Canada has run CANDU reactors for decades but until this week had never written a national plan for them. The Nuclear Energy Strategy, unveiled by Energy and Natural Resources Minister Tim Hodgson in Newmarket, Ontario, runs 23 pages over four pillars: new builds at home, supplying and exporting to the world, uranium and fuel expansion, and new innovations. Hodgson called it a “co-ordinated targeted plan for the nuclear sector at home and abroad.” He added “A plan that will mean new tools, new partnerships, new builds, and most importantly, a new civilian nuclear renaissance for Canada,”
The build-out at home is the concrete half: a modernized, cost-competitive CANDU design by 2030 and up to ten large new reactors over the coming decades, with two under construction by 2035, five more planned or in development by 2040. At least one deployment outside Ontario, small modular reactors included, should be operating or in construction by 2035; a Canadian microreactor is to be demonstrated that year, then sent to remote communities late in the decade. Darlington is the template, at 300,000 homes powered, 3,700 jobs sustained annually and 18,000 during construction. Federal reviews are to wrap within two years; a financing policy follows by April 2027, covering green bonds, Infrastructure Bank participation and loan guarantees. Officials put aggregate capital needs above $100 billion, though the document earmarks nothing.
Domestically, the wager is employment: roughly 90,000 direct and indirect nuclear jobs today should, in Hodgson’s framing, double to 180,000 or more over the coming decade. Ontario Energy Minister Stephen Lecce called nuclear “a key driver of jobs, growth, and long-term competitiveness,” while Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre was flatly unimpressed: “an announcement will not build anything.” Prime Minister Mark Carney was screened out of the strategy’s development over conflict-of-interest rules.
Strategically, the calculus is export power. Twenty-six CANDU reactors operate worldwide, 17 in Canada; the strategy aims to win at least four new international markets for the technology by 2040 while engaging six to ten entrant countries over 15 years, starting with Romania’s new-build and refurbishment programs. Canada, the world’s second-largest uranium producer, plans to double uranium exports by 2035, and the text is blunt about why: supply chains are bifurcating, with the United States and Europe “moving away from a hostile aggressor in favour of reliable actors”.
The broader stakes reach into innovation. The 2018 closure of the National Research Universal reactor “removed a cornerstone capability”, and its replacement is now “a strategic priority, not simply a scientific one”, with private-sector research spending set to more than double by 2032. On social media, Hodgson wrote that the strategy “is more than an energy plan. It is an industrial strategy, a pillar of our energy security, and an instrument of our foreign policy.” Energy policy, in other words, as statecraft.
Sources
- Canada unveils nuclear energy strategy
- Canada aims to grow nuclear and uranium capacity, at home and abroad – World Nuclear News
