Canada’s first new nuclear reactor in decades is an American design. Will this lead to a rethinking of government support?

A visitor to the Darlington Nuclear Power Plant in Clarington, Ontario looks out over the facility during a guided tour in February 2016.Fred Lum / The Globe and the Post

Ontario Power Generation’s decision for GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy to build a small modular reactor (SMR) at its Darlington Station in Clarington, Ontario started events that could shape Canada’s nuclear industry for decades to come.

OPG’s choice announced in December is the BWRX-300. It is a light water reactor most popular in developed countries and very different from Canada’s existing fleet of CANDU heavy water reactors. Although not exactly small – the 300 megawatt output of the BWRX roughly corresponds to that of a large wind farm – it would only produce a third as much electricity as conventional reactors. It would use different fuels, generate different waste, and potentially have different safety implications.

The Darlington SMR would be the first BWRX-300 ever built. OPG hopes the move will first embed Ontario into a global supply chain for these reactors.

“OPG itself, we really don’t get any of this – it’s a lot of work,” said Robin Manley, OPG vice president of nuclear development. “Our goal is to get as many contracts as possible with Canadian suppliers.” But that may not satisfy some of the critics who have protested against OPG’s choice for a US design from North Carolina-based GE Hitachi.

It seems to confirm the end of the Canadian tradition of indigenous reactors. The BWRX-300 would be Canada’s first new reactor since the completion of Darlington Block 4 in Ontario in 1993. According to Mycle Schneider Consulting, the average age of 19 operating reactors in the country is 38 years. Attempts to update the CANDU design proved largely unsuccessful; OPG and Bruce Power decided to refurbish the reactors at Darlington and Bruce stations to keep them running for more decades, while also evaluating SMRs as a possible next step.

Time is running out. This decade is widely seen as critical to building zero-emission generation capacity. SMRs will be late for this party even if this BWRX-300 is built on time. Delays and cost overruns, pervasive risks to any reactor, could ruin its prospects.

The partnership with OPG represents a major coup for GE Hitachi, a US-Japanese alliance that founded its SMR subsidiary in Canada less than a year ago. There are at least 50 SMR designs worldwide, but most only exist on paper; Vendors compete fiercely to sell to experienced nuclear operators like OPG because they present an opportunity to build a real reactor that could attract other customers. For the same reason, OPG’s decision is a blow to the losing candidates, Oakville, Ontario, Terrestrial Energy Inc. and X-energy, an American provider.

“There is a lot of enthusiasm among nuclear reactor designers, developers and national laboratories and academic nuclear engineering departments” about SMRs, said Edwin Lyman, director of nuclear safety for the Union of Concerned Scientists, who initially published a report on SMR reactor designs in 2021. “The offer is high, but the demand is low because the utility companies don’t want to be guinea pigs. “

Nuclear industry executives and government officials hope the Darlington SMR will be the first of many to be deployed in Ontario and beyond. SaskPower also buys; it has been working with OPG since 2017 and said the BWRX-300 is one of its candidates. Canada has a small population, so observers doubt the country could support supply chains for multiple reactor designs.

But OPG’s selection of an American SMR has drawn severe criticism. Some observers believed Terrestrial enjoyed a home advantage, especially given the federal government’s decision to invest $ 20 million in its integral molten salt reactor (IMSR). The Society of Professional Engineers and Associates, a union representing engineers and others who work on CANDU reactors, complained that “Canadian design should be given priority.”

“It’s a slap in the face for Terrestrial,” said MV Ramana, professor at the University of British Columbia’s Liu Institute for Global Issues. “That’s not a good sign for Canada’s nuclear industry.”

Prof. Ramana added that OPG’s decision could lead to a reconsideration of government support for SMR developers. In addition to funding Terrestrial, Moltex Energy received $ 50.5 million from the Federal Strategic Innovation Fund and Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency to advance the Stable Salt Reactor wasteburner it is working on in New Brunswick. ARC Clean Energy received $ 20 million from the New Brunswick government for its ARC-100 reactor.

“If these companies fail to convince OPG, maybe we should stop funding them,” he said.

However, observers said that of OPG’s three publicly announced candidates, GE Hitachi was the conservative choice. While most SMR vendors are startups that don’t yet need to build a single reactor, GE Hitachi has been in business since the mid-1950s. The BWRX-300 is being referred to as the 10th generation of the company’s light water reactor design.

“I would bet that was the deciding factor,” said Lyman. “The supply chain is probably better established than these other designs, which have very little or no operational experience and are tied to a lot of other unknowns.”

Other experts have come to similar conclusions. Tractebel, an engineering firm that has worked on nuclear projects in 20 countries, evaluated dozen of SMR designs for Estonia a few years ago. The BWRX-300 was shortlisted as a simple, “proven technology”. (Terrestrial also got good results, but Tractebel concluded that molten salt reactors like its IMSR are farther away.)

Unlike CANDUs, which consume non-enriched uranium, light water reactors require enriched fuel to increase uranium-235 levels. Mr Lyman said that adopting a non-CANDU design will make Canada dependent on enriched fuels imported from the US, Europe or elsewhere.

Industry would also have to learn to dispose of unknown waste. The Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO), which is in the final stages of selecting an underground storage facility for Canada’s radioactive spent fuel, said BWRX-300 spent fuel would generate more heat and radioactivity than CANDU fuel but could be in fewer containers be stored, further apart.

“We will learn from our international partners who already have plans to permanently store this type of waste in a deep geological repository,” the NWMO said in a statement.

All of this assumes that the reactor will be built by OPG. First of all, the BWRX-300 is not actually approved anywhere. GE Hitachi is participating in the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission’s Vendor Design Review, which provides early regulatory feedback on its reactor. Completing this process would confirm that the CNSC did not find any features that would deviate from Canadian requirements.

After that, GE Hitachi would need a building permit. Like other SMR vendors, GE Hitachi calls its SMR “passive” safety features, which means that during an accident, the system has enough water and electricity to operate without intervention for days or even weeks. A safer reactor could also be a cheaper reactor: for example, the SMR could require less containment than traditional structures and therefore less concrete. According to GE Hitachi, the BWRX-300 takes up less than 10 percent of the volume of its predecessor. But the CNSC would have to first agree that the reactor really deserved lower safety precautions.

“The licensing process is quite early,” confirmed Mr. Manley. “We as operators are very confident that we can license this reactor.”

However, critics say that completing the reactor by 2028 will be a huge task. According to Mycle Schneider Consulting, every eighth reactor that has been under construction since 1951 never went online. Many survivors, meanwhile, arrived years later than promised.

Mr Manley said 2028 was “an ambitious goal” and not a tough deadline. The project plan will solidify over the next two years.

OPG has not yet released a cost estimate, but according to a report released by PwC, the SMR project is “expected to spend $ 2 billion over seven years”. That’s already more than the $ 1 billion price GE Hitachi promised for a BWRX-300 in 2019.)

Even so, Mr. Manley said that OPG’s intent is that the SMR will be cost competitive with other clean energy options.

Prof. Ramana said cost escalation was practically inevitable. The AP1000 reactor, a Westinghouse pressurized water reactor with an output of 1,110 megawatts, was originally expected to cost $ 2 billion. But the price of the two-part Vogtle system in Georgia was estimated at $ 14 billion and later rose to over $ 30 billion. Westinghouse marketing materials emphasized that the reactor had been greatly simplified, making it cheaper to build, operate and maintain.

“In the past, the providers’ estimates were always far, far lower than the actual costs,” said Prof. Ramana. “I don’t think there’s any reason to expect this to be any different.”

Mr. Manley acknowledged that for the past two decades, large nuclear power plants “have been challenged to stay on schedule and on budget.” But that’s one of the reasons OPG decided to build an SMR. They “are lower capital costs, are simpler, smaller and therefore faster and easier to build,” he said.

Nor will this be the first time OPG has managed a complex, high-risk capital project. The company says its $ 12.8 billion renovation, now half complete, of its Darlington station is on time and on budget. This experience has shown that “if we take the time to properly plan the job, we will be able to come up with a good estimate and schedule to meet,” said Manley.

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