OTTAWA — For decades, nuclear power in Canada lived in the shadow of cheap hydro and abundant fossil fuels. That calculus has shifted. On June 24, the federal government published a strategy that plants a flag: Canada intends to build its way back into the global nuclear business, and it plans to do so at scale.
The plan, released by Natural Resources Canada, calls for construction of up to 10 new large-scale reactors. Two are to be under construction by 2035.
Several more should be either planned or under development by 2040. Those are not tentative goals. They are targets set by a department that oversees the country’s energy resources.
Why now? The answer is partly about domestic supply and partly about export ambition.
Canada already generates roughly 15 percent of its electricity from nuclear plants in Ontario and New Brunswick. Those plants are aging. The new strategy does not merely replace them.
It expands the fleet. Small modular reactors — SMRs, in industry shorthand — get their own lane in the plan. A Canadian microreactor is scheduled for demonstration by 2035.
After that, deployment to remote communities is projected for the late 2030s. For towns that rely on diesel generators flown in by plane, that timeline matters.
The strategy offers them a different future: reliable power without the fuel cost or the carbon. But the strategy is not just about keeping the lights on in isolated northern settlements. It is about selling Canadian technology abroad.
The plan sets a target of securing Canada’s CANDU reactor design in at least several new international markets by 2040. CANDU reactors use natural uranium and heavy water, a design Canada has marketed for decades with mixed results.
The new push aims to change that track record. Over a 15-year horizon, Canada wants to engage with a substantial number of new nuclear entrant markets. Those are countries that have never built a nuclear plant but are now considering one.
The economic payoff could be significant, though the strategy does not put a dollar figure on it. The timing is not accidental. Several factors converged to make this moment possible.
Public opinion on nuclear power has softened as concern about climate change has hardened. Nuclear plants produce no carbon dioxide during operation.
That fact has won over environmentalists who once opposed the technology. Meanwhile, competing energy sources face their own headwinds. Hydro projects face long permitting battles.
Natural gas prices have been volatile. Wind and solar cannot run around the clock.
Canada also has home-field advantages. It has uranium reserves. It has a licensed reactor design.
It has a regulator that has already approved SMR prototypes. And it has a workforce trained in nuclear operations. The strategy tries to capitalize on all of that.
There are risks. Large nuclear reactors are expensive to build.
Cost overruns have plagued projects in other countries. Small modular reactors are still unproven at commercial scale. And international competition is fierce — Russia and China are both marketing reactors aggressively to developing nations.
The strategy does not pretend those risks do not exist. It simply argues that the potential reward outweighs them.
Canada is betting that a new generation of reactors can secure its energy independence and open new export markets at the same time. That bet will take decades to pay off. But the government has now laid out the road map.
