Codette Lake, as see behind the Nipawin Dam, could be a location for large-scale nuclear power generation. SaskPower photo
Working for Saskatoon-based uranium giant Cameco Corporation for eight years provided this former business journalist many insights into the Canadian nuclear industry, along with more homegrown insights into how well-paying jobs have transformed people and communities in northern Saskatchewan.
One of the best trips our communications group at Cameco took was to Port Hope, Ont., home to the Cameco Fuel Services facilities which manufacture CANDU fuel assemblies for the giant Bruce Power complex on the Bruce Peninsula of Lake Huron. These fuel assemblies, formerly made by hand, are now assembled by robots, and fascinating to observe.
There are two aspects to Cameco Fuel Services in Port Hope, now a robust profit centre within the company. One is making the ceramic natural (non enriched) fuel pellets that those robots assemble into fuel bundles. The other major role of Cameco Fuel Services is to manufacture uranium hexafluoride which is the intermediate chemical step before this uranium is enriched at American centrifuge enrichment facilities to the 5 or 6 per cent enrichment level used in large power reactors owned by American utilities.
(Editor’s note: the proposed Ontario Power Generation New Nuclear Wesleyville Project is just eight kilometres west of Cameco’s Port Hope facilities, along the north shore of Lake Ontario.)
As Pipeline Online editor Brian Zinchuk notes, the critical decision for future large reactors in Canada is whether the next generation of reactors in Canada will be an unproven, updated CANDU design or an enriched fuel reactor such as the Westinghouse AP-1000 which appears to be a major part of the American nuclear renaissance.
During the Feb.13 Cameco fourth quarter and 2025 full year conference call with investors, CEO Tim Gitzel cut short his participation to jet off to Washington D.C. Westinghouse, now 49 per cent owned by Cameco, has a memorandum of understanding with the U.S. government to spend billions on 10 to 12 AP-1000s (to be built in pairs in exchange for a 10 per cent U.S. government equity in these new power plants). It is a very large potential development, so no wonder the Cameco CEO got on a plane on short notice.
The investment in Westinghouse is already paying off big for Cameco as utilities upgrade or “up rate” the output of their reactors, Cameco president and chief operating officer Grant Isaac told analysts Friday it is also paying off for partner Brookfield Asset Management, which bought the other 51 per cent of Westinghouse several years back.
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So Canada’s nuclear future looks promising indeed. As Mr. Zinchuk noted last week, nuclear is being contemplated at multiple sites in Ontario, Alberta and now Saskatchewan.
On my last trip to Port Hope nearly a decade ago, Cameco staff were given a tour of the giant Darlington reactors 50 or so kilometres from Port Hope. I got to see the steam generators and turbines, plus the pools of water where used fuel bundles cool down.
Other members of our tour saw a full mock-up the reactors which led, 10 years later, to all three Darlington reactors refurbished on time and on budget, once again providing clean baseload power to Ontario.
FILE – Reactors for Unit 3 and 4 sit at Georgia Power’s Plant Vogtle nuclear power plant on Jan. 20, 2023, in Waynesboro, Ga., with the cooling towers of older Units 1 and 2 billowing steam in the background. Company officials announced Wednesday, May 24, 2023, that Unit 3 would reach full power in coming days, after years of delays and billions in cost overruns. (AP Photo/John Bazemore)
My dumb question during the tour was to ask where were the cooling towers? The answer is simple. Darlington uses the cold depths of Lake Ontario for cooling. No cooling tower is necessary. The same story applies at Pickering, also on Lake Ontario, and also Bruce Power, adjacent to Lake Huron.
That brings us to Saskatchewan, where there is no such vast expanse of cold deep water like is found within a Great Lake.
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So if the small modular reactors could be cooled as the coal plants are currently at Coronach, Boundary Dam or even on the banks of Lake Diefenbaker, these existing small cooling dams do not meet the cooling needs of two nuclear plants producing more than a gigawatt each.
This is the latest word from the Moe government which wants SaskPower to consider both small modular reactors (300 megawatts) and big nuclear, the size of an AP1000.
I know it is presumptuous to tell SaskPower where to look for siting two such large reactors, but the utility has two large lakes behind its two robust hydropower stations on the Saskatchewan River. One is the E.B. Campbell station which created a reservoir known as Tobin Lake, famous for its Pike Festival.
The other reservoir is known as Codette Lake and it is the reservoir behind the Nipawin Dam, a three turbine power station completed in the mid 1980s. Both hydroelectric dams are bolstered by their intertie with Manitoba Hydro, which owns the largest Saskatchewan River hydro plant at Grand Rapids.
So why pick Codette Lake or Tobin Lake to situate a large nuclear power plant complex? Unlike Lake Diefenbaker, which is on the South Saskatchewan branch only, and whose levels depend on glacier melts now in question as climate change advances, the two big SaskPower hydro dams are fed by both the south and north branches of the river.
And while two large nuclear reactors, without benefit of a deep, cold Great Lake might require cooling towers, the volume of water at Codette Lake, for example, could well be sufficient without impacting recreational uses such as sport fishing and boating.
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As an aside, SaskPower made a big mistake when it flooded the river valley in the early 1960s for Tobin Lake but did not remove the felled trees. Those logs became a navigational hazard on Tobin Lake for decades. The same mistake was not made on Codette Lake. The trees and logs from this section of river valley were taken away. There were sawmills and a functioning pulp mill in Prince Albert during that era so those felled trees were not wasted.
So while if is presumptuous of me to suggest to the inhabitants of Nipawin that they should welcome the idea of two large nuclear reactors 10 kilometres south of town, there is a strong economic impetus to do so.
For Nipawin, Carrot River, Tisdale and Melfort, nuclear plant employment would become, by far, the highest paid, highest skilled employment in the region. (Remember: Homer Simpson isn’t real.)
Nuclear plant wages would greatly dwarf wage levels at the canola crushing facility in Nipawin or other agricultural-related businesses.
Obviously, it is a long road to Saskatchewan becoming a nuclear power powerhouse. Site studies, environmental impact studies and sociological impacts will need to be assessed.
SaskPower itself needs to study if it can go it alone on nuclear power or needs to find a pension fund or a Brookfield Asset Management or a Cameco to invest in this expensive infrastructure.
There also needs to be greater public knowledge and acceptance of the idea that renewables such as wind and solar will not alone give Saskatchewan a clean energy future unless billions get spent on gigawatt-level battery storage.
That battery technology could rival the price of new nuclear.
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Without getting capital P political, Saskatchewan also needs the Official Opposition NDP to get serious about the financial situation of our Crowns. Yes, the Saskatchewan Party pretended in the fall session that the cost of power wasn’t going to rise. However, the grid is in poor shape and a big wind storm could do serious damage to 80-year-old wooden power poles.
And while new natural gas generation is cleaner than coal, it appears lignite coal plant refurbishment is in the cards, like it or not.
So yes, our electricity is not the cheapest or cleanest in Canada, but the January cold snap showed it is reliable.
By the way: The NDP does way better on credibility on our ongoing health care crisis than on critiquing how well SaskPower is managed and whether two per cent price hikes are reasonable.
I know Mr. Zinchuk’s reader base is more the oil patch than the canola oil patch, but I would welcome feedback from the northeast agricultural sector on what their reaction would be to being home to the Saskatchewan equivalent of the Darlington nuclear power complex.
And yes, I am a true believer that baseload nuclear power is safe and cost effective if done right.
Darlington and Bruce Power in Ontario prove the business model.
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