Ontario approves $15 billion plan to build small modular nuclear reactors
Update: 2025-05-20
Description
Demand for electricity is surging globally — and it’s projected to grow even more as society shifts away from gas-powered cars and heating to electric systems, and as intensifying heat waves drive the need for more air conditioning.
This spike is so significant that the International Energy Agency has dubbed this the “Age of Electricity.“
Accompanying this trend is increasing interest in small modular nuclear reactors, or SMRs — a new generation of nuclear power plants that have long been hyped as a climate-friendly way to meet electricity demands without the intermittency of renewable technologies.
Canada is set to become the first country in the G7 with civilian SMRs. The government of Ontario has approved a $15 billion plan to build four of these reactors outside Toronto. But while small modular nuclear reactors are a functioning technology — they power nuclear vessels, and Russia has used them on barges — they have yet to be successfully deployed for civilian use.
The World’s Carolyn Beeler spoke with Chris Bataille, a fellow at the Center for Global Energy Policy at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, about the state of SMR technology and the perspective of nuclear power among the Canadian public.
Carolyn Beeler: Can you say a little bit about how SMRs are meant to work and their goal?
Chris Bataille: Small modular reactors, the theory, or at least the goal for them, is that they’re small enough, and enough of the components can be made in factories and moved to the site that the costs for them come down.
It’s a technology that works. It’s worked in naval vessels, it’s worked on barges in Russia, but they haven’t been common for civilian use. For civilian use, we tend to build larger reactors: 300,000, 600,000 megawatts, they take five to 10 years to permit and build and that’s a lot of capital outlay a long time between the start of a project until you get electricity. The hope with these SMRs is that you know you can order one, and in a couple of years, it’s up and running on your site.
We’re a long way from that, but that’s the dream.
It’s a technology that works. It’s worked in naval vessels, it’s worked on barges in Russia, but they haven’t been common for civilian use. For civilian use, we tend to build larger reactors: 300,000, 600,000 megawatts, they take five to 10 years to permit and build and that’s a lot of capital outlay a long time between the start of a project until you get electricity. The hope with these SMRs is that you know you can order one, and in a couple of years, it’s up and running on your site.
We’re a long way from that, but that’s the dream.
You’ve said this is kind of the idea, this is the dream. I understand there’s one of these projects up and running already in the Arctic, built by Russia, and lots more in the works, but Canada’s would be the first in the G7. What are some of the challenges associated with actually building these?
Unfortunately, they have a lot of the same challenges as big nuclear. Every time you tweak something in these designs, that has to go through a whole series of regulatory processes that we’ve developed for safety. And we’ve developed them for good reason. But regulation upon regulation upon regulation leads to a project that could take five years taking 20 years or something along those lines.
What have the ingredients been that have made the approval come to fruition in Ontario?
There’s a long history of nuclear power in Ontario. There’s actually a research reactor up the Ottawa River [at Chalk River Laboratories], where, believe it or not, there was an accident and Jimmy Carter, of all young people, as a young lieutenant crawled into it to stop, to slow down the reaction. He’s literally a hero here in Canada. So, there’s just, it’s a nuclear-friendly place. We have a consistent policy direction for low carbon, low GHG power here in Canada and in Ontario.
Between that history of nuclear power, a legacy nuclear industry, plus the climate imperative, plus the need for firm power to sort of underlay wind and solar, that all came together in Ontario with these approvals.
Between that history of nuclear power, a legacy nuclear industry, plus the climate imperative, plus the need for firm power to sort of underlay wind and solar, that all came together in Ontario with these approvals.
I’ve heard about these small nuclear reactors for a while, and they keep being a “potential solution” in the future. Just how significant is it that Canada is going to build some of these things when we think about the viability of this technology as a climate solution?
First of the kinds are critical in absolutely every industry. Once you build the first plant, an SMR, or what have you, it becomes much easier to get low-cost finance, approvals, in other jurisdictions. It’s one quarter of the effort, literally, when you add it all together to build the next facility.
Nuclear energy is very controversial. A lot of people are worried about what happens with the waste. And one of the reasons that power plants are so expensive and take so long to build is because of that public sentiment against nuclear power plants. It sounds like that’s not as much of an issue in Ontario.
It’s interesting, because there’s [an estimated 16 million] people in Ontario. It’s highly industrialized. Many people have lived near nuclear plants. There’s a long history of nuclear power there, it provides 60-odd percent of the electricity in Ontario. So, I think part of the lack of opposition is people, they’ve lived alongside nuclear power. They probably know people who don’t work in the nuclear industry.
I think there’s a back-end component as well. Canada is one of the places where the back end of the nuclear disposal, when decommissioning and what do you do with all the waste, is much clearer. We have a clear site where all the wastes goes and where it’s planned for a thousand-year disposal. Whereas I know that this is an issue in the [United States], where waste is piling up in various places.
I think there’s a back-end component as well. Canada is one of the places where the back end of the nuclear disposal, when decommissioning and what do you do with all the waste, is much clearer. We have a clear site where all the wastes goes and where it’s planned for a thousand-year disposal. Whereas I know that this is an issue in the [United States], where waste is piling up in various places.
If public sentiment is one of the biggest stumbling blocks when it comes to building nuclear around the world, how much of a difference do you actually think that Canada building these small reactors will make? I mean, it’s a lot harder to change public sentiment than it is to bring costs down.
Yeah, absolutely. There’s the very first reactor, and there’s going to be three more built after it. But if it’s all operating correctly, it’s going to get a lot easier, especially in North America, to get these things approved.
And there are a lot of potential customers watching globally, in Japan and Korea, across Asia where the demand for electricity is just going through the roof. The Chinese have their own designs that they’re working on. There’s hope in Poland, it specifically has a whole nuclear strategy built around these SMRs. So, if it works in Ontario, it will kick off quite a bit more investment globally.
And there are a lot of potential customers watching globally, in Japan and Korea, across Asia where the demand for electricity is just going through the roof. The Chinese have their own designs that they’re working on. There’s hope in Poland, it specifically has a whole nuclear strategy built around these SMRs. So, if it works in Ontario, it will kick off quite a bit more investment globally.
But what about the public sentiment? As I said, that’s a lot harder to change than bringing prices down.
Yeah, that’s a super interesting one, right? Because public sentiment is a bit of a fickle beast going both ways. I’m literally, I was in high school when Chernobyl happened, and I was very firmly anti-nuclear early in my life. But, as I come to understand the whole climate change issue more, and realize how far behind the ball we are, and how critical clean electricity is to everything, I’ve been forced to kind of rework my priors. And there is a whole younger generation that’s, they’re just not as anti-nuclear as older generations are because the older generations are, they were there when [Three Mile Island] happened, they were there when Chernobyl happened. And, you know, the younger generation, climate is just much more important to them. It’s interesting, it’s a bit of a generational thing, the opposition to nuclear. We’ll see what happens.
This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity and length.
The post Ontario approves $15 billion plan to build small modular nuclear reactors appeared first on The World from PRX.
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