In depth with the minister on Saskatchewan First Energy Security Strategy and Supply Plan

 

SASKATOON – On Oct. 20, Minister of Crown Investments Corp. Jeremy Harrison presented the Saskatchewan First Energy Security Strategy and Supply Plan. Pipeline Online spoke to the minister afterwards to dig a little deeper into what exactly it all means, as Saskatchewan is getting serious about nuclear power generation, but using coal to get there.

Harrison said, “This is the formal document that will be guiding our policy going forward. I have talked about it, and we have made decisions on elements of the plan, but this is kind of the full plan, and people can see all that goes together with that. It will be nuclear, it will be coal, it will be transmission. And really how that all fits together within the matrix of reliable, affordable energy, secure power going forward.”

Natural gas

The plan does not reference additional natural gas-fired power plants beyond the 370 megawatt Aspen Power Station currently under construction near Lanigan and the BHP Jansen site. Asked about that, Harrison said, “I wouldn’t rule out additional gas plants. I think there likely will be additional gas that will come on to the system. It won’t be at the scale of Aspen, but there will be more gas that will be coming onto the system. We’ll likely have some announcements on that in the next few months.”

As for coal, asked if they’re starting to turn wrenches on bringing back to life the retired coal-fired Boundary Dam Power Station Unit 4, Harrison said, “They have. Yeah, the water pumps are actually out for rebuilding right now on Boundary Dam Unit 4. There’s some additional work that’s going on on the boilers, and there’s going to have to be a bit of work on the turbines.

“So that is all underway right now. I’m hoping that we will get it back into service by very early 2026. I had hoped we would be prior to 2026 in December, but I think given some of the procurement lead times, we’re probably going to be into the very start of 2026 before it’ll be operational.

Harrison had noted that $900 million will be spent on the coal refurbishments of the Boundary Dam, Poplar River and Shand Power stations over the next four years.

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Small Modular Reactors

The plan notes two small modular reactors to be constructed near Estevan. Ontario Power Generation is currently building the first four of that model of reactor – the GE Vernova Hitachi BWRX-300, at its Darlington New Nuclear project, east of Toronto. Those four include the “first of a kind” and the subsequent three reactors of that model, with a current price estimate of $20.9 billion. (The entire Saskatchewan provincial budget passed in the spring of 2025 was $21.0 billion).

As Tennessee Valley Authority will be the next up to bat building the BWRX-300, that puts SaskPower to be in the “nth of a kind” position, hopefully gaining the benefits of lower prices due to serial production of this model of reactor. Asked about that and how much it might cost Saskatchewan for these SMRs, Harrison said, “I think that that remains to be seen yet. Right? We’re going through that process at Darlington right now. My understanding, having been on the ground is that things are going well. I mean, there’s an experienced team that is doing the Darlington project, who had done a lot of the refurbishments and rebuilds on the facilities at Darlington, which is where they were doing the life extensions on their nuclear so, we’re going to be paying very close, very close attention on, on the numbers.

“And the other thing I’ve said as well, as far as the time frame for decisions, we’re going to make a decision when it’s ready to be made, which might means it might take a bit longer on the on the SMR project. But I don’t want to speculate, because I don’t know that will be the case. But my point in saying that is that we’re going to make a decision when it’s the right time to make a decision.”

SaskPower’s current timeline has 2029 as the final decision point to go ahead with the first SMR. The project was first announced in 2022, and preliminary work had take place long before that.

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Large reactors

Ever since Cameco and Brookfield Asset Management teamed up to buy Westinghouse 49/51 percentage wise, Premier Scott Moe has been talking about “large reactors,” of the 1,000 megawatt scale. Westinghouse produces the 1,200 megawatt capable AP1000 reactors, the first two of which went online in 2023 and 2024 as Vogtle 3 and 4 in Georgia. They were “the first new nuclear units to be constructed in the U.S. in the last 30 years,” according to Southern Nuclear.

The construction of those went massively over time and budget, in large part due to regulatory changes mid-construction that dramatically impacted the design (the containment building now had to be able to handle the impact of an airliner, a la 9/11). But those two reactors are now online, and the design has been locked down. In a separate interview with Pipeline Online at the conference, Westinghouse Canada president John Gorman riffed off Henry Ford by saying you could have them in any colour you want, as long as it’s black.

 

Alternatively, Atkins-Realis, formerly SNC-Lavalin, has taken over the Atomic Energy of Canada Limited CANDU reactor program. That company, which happened to set up an office in Regina across the street from the SaskPower building in recent years, has also in the same time frame announced its new Monark design, a 1,000 megawatt reactor with a Canadian supply chain and fuel processing. However, it’s very much at the first of a kind stage, with potentially all the issues that could entail.

It was no coincidence that the announcement took place in Cameco’s head office on the top floor of an office tower overlooking the river. Asked if they were considering the AP1000, or if they were looking at any other models, Harrison said, “Well, I would say, you know, as far as large scale, we would keep an open mind on that as well, like we’re not committed to one technology or the other necessarily.

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“You know, my view is that, you know, obviously there’s a real synergy between Westinghouse, Cameco and Saskatchewan. I think that that is something that is real, the fact that there are elements of the Westinghouse supply chain that are actually being developed here in this province as well, is a positive and significant development. So we’re going to keep an open mind.

“But, I mean, there’s six AP1000s that are operational in the world right now, and a number of others that are under construction, meaning there is a supply chain. This is not a one-of-a-kind, only-of-a-kind sort of scenario, right? So, we will have a much clearer picture of what the actual costs are for that. AP, then I think, for competing designs that exist out there.”

 

US/Cameco/Brookfield/Westinghouse deal

The following week, after the conference and this interview, The US Government signed an agreement with Cameco, Brookfield and Westinghouse for $80 billion of reactors.

The Oct. 28 Cameco press release said, “Westinghouse Electric Company, Cameco Corporation and Brookfield Asset Management today announced that the United States Government has entered into a strategic partnership to accelerate the deployment of nuclear power, in accordance with the President’s May 23, 2025 Executive Orders.

“At the center of the new strategic partnership, at least $80 billion of new reactors will be constructed across the United States using Westinghouse nuclear reactor technology. These new reactors will reinvigorate the nuclear power industrial base.”

The press release added, “There are six AP1000 reactors currently setting operational performance and availability records worldwide with 14 additional reactors under construction and five more under contract. The AP1000 technology has been selected for nuclear energy programs in Poland, Ukraine and Bulgaria.”

Notably, that does not even count Canada at this point.

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During his Oct. 30 Premier’s Supper in Estevan, which will be the host of the first two reactors expected to be built, Premier Scott Moe said, “When I look out over the course of the next number of years in this very uncertain world, Saskatchewan has a very a tremendous opportunity in the medium and long term to capture some of the investment that we see flowing around the world. We had the nuclear conference in Saskatchewan just a week ago. Subsequent to that, we see a Saskatchewan company at the very centre of an $80 billion nuclear deal with the United States of America.”

 

Moe added, “We are uniquely positioned because of the decisions we have taken about securing our future and that we’re reliable, affordable power. And that’s going to move as we move into that nuclear sphere as well. An enormous advantage that we have here in Saskatchewan, an incredible uranium resource. And that was another part of that energy security announcement is we are going to be moving into that nuclear sphere as we go forward into the future. We’re looking at SMRs here, in Estevan. Of course, we are looking at large scale nuclear as well, very, very seriously, even probably more seriously given the amazing, remarkable events of the last week, and the central role Cameco and Saskatchewan plays in one of the largest announcements you’ve ever seen from the US government.

Moe clarified, “That is going to be the first eight to 10 reactors. So it’s going to provide price certainty in the nuclear space, which is one thing that the nuclear space needs. And that is coming now. And this is really an exciting time, and Saskatchewan is at the centre.”

Based on those numbers, that, in turn, puts a price of $8 to $10 billion USD each per AP1000. And while no one has been talking hard numbers, in public, at least, that’s the hardest number for a price likely to be seen for a while. Gorman declined to give a price, for instance, but said they’d be less than the Vogtle reactors.

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Coal

It might have seen incongruous, but among the first people to arrive at Harrison’s Oct. 20 announcement were representatives of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and the United Mine Workers of America, the two unions who mine Saskatchewan’s coal and operate the coal-fired power plants. There’s about 1,100 direct coal-related jobs, all in, between the plants and the mines. And since it would take five SMRs to replace the 1,500 megawatt coal fleet, maintaining Saskatchewan’s coal-fired power production as a bridge to nuclear is a key part of the nuclear strategy. It will take many years to build those reactors, whether small or large, and coal will keep the lights on in the interim. (On cold winter nights, coal accounts for up to 44 per cent of Saskatchewan power generation, according to data from SaskPower.)

With regards to the importance of the coal workers attending the announcement, Harrison said, “We’ve built and worked really hard on what that appropriate path forward is. And I would say this, and I’ve said it before publicly, working with IBEW, working with the United Mine Workers, has been really, very, very helpful in government, as far as shaping our path forward in coal, even kind of really understanding the operational considerations that go into life extension. So beyond that, and the city of Estevan as well, they have been, all of them, very, very good partners in working through this process, which has taken some time. We wanted to make sure we were making the right decision for the entire province, but also for those local communities, and I think, I think that’s where we landed. And, you know, I’m pretty excited about it.”

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

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