatively small population province, what we are here in Saskatchewan. What’s your comment on the impact of all of this on power rates?

Marcotte: I’m not a politician, and I’m sure someone else would be more careful, but I think I would go to just keep sticking to the facts and figures.

If you look at the average electricity rate for consumers, the price at the home meter in every single province and territory, you’ll see that Ontario and Quebec have the lowest rates, somewhere about eight, nine, 10, cents a kilowatt hour. So, I find it’s more useful to talk in cents per kilowatt hour, and then you look at other provinces and in the West, many of the provinces have rates closer to 16,17, 18,19 cents a kilowatt hour, even more so in the north or in the territories.

  • 0116 IBEW 30
    0116 IBEW 30
  • 0115 SaskPower SASPO_2817_PLT_Recruitment_DIVERSITY
    0115 SaskPower SASPO_2817_PLT_Recruitment_DIVERSITY
  • 0114 Prospera Bold Vision
    0114 Prospera Bold Vision
  • 0113 Miller Epic Cinematic Hollywood trailer
    0113 Miller Epic Cinematic Hollywood trailer
  • 0111 2026 SK Oil Show booth promo 01
    0111 2026 SK Oil Show booth promo 01
  • 0085 Turnbull snow removal call office
    0085 Turnbull snow removal call office
  • 0102 Lori Carr Coal Extended
    0102 Lori Carr Coal Extended
  • 0100 Turnbull Project Manager
    0100 Turnbull Project Manager
  • 0099 Mryglod Steel 1080p
    0099 Mryglod Steel 1080p
  • 0097 Eagle Sky Ventures LTD
    0097 Eagle Sky Ventures LTD
  • 0095 Fast Trucking nearly 70 years good at it
    0095 Fast Trucking nearly 70 years good at it
  • 0092 Turnbull projects big and small
    0092 Turnbull projects big and small
  • 0046 City of Estevan This is Estevan Teaser
    0046 City of Estevan This is Estevan Teaser
  • 0077 Caprice Resources Stand Up For Free Speech
    0077 Caprice Resources Stand Up For Free Speech
  • 0061 SIMSA 2024 For Sask Buy Sask
    0061 SIMSA 2024 For Sask Buy Sask
  • 0051 JML Hiring Pumpjack assembly
    0051 JML Hiring Pumpjack assembly
  • 0049 Scotsburn Dental soft guitar
    0049 Scotsburn Dental soft guitar
  • 0041 DEEP Since 2018 now we are going to build
    0041 DEEP Since 2018 now we are going to build
  • 0032 IWS Summer hiring rock trailer music
  • 0022 Grimes winter hiring
  • 0021 OSY Rentals S8 Promo
  • 0018 IWS Hiring Royal Summer
  • 0013 Panther Drilling PO ad 03 top drive rigs
  • 0002 gilliss casing services
    0002 gilliss casing services
  • 9002 Pipeline Online 30 sec EBEX
    9002 Pipeline Online 30 sec EBEX
  • 9001

 

And so that’s really a function of what kind of choices hydro can be – one of the cheapest, very expensive to build. So you look at any major hydro project, you look at Site C in British Columbia, that was just completed last year, that was $17 billion for one gigawatt, or 1,000 megawatts, the size of one CANDU reactor, $17 billion, 17 years, and it flooded 5500 hectares of land. That’s an incredible impact.

BC Hydro’s Site C Dam cost $17 billion and is equal in output to just one large-scale reactor. BC Hydro.

 

And so, you say every choice you make, but it’s 100 year asset. That dam, that site will be producing electricity 80, 90, 100 years from now. So, when you average it out over the total electricity produced over its expected lifetime, you get down to pennies. You get down a few cents per kilowatt hour. And that’s really worth doing.

And nuclear is the same way. Yes, the numbers are large. Everything starts with a ‘B’ in the nuclear business, but what you get are 60, 80, 90, 100 year assets, guaranteed, that are going to produce power day in, day out, and they’re going to produce huge baseload power. So it means you only need a couple of stations to run a large province like Ontario. Those three stations are producing 50 per cent of all the electricity that 17 million people consume. It’s a lot of electricity.

So we’re down to, if you looked at last year’s rates for OPG and Bruce Power, they were paid about nine and a half to 10 and a half cents per kilowatt hour. That was how much they were paid for the electricity they produced. So that’s the all-in cost of generating it. It’s the money put aside for the eventual decommissioning of the plants. It was profit they made. All of that is all rolled into that nine and a half to 10 and a half cents.

  • 0116 IBEW 30
    0116 IBEW 30
  • 0115 SaskPower SASPO_2817_PLT_Recruitment_DIVERSITY
    0115 SaskPower SASPO_2817_PLT_Recruitment_DIVERSITY
  • 0114 Prospera Bold Vision
    0114 Prospera Bold Vision
  • 0113 Miller Epic Cinematic Hollywood trailer
    0113 Miller Epic Cinematic Hollywood trailer
  • 0111 2026 SK Oil Show booth promo 01
    0111 2026 SK Oil Show booth promo 01
  • 0085 Turnbull snow removal call office
    0085 Turnbull snow removal call office
  • 0102 Lori Carr Coal Extended
    0102 Lori Carr Coal Extended
  • 0100 Turnbull Project Manager
    0100 Turnbull Project Manager
  • 0099 Mryglod Steel 1080p
    0099 Mryglod Steel 1080p
  • 0097 Eagle Sky Ventures LTD
    0097 Eagle Sky Ventures LTD
  • 0095 Fast Trucking nearly 70 years good at it
    0095 Fast Trucking nearly 70 years good at it
  • 0092 Turnbull projects big and small
    0092 Turnbull projects big and small
  • 0046 City of Estevan This is Estevan Teaser
    0046 City of Estevan This is Estevan Teaser
  • 0077 Caprice Resources Stand Up For Free Speech
    0077 Caprice Resources Stand Up For Free Speech
  • 0061 SIMSA 2024 For Sask Buy Sask
    0061 SIMSA 2024 For Sask Buy Sask
  • 0051 JML Hiring Pumpjack assembly
    0051 JML Hiring Pumpjack assembly
  • 0049 Scotsburn Dental soft guitar
    0049 Scotsburn Dental soft guitar
  • 0041 DEEP Since 2018 now we are going to build
    0041 DEEP Since 2018 now we are going to build
  • 0032 IWS Summer hiring rock trailer music
  • 0022 Grimes winter hiring
  • 0021 OSY Rentals S8 Promo
  • 0018 IWS Hiring Royal Summer
  • 0013 Panther Drilling PO ad 03 top drive rigs
  • 0002 gilliss casing services
    0002 gilliss casing services
  • 9002 Pipeline Online 30 sec EBEX
    9002 Pipeline Online 30 sec EBEX
  • 9001

 

So yes, they the rates do have to go up. The Ontario Energy Board is reviewing the increase in rates, and that increases to help pay for those refurbishments or any new nuclear in the future.

But of course, the over the course of time, that pays for itself, right? So once those stations are up and running, they’re very profitable. They’re feeding back into the grid. And your long-term rates, I don’t think, really materially change. So they’ll have to go up for a while as you pay for new investments. But I can’t, I wouldn’t know how to comment on anything beyond that.

But I think when you look at it on a life cycle basis, nuclear, like hydro, gives you really, really quite clean baseload power that costs cents per kilowatt hour. So it’s really the way to go.

Zinchuk: I want to touch on a couple numbers of both you brought up here, one of which was the price of the four SMRs for Darlington being $21 billion, which is almost precisely entire Saskatchewan provincial budget for 2025, and Bronwyn’s been at the cabinet table, passing those budgets. Okay, and that’s for building 1,200 megawatts. Whereas if you built one large reactor, you said about $10 billion for 1000 megawatts.

Marcotte: It would be some number in that general ballpark.

  • 0116 IBEW 30
    0116 IBEW 30
  • 0115 SaskPower SASPO_2817_PLT_Recruitment_DIVERSITY
    0115 SaskPower SASPO_2817_PLT_Recruitment_DIVERSITY
  • 0114 Prospera Bold Vision
    0114 Prospera Bold Vision
  • 0113 Miller Epic Cinematic Hollywood trailer
    0113 Miller Epic Cinematic Hollywood trailer
  • 0111 2026 SK Oil Show booth promo 01
    0111 2026 SK Oil Show booth promo 01
  • 0085 Turnbull snow removal call office
    0085 Turnbull snow removal call office
  • 0102 Lori Carr Coal Extended
    0102 Lori Carr Coal Extended
  • 0100 Turnbull Project Manager
    0100 Turnbull Project Manager
  • 0099 Mryglod Steel 1080p
    0099 Mryglod Steel 1080p
  • 0097 Eagle Sky Ventures LTD
    0097 Eagle Sky Ventures LTD
  • 0095 Fast Trucking nearly 70 years good at it
    0095 Fast Trucking nearly 70 years good at it
  • 0092 Turnbull projects big and small
    0092 Turnbull projects big and small
  • 0046 City of Estevan This is Estevan Teaser
    0046 City of Estevan This is Estevan Teaser
  • 0077 Caprice Resources Stand Up For Free Speech
    0077 Caprice Resources Stand Up For Free Speech
  • 0061 SIMSA 2024 For Sask Buy Sask
    0061 SIMSA 2024 For Sask Buy Sask
  • 0051 JML Hiring Pumpjack assembly
    0051 JML Hiring Pumpjack assembly
  • 0049 Scotsburn Dental soft guitar
    0049 Scotsburn Dental soft guitar
  • 0041 DEEP Since 2018 now we are going to build
    0041 DEEP Since 2018 now we are going to build
  • 0032 IWS Summer hiring rock trailer music
  • 0022 Grimes winter hiring
  • 0021 OSY Rentals S8 Promo
  • 0018 IWS Hiring Royal Summer
  • 0013 Panther Drilling PO ad 03 top drive rigs
  • 0002 gilliss casing services
    0002 gilliss casing services
  • 9002 Pipeline Online 30 sec EBEX
    9002 Pipeline Online 30 sec EBEX
  • 9001

 

Zinchuk: I mean, you’re getting a lot more bang for the buck if you go off the economies of scale of building large which is one of the reasons why, I suspect, Saskatchewan might punt on small ones and just build large ones.

The other thing is, you mentioned years. So you know, if people talk about dams having a cycle of 100 years, I don’t think any large dam in North America is going to be removed after 100 years. It may be refurbished, but I don’t think anything’s gonna get removed after 100 years, because what do you going to do, flush it downstream? And it’s not going to happen.

So the timeline that Ontario Power Generation said for their Wesleyville project, which could be 10,000 megawatts, which is three times the typical daily output for Saskatchewan. They said for each unit, three years of site preparation, seven years of construction, 70 years of operation, and 42 years of decommissioning after it turns off, per unit. And if they build the number of units they’re talking about there, it could be to 2160, before the last person walks off that site. I mean, that’s almost as long as Canada has been a country.

Marcotte: It sounds like a Star Trek stardate, when you put it that way, 2160.

Zinchuk: Yeah, it does. But, we’re talking here generational stuff.

Marcotte: Correct

  • 0116 IBEW 30
    0116 IBEW 30
  • 0115 SaskPower SASPO_2817_PLT_Recruitment_DIVERSITY
    0115 SaskPower SASPO_2817_PLT_Recruitment_DIVERSITY
  • 0114 Prospera Bold Vision
    0114 Prospera Bold Vision
  • 0113 Miller Epic Cinematic Hollywood trailer
    0113 Miller Epic Cinematic Hollywood trailer
  • 0111 2026 SK Oil Show booth promo 01
    0111 2026 SK Oil Show booth promo 01
  • 0085 Turnbull snow removal call office
    0085 Turnbull snow removal call office
  • 0102 Lori Carr Coal Extended
    0102 Lori Carr Coal Extended
  • 0100 Turnbull Project Manager
    0100 Turnbull Project Manager
  • 0099 Mryglod Steel 1080p
    0099 Mryglod Steel 1080p
  • 0097 Eagle Sky Ventures LTD
    0097 Eagle Sky Ventures LTD
  • 0095 Fast Trucking nearly 70 years good at it
    0095 Fast Trucking nearly 70 years good at it
  • 0092 Turnbull projects big and small
    0092 Turnbull projects big and small
  • 0046 City of Estevan This is Estevan Teaser
    0046 City of Estevan This is Estevan Teaser
  • 0077 Caprice Resources Stand Up For Free Speech
    0077 Caprice Resources Stand Up For Free Speech
  • 0061 SIMSA 2024 For Sask Buy Sask
    0061 SIMSA 2024 For Sask Buy Sask
  • 0051 JML Hiring Pumpjack assembly
    0051 JML Hiring Pumpjack assembly
  • 0049 Scotsburn Dental soft guitar
    0049 Scotsburn Dental soft guitar
  • 0041 DEEP Since 2018 now we are going to build
    0041 DEEP Since 2018 now we are going to build
  • 0032 IWS Summer hiring rock trailer music
  • 0022 Grimes winter hiring
  • 0021 OSY Rentals S8 Promo
  • 0018 IWS Hiring Royal Summer
  • 0013 Panther Drilling PO ad 03 top drive rigs
  • 0002 gilliss casing services
    0002 gilliss casing services
  • 9002 Pipeline Online 30 sec EBEX
    9002 Pipeline Online 30 sec EBEX
  • 9001

 

Zinchuk: This isn’t like a natural gas plant. I’ve attended the opening one of these, and they say, oh, yeah, we’re expecting 25-30 years, and that’ll be it, like, what are they going to rebuild it then? Or, or is it just done in 30 years? I don’t know. But for nuclear, obviously, we’ve done rebuilds for OPG and for Bruce. You know, this is a forever thing that we’re talking about.

Marcotte: Yeah, and I think that’s actually part of it’s part of its charm, part of the magic.

When the CANDU stations were originally built, they were estimated to have a 30 year useful life. And very quickly, we realized, wow, with a with a relatively modest cost for refurbishment, compared to new, at its 30 year mark, you could actually take it apart and for about a quarter of the cost of building new one, you basically get a brand new station. And you had run it for another 30 years.

We believe that we would actually do second refurbishments and run it for a third 30 year period. The concrete will still be good, almost certainly, in most stations.

So the opportunities are tremendous, and that’s what all utilities are actually planning for in the US, same sort of thing. They’re now getting some of their reactors being licensed for 60, 80, even up to 90 years. You’ll see that coming. 80 is not unusual.

So you’re right, Brian, these are very long-lived assets, and I think that’s a good thing, because they’re producing tremendous amounts of power, 24/7 rain or shine, doesn’t matter what temperature it is, doesn’t matter what’s going on outside. They’re producing power that people can count on. And I think that’s the fundamental thing that that really makes a big difference.

 

  • 0116 IBEW 30
    0116 IBEW 30
  • 0115 SaskPower SASPO_2817_PLT_Recruitment_DIVERSITY
    0115 SaskPower SASPO_2817_PLT_Recruitment_DIVERSITY
  • 0114 Prospera Bold Vision
    0114 Prospera Bold Vision
  • 0113 Miller Epic Cinematic Hollywood trailer
    0113 Miller Epic Cinematic Hollywood trailer
  • 0111 2026 SK Oil Show booth promo 01
    0111 2026 SK Oil Show booth promo 01
  • 0085 Turnbull snow removal call office
    0085 Turnbull snow removal call office
  • 0102 Lori Carr Coal Extended
    0102 Lori Carr Coal Extended
  • 0100 Turnbull Project Manager
    0100 Turnbull Project Manager
  • 0099 Mryglod Steel 1080p
    0099 Mryglod Steel 1080p
  • 0097 Eagle Sky Ventures LTD
    0097 Eagle Sky Ventures LTD
  • 0095 Fast Trucking nearly 70 years good at it
    0095 Fast Trucking nearly 70 years good at it
  • 0092 Turnbull projects big and small
    0092 Turnbull projects big and small
  • 0046 City of Estevan This is Estevan Teaser
    0046 City of Estevan This is Estevan Teaser
  • 0077 Caprice Resources Stand Up For Free Speech
    0077 Caprice Resources Stand Up For Free Speech
  • 0061 SIMSA 2024 For Sask Buy Sask
    0061 SIMSA 2024 For Sask Buy Sask
  • 0051 JML Hiring Pumpjack assembly
    0051 JML Hiring Pumpjack assembly
  • 0049 Scotsburn Dental soft guitar
    0049 Scotsburn Dental soft guitar
  • 0041 DEEP Since 2018 now we are going to build
    0041 DEEP Since 2018 now we are going to build
  • 0032 IWS Summer hiring rock trailer music
  • 0022 Grimes winter hiring
  • 0021 OSY Rentals S8 Promo
  • 0018 IWS Hiring Royal Summer
  • 0013 Panther Drilling PO ad 03 top drive rigs
  • 0002 gilliss casing services
    0002 gilliss casing services
  • 9002 Pipeline Online 30 sec EBEX
    9002 Pipeline Online 30 sec EBEX
  • 9001

 

AtkinsRéalis’ Case for CANDU, Part 1: Design and fuel

AtkinsRéalis’ Case for CANDU Part 2: A Canada-wide fleet purchase?