Canada to Build $15 Billion Modular Nuclear Plant, First in G-7
(Bloomberg) -- Canada’s most populous province greenlit a C$20.9 billion ($15 billion) plan to build a new, smaller kind of nuclear plant, a step forward for a nascent technology that’s been touted as a way to meet surging power demand from artificial intelligence.
Ontario Power Generation Inc. won approval to build the first of four small modular reactors designed by GE Vernova Inc. at a site outside of Toronto, the provincial government said in a statement Thursday. The Darlington project, as it’s known, is expected to be the first to be deployed in a Group of Seven country.
Interest in nuclear is soaring globally as technology companies and governments seek clean, stable energy to meet rising electricity use. Supporters say SMRs, which can be produced in factories and assembled on site, will eventually be cheaper and faster to build than their conventional counterparts. Amazon.com Inc. is among the companies that have inked deals with companies developing the next generation of nuclear technology to secure power for data centers.
But significant hurdles remain. SMRs remain expensive, produce less power than conventional reactors and have barely been deployed on a large scale. Only a handful are in commercial operation, all of them in Russia or China. Less than two years ago, NuScale Power Corp., the first company with US approval for a small reactor design, canceled its flagship project as costs rose.
The first unit at the Darlington site is expected to cost C$6.1 billion, and costs for the subsequent reactors are expected to decline as the company gains expertise, according to the statement Thursday.
The project is the “best, most affordable option to meet the growing demand that we face of electricity,” Stephen Lecce, Ontario’s minister of energy and mines, said at a press conference Thursday at the site. “If we don’t take that strong decisive action, our future, our economy — there could be serious repercussions.”
Government-owned Ontario Power signed an agreement in 2023 with GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy to deploy its BWRX-300 SMR at the Darlington site. The unit has roughly 300 megawatts of capacity, about a third of what traditional reactors can produce.
Ontario Power’s plans to build four SMRs will help the company gain experience and is expected to make each one cheaper than the prior units, said Chris Gadomski, lead nuclear analyst for BloombergNEF.
The project’s approval “is very significant,” Gadomski said. “The US and Canada and the West have been trailing what the Chinese and the Russians are doing.”
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