Canada’s planned expansion of small modular reactors could create a new dependence on foreign nuclear fuel and technology, according to York University professor Mark Winfield.
The reactor designs being pursued in Ontario and considered elsewhere in Canada require enriched uranium, unlike Canada’s existing CANDU reactors, which use natural uranium. Canada mines, refines and converts uranium, but does not currently enrich it.
That leaves governments with 2 choices: import enriched fuel, most likely from the United States, or spend billions of dollars developing a domestic enrichment industry, Winfield told Energi Media.
“The most likely somewhere else would be the United States, which presents some energy security challenges in the current context,” he said.
Ontario Power Generation is building a GE Hitachi BWRX-300 small modular reactor at the Darlington nuclear site. Winfield said the use of foreign reactor designs and imported fuel raises questions about whether Canada’s nuclear strategy is consistent with Ottawa’s stated goals of energy security, domestic manufacturing and energy sovereignty.
Canada’s original CANDU program was designed around a largely domestic supply chain, including Canadian reactor technology and natural uranium fuel. The new nuclear pathway would rely more heavily on non-Canadian reactor vendors and enriched fuel.
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Winfield said Canada could establish its own enrichment capacity, but the domestic market may be too small to support the required investment. A commercially viable industry would likely need to export enriched uranium fuel.
That would introduce additional concerns because uranium enrichment is a dual-use technology. The same basic process used to produce civilian reactor fuel can also be used to produce material for nuclear weapons.
Winfield said the federal nuclear strategy gives insufficient attention to the potential implications for nuclear weapons proliferation and Canada’s international non-proliferation commitments.
The shift toward foreign reactor technology also reflects the decline of Canada’s domestic reactor design capacity, he said. Atomic Energy of Canada Limited stopped selling new CANDU reactors in the 1990s, and its reactor business increasingly focused on refurbishing existing plants.
AtkinsRéalis is developing a new CANDU design, but Winfield said it is not expected to be commercially available until the next decade. Provinces seeking to move ahead sooner are therefore considering American or American-Japanese designs.
Winfield also criticized the federal government’s broader electricity strategy for emphasizing nuclear power and natural gas while giving less attention to renewable energy, geothermal power, storage and energy efficiency.
The strategy proposes significant new electricity generation, including 10 large reactors, but does not identify where the reactors would be built, which technologies would be used or how the projects would be financed.
Winfield said the approach appears to favour established industries capable of navigating federal policymaking and advancing large projects.
The result, he said, could be an electricity strategy that directs public investment toward incumbent nuclear, mining and fossil fuel industries while giving less support to emerging technologies with stronger domestic supply-chain potential.
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