Alberta has flirted with nuclear power before. Is it now ready to make a move?

While Alberta may be best known for its oil and gas industry, a conference in downtown Edmonton this week is hyping another form of energy: Nuclear. 

“The potential is tremendous here,” said May Wong, a senior vice-president with power generator Capital Power, which is exploring the possibility of building small modular reactors (SMRs) in Alberta.

“We have a moment in time where we can transform our industry and create a new industry.”

Smaller in scale and output than a traditional nuclear reactor, SMRs are built in a factory; in theory, they are cheaper, safer and quicker to construct, and can be used in less-populated regions.

Nuclear power already exists in New Brunswick and Ontario, with Ontario relying on nuclear for more than half of its electricity. The province also has plans to ramp up its nuclear capacity through the use of SMRs — an initiative that made Ottawa’s recent list of fast-tracked “nation-building projects.” 

Now the buzz has made its way to Alberta; the province recently set up an expert panel to explore the possibility of building reactors, and Premier Danielle Smith, who has expressed reservations about renewables such as wind and solar, has said “there’s a lot to like about nuclear.”

Alberta has been here before. In 2008, it also set up a panel to explore the potential of nuclear power, but a decade and a half later, there are no nuclear reactors to be seen.

So what’s changed this time around?

‘Ideal’ timing

The appeal of nuclear power is that it can provide a lot of reliable electricity on a long-term basis without much in the way of emissions, said Nathan Neudorf, Alberta’s minister of affordability and utilities, in an interview on the sidelines of the SMR Forum in Edmonton.

Part of the appeal is that Alberta isn’t going it alone, he said. Instead, the province would be jumping on a global bandwagon. 

Countries around the world are scrambling to ramp up their nuclear capacity as a way of securing a stable, low-carbon source of electricity. And big-name tech companies, such as Microsoft, Google and Amazon, are signing large procurement contracts to secure a steady supply of nuclear power for their growing AI and cloud services.

“All of those things work together to create this timing … making it ideal,” said Neudorf. 

The renewed urgency around nuclear power is driven in part by expectations that demand for electricity will skyrocket globally in the decades ahead due to growing demand for everything from air conditioning to electric cars to AI data centres. 

Alberta, in particular, is also contending with demand driven by a steep increase in population and the province’s plan to become a hub for AI data centres.

Scott Henuset, the CEO of Energy Alberta, made a similar point. His company plans to build a nuclear power station in Northern Alberta, though with a more traditional CANDU-style reactor rather than with SMRs. 

“We feel that it does have a place in all of Western Canada, securing the power [supply] and increasing grid stability,” Henuset said in a Zoom interview this week.

But the economics of nuclear power in Alberta could pose a challenge; the upfront capital costs are high, which could make it a tougher sell in a province where natural gas is abundant and already provides the bulk of electricity. 

The projected cost to develop four SMRs at Ontario’s Darlington power plant is about $21 billion, while a large-scale nuclear facility in Georgia cost $35 billion US for two built-from-scratch reactors.

“Right now, natural gas use is obviously more cheap,” said Dustin Wilkes, president and CEO of Calgary-based Nucleon, an SMR project developer. “Short term, it’s very difficult.”

History has shown that to be the case.

In the early 2000s, Energy Alberta — then led by Scott Henuset’s father, Wayne — was exploring the possibility of building reactors near Peace River. The company was later bought by Ontario-based Bruce Power, but when the price of natural gas plummeted a few years later, the project was scrapped, Henuset said. 

While the price of natural gas remains low today, the global appetite for nuclear power has created a much different investment climate, Henuset said. Upfront costs may be high, he said, but the long-term payoff will be worthwhile given how long nuclear plants can run and how much demand for electricity is expected in the decades ahead. 

“There is economic viability for nuclear power; we wouldn’t be looking at it if it wasn’t there,” said Henuset. 

When it comes to SMRs, in particular, Wong, with Capital Power, says the costs of the small, prefabricated reactors will likely go down significantly over time — a prediction echoed by industry observers and researchers.

Wilkes said that while nuclear power is new to Alberta, the province’s advantage is its deregulated electricity system, which allows private operators to build and compete to sell power into the market.

Still, there are plenty of details that need to be ironed out before anyone starts splitting atoms.

Wong said while the appeal of nuclear is that a power plant can run for a long time — once built, the equipment is relatively easy to maintain or upgrade — it also means the costs of operating it and the necessary safety protocols must too be factored in over many decades. 

And the nuclear waste produced by the power plants must be considered; there has been heated debate in Ontario when possible sites are chosen to store the material.

“Because it’s very long duration, from a development perspective, as well as an [operational perspective], that uncertainty increases much more than traditional technology,” said Wong. 

Utilities Minister Neudorf said the province must first hear from Albertans whether they want nuclear power in the first place. An online survey seeking public input just closed on Thursday, while a request for information from industry and local governments is open until Oct. 25.

Public opinion and social acceptance could be a sticking point, considering concerns around the safe storing of nuclear waste and some high-profile problems with nuclear power plants in the past.

A 2009 report commissioned by the Alberta government made no recommendations about whether the province should proceed with developing a nuclear power plant industry, while detailing how every form of electricity production has its trade-offs, such as emissions, water use and overall expense. 

At the COP28 UN climate conference in 2023, Canada and several other countries made a pledge to triple the amount of nuclear electricity around the globe by 2030.

As for Henuset and Wilkes, the two CEOs expect it will take somewhere around a decade for their respective projects to get up and running. 

By that point, they say, the demand for electricity will be even greater — and the case for nuclear will be more compelling.

“We believe in the long-term … that nuclear power wins,” said Wilkes.

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