Brian Zinchuk is editor and owner of Pipeline Online
Premier Scott Moe speaking about SMRs and uranium development. Facebook/Scott Moe Facebook page
REGINA, ESTEVAN – Premier Scott Moe dropped a bombshell during his speech to the Saskatchewan Chamber of Commerce Food, Fuel and Fertilizer Global Summit in Regina on May 6. He kinda sorta but not officially announced the location of Saskatchewan’s first small modular reactors (SMRs).
Moe said, “It will quite likely be in the Estevan area,” if the province decides to go ahead with the development of a small modular reactor. He added, “but I don’t think that’s been announced yet.”
After studying two regions, the Estevan and Elbow regions, it’s come down to Estevan, currently the site of two of the provinces three coal-fired power plants. Elbow is on a larger body of water, Lake Diefenbaker. It is more central to Regina, Saskatoon, Moose Jaw, and much of the industrial core including most potash mines, but it has little in the way of its own industrial base.
A coal-fired power generating area for many decades, Estevan has a substantial industrial base and workforce, as well as existing electrical grid connections, and hundreds of workers who have spent decades running power stations.
The government and SaskPower have been coy about firmly saying at this time that they will for sure be building nuclear reactors, continually citing 2029 as the “Final investment decision to build an SMR.”
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The caginess centres around the fact federal licenses are still required before the province can definitively say it’s going to build reactors.
According to SaskPower, those permits from the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) include:
-
- a Licence to Prepare the Site
- a Licence to Construct an SMR
- a Licence to Operate an SMR
As such, Moe’s statement was indicative, if not definitive.
And the number of reactors has become fuzzier as time goes on. When then-Minister of Crown Investments Corp and SaskPower Don Morgan first made the announcement in early 2022, he said SaskPower was looking at building four GE-Hitachi BWRX-300 reactors, each 300 megawatts in electrical capacity. The total would almost, but not quite, be enough to replace SaskPower’s current 1,389 megawatts of unabated coal generation capacity.
But by August of 2023, Morgan was musing about as many as nine small modular reactors could be built in Saskatchewan. And the next week, Premier Scott Moe floated the idea that Saskatchewan could end up building 1,000 megawatt reactors, much larger than the SMR-class initially announced. But consistently, the number discussed has been at least two SMRs. And Morgan had said repeatedly the cost could be between $3 and $5 billion a piece, although Ontario officials suggested back in 2022 the cost could be much lower.
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And Ontario is going to find out, because it is currently building the first of four reactors at the Darlington New Nuclear site, part of the Darlington Nuclear Generating Station on Lake Ontario, east of Toronto. SaskPower is partnering with Ontario Power Generation and following its lead.
Indeed, there’s been a lot of partnerships going on, with the most recent being announced just last week, with Alberta and Saskatchewan signing an MOU on nuclear advancement. That announcement came just days after SaskPower joined the CANDU Owners Group.
Premier Scott Moe and CEO of Cameco Tim Giztel. Facebook/Scott Moe Facebook page
At the summit, Moe shared the stage with uranium-producer Cameco’s CEO Tim Gitzel. Last year Cameco closed its deal to purchase 49 per cent of Westinghouse, a nuclear reactor company which has supplied many of the reactors used by the United States navy for Nimitz-class aircraft carriers and much of the submarine fleet over the past 70 years, as well as for civilian power generation. The province recently funded the Saskatchewan Research Council’s efforts to produce a 5 megawatt Westinghouse eVinci microreactor.
As for a specific site, the initial considerations in southeast Saskatchewan included the Alameda Reservoir, Boundary Dam Reservoir, and Rafferty Reservoir. Since then the site selection has largely excluded Alameda. The area around Boundary Dam still under consideration has largely been mined out already, and thus is either disturbed ground or the crowded site of the existing Boundary Dam Power Station. That leaves areas along the north and south shores of the southeast end of Rafferty, with the colour coding on the map heavily indicated the north side of Rafferty, between the dam and south of Macoun.
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Reaction
Estevan Mayor Roy Ludwig said by email, “I was in the room when the premier alluded to Estevan getting the SMRs. We couldn’t be happier! Great news!”
NDP Energy and SaskPower Critic Aleana Young said in a scrum, “I was listening closely to the previous comments, obviously, and I’m unclear on whether that was a formal announcement or not. Certainly the community of Estevan will be thrilled. It’s a community that’s been dealing with a huge amount of economic uncertainty with, thanks, actually, to Mr. Harper, that pending phase out of coal, and the implications for Westmoreland and Boundary Dam 3, 4, 5 and 6.
“If the Premier is making these promises, I suppose, I hope they’re true for the community of Estevan. And I also think it points to some of the concerns that we’ve raised around whether or not these timelines and commitments that SaskPower is making publicly, are real.”
Estevan MLA and Minister of Highways Lori Carr said by phone, “I think this is really exciting news. Because if we are going to be moving towards small modular reactors in the province, I would like them in my backyard, and to be able to have that workforce working in the community of Estevan.
“Of course, right now we’re talking all of the above, as far as power production goes, until we can get to that point. But it gives people the certainty that industry will be here, power production will be here. It gives people an opportunity to plan – do I need to get retrained? What does that look like?
“For the province, once that final decision is made, being a part of a setting up the right programming to ensure that training is done, and that we can keep those people that really do like our community, and don’t want to go anywhere, to be able to know that there will be something else for them.”
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The provincial government still has to get approval from the federal government to go ahead with building any reactors. Getting such license approval includes lengthy engagement with the community. Carr noted, “We’ve been engaging. We’ve been having stakeholder meetings. We’ve had outreach with communities, lots of online engagement, and that’s all part of the process is, is getting that feedback from stakeholders, for lack of a better term, whether you’re a citizen living in the community, someone that might be partaking in building it, someone that might be working there. So, all of that work has been going on over the past couple of years, which leads to the submission for hopefully Estevan becoming the site.”
Asked why Estevan instead of Elbow, Carr, who represents Estevan, said, “I can guess. Logically thinking we have, in Estevan, infrastructure. Now I do understand that some new infrastructure will need to be built. Things will need to be upgraded, if this does go ahead. But we have the infrastructure in place, we have professionals in place, we have a workforce that is already here, people that can transition over to that new way of producing power down the road. So, really, in my mind, it’s a no brainer as to where it should go.”
SaskPower has previously said the workforce could be as high as 1,400 people to build a reactor. That would be very similar to the peak workforce level when the Boundary Dam Unit 3 Integrated Carbon Capture and Storage Project was built between 2011 and 2014. However, that occurred at a time when the oil industry in and around Estevan, which compounded issues like housing shortage. The oil activity and workforce has dramatically diminished in the 10 years since then. And if conventional coal-fired power generation does indeed end by the end of 2029, that means there will be hundreds of coal miners out of work just as the reactor construction is anticipated to start.
Carr said of the SMR developments, “I think you see Saskatchewan Party government is working really hard to ensure that we do have an economy and Estevan, and is fighting for facilities and businesses to actually be able to move there. And this would be just one step in that direction.”
Pipeline Online provides the most in-depth coverage of Saskatchewan’s energy sector. No other media comes even close. Check each morning for the top story posted at 7 a.m.
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