Ontario produces a good part of its electricity from nuclear power stations (currently about 60% according to Ontario Power Generation, most of the rest being from hydroelectricity), and it is now planning on doubling down on this technology by putting billions into refurbishing and extending the life of old reactors and investing in the unproven technology of small modular reactors (SMRs or SMNRs).
Yes, nuclear power is a carbon neutral source (depending on how you count it), but it is also an extremely expensive option. Even the World Nuclear Association estimates that nuclear power is currently 3 or 4 times more expensive than large scale solar and onshore wind power (and some estimates put this much higher). Large nuclear projects can also take well over a decade to get up and running (plus, they usually run almost as long again behind schedule). And these costs do not even factor in the costs associated with the high-risk storage of spent fuel rods for centuries to come. Most nuclear programs worldwide rely on huge government subsidies to make them anything like commercially feasible.
For these and other reasons, gigawatt-scale large reactors are widely considered obsolete these days. For example, there has only been one nuclear power project initiated in the USA in the last 50 years (in Georgia), and that one is running into problems. The last nuclear plant commissioned in Canada was at Darlington in 1977 (it came online 5 years late, in 1993, and its final cost had ballooned to nearly four times the original estimate). The billions of dollars that have already been sunk into the commercial nuclear program in Ontario have been showing up on your electricity bill for decades now, in the so-called "global adjustment" line.
Proponents of SMRs, though, claim that, because they are smaller than the huge traditional nuclear power stations that sucked up so much of the energy investment of the late twentieth century, they will be safer, cheaper and quicker to build, and they that units will one day be manufactured in factories and shipped ready-made to their final sites. Joe Biden included billions for SMRs in his otherwise forward-thinking Inflation Reduction Act, and even the usually astute Bill Gates is investing heavily in them.
But, let's look at the reality. To date, there are actually only two advanced SMRs anywhere in the world: a pilot project in China, and another very small one in Russia (hardly role models). A few others are currently under construction in China, Russia and Argentina.
US developer NuScale plans to developed one in Idaho, but is already running into problems and has already substantially increased its estimated construction costs and price per megawatt of power even before a single brick has been laid. So far, buyers have only signed up for about a quarter of the plant's capacity, and the company has said that it will not begin construction until it is 80% subscribed. Bill Gates' Terrapower project is even further away from reality, and is facing at least two years' delay as it tries to source uranium from an suppliers other than Russia.
So, don't expext SNRs to become a climate change solution any time soon (and soon is exactly when we need it). The industry worldwide is essentially stuck at the prototype stage, and none of the units built to date is truly modular as original envisaged. All the attention being paid to them is also distracting from more plausible solutions like clean wind and solar energy coupled with updated smart grids, expanded storage capacity, virtual power plants, and demand response strategies.
Which begs the question of why Ontario and Canada are even considering SNRs. Canada has published a whole Small Modular Reactor Action Plan, which it calls "the next wave of nuclear innovation", and into which it intends sinking a substantial wodge of taxpayer money.
And now Ontario has announced plans to build three SNRs at its Darlington nuclear site, which it is calling "key to meeting growing electricity demands and net zero goals". They are hoping these could come online somewhere between 2034 and 2036 (at least in theory), which is way too late for the serious work that needs to be done on reducing the province's carbon footprint, especially if Doug Ford also goes ahead with his ill-advised plans to expand gas-fired power stations in the province.
What a mess!
UPDATE
And now, the West's only licensed small nuclear reactor, NuScale Power's project in Idaho, USA, is being abandoned, posing new questions over the deliverability of the technology. This is mainly due to ballooning costs (a constant problem with nuclear projects of any kind) and supply chain issues.
This leaves the only functioning SMRs in Russia and China. And would you trust Russian and Chinese technology?
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