Carl Marcotte, senior vice-president, Marketing & Business Development at CANDU Energy, in Saskatoon on Sept. 29. Photo by Brian Zinchuk
SASKATOON – There are two leading competitors to provide the two large, 1000-megawatt scale nuclear reactors the Government of Saskatchewan said on Sept. 29 they intend on building. One of those competitors is AtkinsRéalis, which holds the intellectual property rights to the Canadian designed CANDU reactor, this country’s organic reactor design that is used in all Canadian nuclear power generating units.
AtkinsRealis was formerly known as SNC-Lavalin. It is also closely linked with an organization known as Canadians for CANDU.
AtkinsRéalis has been offering the 950 megawatt MONARK, a new design derived from existing designs. However, as this interview reveals, they are also now offering a second design, the smaller EC6, which is fundamentally similar to the reactors at the recently refurbished Darlington Nuclear Generating Station in Ontario, operated by Ontario Power Generation (OPG). The EC6 is 750 megawatts in capacity, meaning it would take three of these units to achieve Saskatchewan’s stated goal of 2,000 megawatts of large-scale nuclear generating capacity in northwest Saskatchewan, as opposed to two units.
Seated near the front was Carl Marcotte, senior vice-president, Marketing & Business Development at CANDU Energy. Pipeline Online spoke with him immediately after the announcement. (Marcotte has been a guest on the Pipeline Online Podcast, seen here)
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Here’s the conversation with Marcotte, right after the Saskatoon announcement on Sept. 29:
Pipeline Online
So, what are your thoughts in today’s announcement? Because this is a big deal.
Carl Marcotte
This is a really big deal. This is a great announcement today. The province has been working diligently for years, and we’ve been involved behind the scenes, helping, working with companies, developing the supply chain, working with Indigenous nations to get them excited and get them prepped to be ready to be part of it. And so, the province, I think, is doing things in just the right sequence, step by step, building it up right? Because it’s a big investment, as the premier said. It’s 80, 90 year assets you’re building, so you got to get it right, and it has to be flexible. It has to build on Saskatchewan’s strengths, and I think that’s what the province is doing.
Pipeline Online
So, can you give us any idea of a price for a MONARK?
Carl Marcotte
So it’s hard to give a price. So as you can imagine, it’s about a two-year process to build up an estimate of what a plant like this costs, because so much of it is about local conditions. I always like to say, if you Google it, and you heard one of the other reporters ask, so per megawatt, per 1000 megawatts, there’s all kinds of industry price points: $5 million per megawatt, or $24 million, and everything in between. That sort of translates into $7 or $8 billion for a small plant, $15 billion for a really big plant. So those are the big, rough, round range of numbers. So this really big numbers, but the work to do, the cost estimate, takes a couple of years. So it’s hard to know. It really depends on what you what features what size all this?
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Pipeline Online
The question I asked the other gentleman, “If that premier calls you up tomorrow, says, ‘Go for it….’”
Carl Marcotte
Yep.
Pipeline Online
How long until the first electron hits the grid?
Carl Marcotte
The most important thing is to get the planning right and the consultation with all the affected parties. And first and foremost, that means Indigenous communities. So the CNSE will mandate a duty to consult with Indigenous communities first and foremost, and that process can take, I’ve seen it take anywhere from two to four years, roughly, depends on what you’re doing. And that’s where you get all of the ideas, all of the benefit agreements, all of the opportunities to participate. And for First Nations or Indigenous communities, Métis Nation as well, to shape the project.
That’s really important. Do we want a little bit of this, a little bit of that? Where do we site it? How do we do it? All of those elements, and then you come up with this initial project description. It takes about a year or two to do it right, and then your project is kind of ready to go.
So you start doing the environmental work, the detailed planning, the detailed site specifications, exactly how it’ll be placed, how much water is used, how it works, all that good stuff. So you’re looking at probably a planning period that is in total, roughly four to six years, that is really good planning that involves everybody that’s going to be affected, and then you’re looking at about a five-year build time.
Pipeline Online
Only five years?
Carl Marcotte
About five years, absolutely.
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Pipeline Online
That sounds incredibly short for a large one.
Carl Marcotte
Five to six, depending on what kind you’re talking about. That’s our experience at CANDU. SMRs can be a little bit faster. There’s a little bit less to them, but five to six is exactly what we’re planning for, for both our EC6, which is a 750 megawatt model, and the MONARK, which is a 950 megawatt model, just like what we have at Darlington today.
Pipeline Online
Okay, so let’s talk about that. Yeah. Are you talking to the province about the EC6, which has been built? Many of them have been built…
Carl Marcotte
Yep.
Pipeline Online
Or the MONARK, which has not been built, and everyone is scared shitless about building something that you’d be the first of kind.
Carl Marcotte
So I’ll touch on that right away. The MONARK actually uses is a slightly different plant layout, but it uses the proven core of the Darlington existing reactors. Period. So when we build a four-pack MONARK, which is what we hope we’re going to be building in Ontario very soon, that is essentially exactly the same as the current Darlington refurbished reactor that was built in the 90s and just finished refurbishment on time and on budget. It’s the exact same core. It’s the same nuclear steam plant inside those containment domes, and it’s a slightly different plant, way able to get a little more power out of it. So it’s updated for today’s codes and standards, but it is the tried and true large CANDU that’s been running for 30 years.
So that’s what we’re building. That’s what we’re calling MONARK, and the province would have the choice of building one of these large four packs, or EC6s in single, twin, or you know three or four, whatever you want, whatever you want to build. It’s a great opportunity for flexibility.
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Pipeline Online
Could you put numbers on EC6 versus MONARK for power generation?
Carl Marcotte
Power generation out of the MONARK gets in about 950 (megawatts) per reactor and 750 for an EC6. The number of fuel channels, the core of the reactor is just a little bit smaller in an EC6.
Pipeline Online
Now you said about Ontario, are you referring to Bruce C? Are you talking about Wesleyville?
Carl Marcotte
Both.
So the idea with that Wesleyville and Bruce C could be the same reactor design, which would make a lot of sense.
It’s the same for the overseas opportunities. We’re working very diligently in places like Poland and Turkey. The premier mentioned. In fact, we met with the premier there. There’s all kinds of great opportunities, Southeast Asia as well, where they really see Canada as a great partner. If you’re a country that’s new to nuclear, just like a jurisdiction in Canada that’s new to nuclear, you’re not just buying from a company; you’re buying from an entire ecosystem of dozens, if not hundreds, of companies, and you want to partner with a government that’s going to be there to support you. And the CNSE, which is such a world-renowned regulator, they’re viewed as the best of the best.
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Pipeline Online
I asked Tim Gitzel this because it’s a little bit different than CANDU. Most people know the CANDU. Can you talk about the fuel cycle? Because yeah, as opposed to going enrichment, you explain basically from mine to reactor.
Carl Marcotte
Sure. The way it works, and this was something that a Diefenbaker government actually mandated way back in the late 50s when the scientists first started working on how we were going to use nuclear technology for peaceful, civil purposes.
What they were told was: make sure you can build a reactor with components made in Canada. Don’t import big, large components that we don’t make here, and design the reactor so that it runs on natural uranium. We have a huge abundance of that. Let’s make sure we’re using that, and we don’t have to enrich uranium.
So that was the mandate, and that’s why the CANDU’s were developed the way they were, is that they run on natural uranium.
And what that means is it comes out of the ground in Saskatchewan, goes for a first level of processing in northern Ontario, and then final fuel manufacturing outside Toronto or Port Hope, where Cameco was based.
And so basically, we like to joke that CANDUs kind of burn dirt. We don’t do a whole lot to that uranium other than clean it up and package it, and then it goes right into the reactor. And it’s the only reactor design in the world like that. So really, it’s cheaper than enriched fuel reactors, and it’s much simpler, and it doesn’t have to leave our borders.
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Pipeline Online
I didn’t get a chance to ask this during the question thing, but what do you think the possibility, and maybe you can’t answer this, that Bruce could end up being the company contracted to actually operate these for Saskatchewan?
Carl Marcotte
So I think what’s really important is SaskPower is a great utility, and to any utility that wants to change and evolve into becoming a nuclear utility has to do so many different things.
SaskPower is doing all of that, and they’re getting really good advice from those that are already really good at it. And Bruce is, and Bruce and OPG are obviously excellent utilities that have an amazing track record. So they’re both great partners to learn from. And so SaskPower is doing the right thing, which is to pull in their expertise on a consulting kind of basis, and then eventually, what that can mean is you could have all kinds of different partnerships and legal structures for how the assets are actually owned, how they’re run. The province could have a partial ownership, and the private sector could have a partial ownership. You can set it up under a PPA (power purchase agreement). SaskPower could own it all.
You’ve got four or five good permutations and combinations that are all equally attractive and interesting, and it’s going to depend on equity proposals and who wants to do the financing and all that sort of stuff.
I think Bruce would be a great partner here. They don’t have to run it. SaskPower can do that themselves. They’ll learn to be able to do it and be just a great nuclear utility as well.
So it’s just a question of choices over the next couple of years, I would say.
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