Front Burner - Canada’s push for a ‘nuclear renaissance’

Episode Date: August 5, 2026

Earlier this summer, the federal government announced that it would build up to ten new nuclear reactors in the next fifteen years to help achieve Canada’s energy goals.Canada isn’t alone in making this kind of big investment in nuclear power. Plans are underway to build more reactors in the U.S., China, India, and across Europe. Still, there are concerns about costs, safety and the long term management of radioactive waste.Jacopo Buongiorno teaches nuclear science and engineering at MIT. He’s also the director of the school’s Center for Advanced Nuclear Energy Systems.He’s here to talk about what’s driving Canada’s – and the world’s - nuclear power boom, and what risks could come with it.For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

Uncover from CBC Podcasts is your source for exceptional storytelling and groundbreaking journalism. Hear how lives were altered forever by results from one DNA lab. I'm like, what? What do you mean? He's not my son. And unravel the clues that a gravel pit may hold about one woman's disappearance. It's just, it's odd because there was no trace of a scuffle. There was no, nothing.

Hear the very best in award-winning true crime. Listen to uncover wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC podcast. Hi, I'm Elaine Chow, in for Jamie. To put it simply, if our goal is to double our grid and reach net zero by 2050, there is no credible plan for Canada to do that without nuclear energy and the clean, reliable base load power it provides. That's energy minister Tim Hodgson back in June.

announcing the federal government's plans to build up to 10 new nuclear reactors in the next 15 years to help achieve Canada's energy goals. Canada isn't alone in making this kind of big investment in nuclear power. We're really seeing it all around the world. Back in the fall, the Trump administration struck a deal to build at least $80 billion worth of reactors in the U.S. And plans are underway to build more reactors in China, India, and across Europe. Despite all that, there is still plenty of weariness around how costly and delayed these projects can be. Not to mention nuclear safety and the long-term management of radioactive waste. What is driving Canada and the world's nuclear power boom?

And what risks could come with it. Jakopo Bonjourno teaches nuclear science and engineering at MIT. He's also the director of the school's Center for Advanced Nuclear Energy Systems. Hi, Jacobo. Hi, Elaine. Thanks for having me. Right now, Canada has four nuclear power plants, home to about 17 reactors that are operable. The federal government wants to build up to 10 new nuclear reactors in the next 15 years. And obviously, like, producing the necessary fuel for nuclear energy is complex.

What are the biggest challenges in trying to accomplish this along these timelines? Well, I would say the three biggest challenges facing construction of new nuclear power plants in Canada, and I would say elsewhere, in the, let me call it the Western world, which means the U.S. and Europe are as follows. Financing, particularly for the large plants, you're looking at investments of the order of $10 billion. dollars. For SMR, small modular reactors, a little bit smaller. Maybe you're looking at investments of the order of two or three billion dollars per reactor. But in either case, you're talking about big money, so the money's got to come from somewhere. And historically, the new nuclear deployment programs that have been most successful have been very strongly supported by governments. These are projects that require accurate planning. And to your point, they take time to execute from the time you make the decision to the time you actually have electrons online.

Optimistically, you're looking at eight, ten years, more realistically, maybe ten, fifteen, really this is all country dependent. So, I mean, that sort of stability of decision-making, the stable regulatory environment, and government support are absolutely key. The second challenge is supply chain. In the U.S., Canada, and Europe, the industry has been very good at operational. the existing reactors. If you mentioned you have, you know, four in Canada, we have 50 plus sites in the U.S.

with 94 reactors. The industry really runs those existing machines very efficiently. But that same industry has not built your Nuka power plants for effectively for 30 years since that first fleet of reactors was completed back in the 70s and the 80s. And quite simply, the supply chain evaporated. and now it has to be rebuilt, which you can't just snap your fingers and, you know, factories and facilities that are appropriate to make components and fuel to your point. They don't just materialize overnight. So that's the second challenge.

And the third is perhaps the most important is people, workforce. I'm really referring to the specialized craft and engineers and construction managers that will be needed. to actually build the plants to begin with. So I would say, you know, these challenges are common, Canada, U.S., and Europe, and they're real. Right. And just to kind of illustrate the point around cost overruns and difficult timelines, you know, like the largest nuclear power plant in the U.S. The Voktoe plant expanded a couple of years ago.

The two new units were the first nuclear reactors to be built on U.S. soil in 30 years, and costs were more than double what was budget. And there was a seven-year delay for the units to come online. And you really see kind of similar stories across Europe as well. Hinkley Point C in the UK, which started out with an initial budget of $34 billion and now estimated to cost more than $64 billion. Like that is quite the jump. Yes, that's correct. And you didn't mention all Kilwater and Flamamonville to other projects in Europe.

Right. You know, incurred of cost of runs and scheduled delays. Well, this is a direct consequence of that, let me call it atrophy of the industry, right? Again, that sort of loss of expertise in the technology development companies, in their suppliers, supply chain, and then the lack of specialized workforce to actually run the construction projects. But I would also say it doesn't have to be that way. First of all, there are countries that because they have been aimed at those capabilities are very, very good at delivering. Unuka power plants on schedule and on budget. I'm thinking Korea, China, even India, Russia,

China big time. With China in particular, like state financing along every step of the process, right? Like it is, it has control of the supply chain and so forth. Like this, these are all contributing factors to why they're able to deliver the way that they have been. They are, but let me distinguish the financing as we said just a minute ago is obviously very important. You need the money to do to execute these projects. But But really what we're seeing in China and again in Korea and Russia and India is not only the government provides the money, but the companies that execute the projects are very good at what they're doing because they've been doing it continuously over the decades. But I wanted to give you an example from another country that is very dear to your heart, Canada itself. It's true. Canada has not built nuclear power plants.

There is one under construction, as you know, at the Darlington site in Ontario. It's a small module reactants will be smaller than, you know, than, like Giga and scale machines. But you should be aware that both utilities, Bruce Power and OPG, have completed major refurbishment projects of the existing reactors. And they've done so on schedule and on budget, which was amazing because this is not the exact same level of complexity of building a whole new plant. But these were major refurbishment projects. It's not like, okay, I replace a pump or a couple of bulbs. Canada, I actually think, is very well positioned now both in policy space as well as in engineering and execution capabilities to run this new program that you mentioned at the beginning of the interview. You mentioned these small modular reactors a couple of times there and how Canada is a leader in many ways on this front.

And this is something that can be found in Darlington, Ontario, also Saskatchewan, the province of Saskatchewan. is also looking at the potential to bring like small nuclear reactors online by the mid 2030s. This is in part to, largely actually, to do with powering up proposed AI data centers. And I think when most people think about nuclear reactors, they're thinking about large-scale ones. And can you walk me through kind of the, like what would be the fifth grade kind of explanation of what a small modular reactor is? Sure. Yeah, yeah, certainly. So I think the easiest way to explain is there are essentially three,

let's call them categories. Basically, think about large, medium, and small. Large scale, what do we mean? We mean about a gigawatts, 1,000 megawatts. That's a lot of power. That's basically enough in the U.S. would be 3 quarter of a million people. So the big, you know, medium-sized city could be powered by a single large reactor. Then you have the intermediate category, which, again, here is a bit of a misnomer.

People call small modular reactors. They should be called smaller. Right. They're still pretty big. because they're small and large. They're still pretty big. And so there, the typical power output might be between, let's say, 100 and 300 megawatts. Just for complete, as I should say, because these are broad categories, even within that, you know, within this category of small module reactors, then you have some there are maybe a little bit less than 100 and others that are a little bit higher than 300.

But roughly, we're talking about several 100 megawatts. And those are called SMRs. And then the small, small, they're actually called micro reactors. And now you're down to maybe between one and 10 or 15 or maybe 20 megawatts. And so they have obviously different power outputs with different intended markets. And SMR is somewhere in between. There are countries whose grids is not large and mature enough to be able to accept or accommodate a gigawatt reactor. because when that reactor is down for either re-hueling or some maintenance,

that would be a disproportionately large share of the grade that is down. But an SMR, which is maybe at one-tenth of the size in terms of power output, might make more sense. And I haven't even talked about yet the, let's say, the financial risk profile of these different categories, which is in part what drives some people to be more interested in, say, small reactors, opposed to large reactors, is that they're cheaper to build. The financial risks is the amount of money that you need to put on the table up front to complete that project is obviously smaller with a smaller reactor, the large reactor.

And these small modular reactors are definitely a key part in Canada's nuclear energy plan. It is really part of this bigger renewed interests in nuclear energy. And I'm curious to hear your view on, you know, compared to other forms of renewable power like solar and wind, for example, what is really driving this renewed interest in nuclear power that we're really seeing not only in Canada, but around the world? Well, I would say a variety of factors, and those factors have been evolving over the past decade. Quite clearly what put nuclear back into the conversation, let's say, 10 years ago, was the very strong drive or desire to decarbonize the energy sector. And nuclear

like renewables is a low carbon energy generation technology. I say low, by the way, not zero, because when you actually account for the life cycle emissions associated with mining materials and building plants, nuclear as well as wind and solar and all of them are doing cursome emissions, but let's call them low carbon, certainly lower than say natural gas or coal or oil, of course. So nuclear is low carbon and the grid to run smoothly and reliably does require a certain amount of power that is there all the time that is not subject to the weather patterns. Sun doesn't shine, the wind doesn't blow, as we all know.

So that's what brought nuclear back into the conversation. But then the big sort of inflection point was 2022 with the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. I think that was a bit of an epiphany, a bit of a wake-up call for many countries, particularly Europe, but I would say globally, that understood, all of a sudden understood the value of energy security. So if you rely on other countries for your energy needs in the form of imports, then if something happens in the geopolitical situation of the world, that disrupts that supply chain, well, all of a sudden, you don't have energy. And energy drives everything. And we've certainly seen that in the Iran war with the supply of oil and gas. Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, if you look at countries, particularly in East Asia, Korea, Japan, Taiwan, even China, they don't have a lot of indigenous energy sources. They import a lot of hydrocarbons from the Middle East. And so absolutely, you know, when those supply chains are, the supply lines are disrupted, that is a real issue.

And of course, with Ukraine, it was really Europe that suffered because of all that Russian natural gas that was flowing in and all of a sudden became no longer acceptable to be reliable on Russia. So it's not that nuclear magically resolves the issue of energy security, but because a nuclear power plant can operate for a long period of time without requiring a lot of fuel, it does actually strengthen considerably the overall energy security. for a country. But then the third thing that happened, and that's even more recent, is the growth in demand of electricity, primarily driven by data centers and AI. That's certainly a thing in the U.S., but I imagine something similar is going on in Canada. And so the demand for electricity has gone up. And data centers, they require, of course, energy that is that is reliable. You run these algorithms

and they run when they want to run, not necessarily be tied to weather patterns. And that's, I think, providing an additional rational for nuclear. Fourth and last thing that I'll mention, that has always been true, is the compactness of nuclear.

So particularly for countries that are constrained in terms of the use of their land for energy infrastructure, Nuclear is extremely compact compared to renewables. So that's what I call the value proposition of nuclear. I know you just kind of walk this through some of the value proposition, as you say, of nuclear energy. But it's also vulnerable in other ways, right? You know, I'm thinking of in particular, you know, the heat waves in Europe.

countries like France, Hungary, Romania having to temporarily shut down some nuclear reactors because they weren't able to cool them down properly. The Romanian Navy carrying out controlled explosions on the Bala Canal to try to push more water into the river Danube. Record low levels have forced the government to shut down a nuclear reactor. In neighboring Hungary, another nuclear plant is expected to be shut down because the water in the Danube is too low to cool its reactors. And that kind of climate instability, you know, certainly isn't going away.

And the reality is that no energy supplies unfortunately immune completely to the effects of climate change. Frankly, solar and wind even more so because climate change changes daily weather patterns. So the capacity factor, the ability of these assets to produce electricity at the time you want them, it becomes even more or rocky. But to your point, nuclear is effective. affected as well. And unfortunately, the need to either shut down or reduce the power output of these reactors really comes at the worst possible time, because if you have a heat wave is when typically demand goes up because of air conditioners and shutting down a reactor goes in the opposite direction. Now, since you mentioned France, France, as you know, relies very

heavily on nuclear power plants, close to 70%, or their about their electricity comes for nuclear power plants. In France, the peak in energy, in electricity, man is actually still in the winter, is not in the summer. So even though they have to reduce the power output to a couple of reactors in the summer, they still have, they still have margin. And so you haven't seen blackouts or brownouts in France. They manage to run the grid reliably. Also, I've seen a study that sort of is looking at this issue of what's the effect of climate change on nuclear power? power plants. And indeed, the biggest risk, if you will, which is not, we're not talking safety risk. We're talking really operational risk and reliability risk is from these heat waves

in the summer more than anything else. And when you look at it in the bigger picture over a course of year under very conservative assumptions, the worst reduction in power output is of the order of one, one and a half percent. So in the bigger picture, nuclear, even with this extreme sort of situations remains an exceptionally reliable energy source. But as you pointed out, it's not a zero effect and has to be managed. Uncover from CBC Podcasts is your source for exceptional storytelling and groundbreaking journalism. Hear how lives were altered forever by results from one DNA lab. I'm like, what?

What do you mean? He's not my son. And unravel the clues that a gravel pit may hold about one woman's disappearance. It's just, it's odd because there was no trace of a scuffle. There was no, nothing. Hear the very best in award-winning true crime. Listen to uncover wherever you get your podcasts. You talked about kind of the industry going through this period of atrophy.

And I just want to come back to that because, obviously when people talk about nuclear power, a big thing that comes up is safety, right? Like a lot of people, when they think about nuclear energy, the historical events of Chernobyl in 1986. There has been a nuclear accident in the Soviet Union and the Soviets have admitted that it happened. The Soviet version is this. One of the atomic reactors at the Chernobyl atomic power plant near the city of Kiev was damaged, And there is speculation in Moscow that people were injured and may have died. 20 years ago today, a reactor exploded at the Chernobyl nuclear plant.

56 people were killed. Another 9,300 are expected to die from cancers caused by the huge radiation release. 300,000 people were permanently evacuated from the area. Fukushima disaster in Japan in 2011. All day long, focus of growing fear. The 40-year-old nuclear plant damaged by the earth. earthquake, its power knocked out, a crucial cooling system disabled with pressure building inside the reactor.

The sickening sight of a nuclear reactor building vanishing in an instant. The blast at the Daichi nuclear power plant in Fukushima was above reactor one. Its outer structure is gone. And the environmental disasters that followed because of all the radioactive material that was released, that's top of mind for a lot of people. And I suspect this has a lot to do with why the air. industry was in atrophy for a while. And can you walk me through a bit about the kind of impact that those events have had on the industry and how it's progressed or not progressed?

Yeah, yeah, good question. A short answer, major impact on the industry. In part, you already alluded to it, you know, policies have changed in different countries as a consequence of those accidents. Let me pick the most recent. In the wake of Fukushima, there were four or five countries that effectively decided, okay, we're going to fade out nuclear. Now, interestingly, not all those countries have gone through. In fact, most of them have reversed that decision and now they're back into, okay, we want to keep our nuclear power plants and we want to actually expand. Equally important, and this is a positive impact, the accidents have had on the industry focus on safety and reliability. Each accident, as painful as they've been, they've also been massive opportunities for learning and improving the technology and the management of the technology.

So let me just give you an example, Three Mile Island, which was the first accident, the first of the three major accidents, occurring in the United States. And the industry immediately realized this is a defining moment. They decided to create an organization by the industry, for the industry, that would actually force them to pull their act together on. reliability and safety. That organization is still in existence now. It's called the Institute for Nuclear Power Operations. It's one of the keys to the success of the nuclear industry in the United States. What Impo does, and there are similar organizations around the world, is to, first of all, go above and beyond the minimum regulatory standards that are imposed by the government agency, the regulators. Very importantly, also, these organizations,

immediately share operating experience from one plant with another. If you look at the history of some of these accidents, there were some precursors at other plants that could have been used to prevent the accident itself. And so that horizontal sharing of information among companies that in other markets, they might consider each other as competitors. But in the nuclear industry, they are considered sort of partners. And then mostly, it's just the development of the technology. itself. So you learn from mistakes and you change things. I mean, just like cars back in the

70s are very different from the cars that we drive now. The reactors that are built that are built now are 21st century reactors. They're not 1970s and 80s. You know, I just think of nuclear safety as such an emotional issue. For example, like here in Canada, there's a plan to build one of the world's largest nuclear power plants in Ontario and in a town called Port Hope. Energy Minister, Stephen Leche announced the first steps towards building a new plant that could be larger than any facility currently operating in Ontario. Any potential project would power our economy as the Conference Board of Canada projects a new nuclear station in Port Hope would contribute $235 billion to Ontario's GDP over its lifespan.

And Port Hope actually has a really fascinating history. It took part in the Manhattan Project. uranium was refined there and used in the atomic bombs dropped on Japan by the U.S. In the years after, as uranium continued to be refined here, the radioactive waste, much of its sand and soil, and which wasn't really considered hazardous at the time, got spread all over town. People used it in construction projects and in their gardens. Then in 1975, an elementary school, which was built on the fill, was suddenly closed because of health concerns. After an initial cleanup of the most radioactive material, in 2001,

the federal government decided to remove all low-level radioactive waste from Port Hope. 25 years later, with a budget of more than $2 billion, that work is still going on. It's not really a surprise that there's been a lot of pushback to this proposed large plant. Residents are incredibly worried about having to live with nuclear waste. We finally have an opportunity to stand up and ask you, questions and you're going to shut us down, that's not right. And I know this is an emotional topic. I should be for everybody. I know, I know. Poor Hope right now has the Canada's largest

low-level nuclear waste dump. And now we're being asked to host the largest nuclear plant in the world. I wonder whether there is, from your purview, like, has there been enough of a recognition of those fears that communities have over nuclear waste, have governments and companies been able to recognize the very kind of palpable fears that communities have over this issue? Yeah, so I'm not going to be able to comment on the specifics of poor hope because I just don't know them. In general terms, of course, it's important not to conflate the, let me call it, legacy nuclear activities related to Manhattan Project and Weapons Program with nuclear energy. it is true that the moment in the US, but not in Canada, I'm going to comment on Canada in a second.

In the US, there is not a long-term repository or what people call waste, which is really the spent fuels, the fuel that is extracted from the reactor once it has sort of lost its energy, most of its energy content, and it's become radioactive, and it stays radioactive for a long period of time. So the practice in the U.S. at the moment is to put that fuel first in a, we call a spent fuel pool, essentially a water pool, and let it decay off there for a couple of years. Radioactivity is a natural phenomenon and with time, it sort of decays off. Once it becomes less radioactive and less hot, then you transfer it to a dry cask, so you no longer need water to remove the heat. And there it stays. It's, again, pretty dull, mature technology has been used for close to 40 years, and it's safe to keep there at the site, at the Nuka Power Plant site for the foreseeable future.

But eventually, that material has to be collected centrally and possibly be put underground. The practice is actually very similar in Canada, although the fuel form is a little bit different for Canada, which is the technology of choice in Canada. but basically the approach is the same. The difference between Canada and the U.S. is that Canada is much more advanced in the conversation and in the process of identifying a site where the permanent repository is going to be. And an example of a country that is already there,

that already has a or soon will have an operating repository for that spent fuel for that waste is Finland. In fact, we expect that to be open. these year in 2026. Jakopo, you know, with this big push in Canada and around the world, you know, for a nuclear renaissance, so to speak, is there a worry here that we're maybe putting too many eggs in one basket? Like, do we risk losing out on other renewable energy opportunities by pouring kind of so much

money and time into nuclear power, despite those projects having challenges in the past around cost overruns and construction delays. First, the concerns about cost overruns and schedule delays is very valid. But in Canada, there is some evidence that it may not be as bad as ESP in US and in Europe. Number two, perhaps more importantly, it's not really nuclear versus renewables. If the goal is to have a low carbon energy system that is reliable and affordable, it's, It's a combination of the two. So I think people shouldn't worry, okay, if I'm building reactors, I'm building less renewables.

All the models show that you're building reactors and you have to be more renewables on top of them as well. And it's that combination that gives you the best path forward. When you look at the magnitude of the investment required, it is large, but it's large no matter what you do, right? So if we're serious about the transformation of our energy sector from hydrocarbons to low carbon, we're going to have to invest not just a few billions. You're talking hundreds of billions of dollars, whether you're building nuclear renewables or a combination of both.

Yakobo, thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate your insight. You're most welcome. That's all for today. I'm Elaine Chow. Thanks for listening to Frontburner. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca.ca slash podcasts.