A contractor with NB Power does a repair on a power line in Fredericton, on Dec. 19, 2023.Stephen MacGillivray/The Canadian Press
New Brunswick says it will consider alternative small modular reactors to build at its Point Lepreau Nuclear Generating Station, branching out from the two vendors it has promoted for several years.
The federal government announced Sunday that it would provide $25-million in new funding to New Brunswick Power, the province’s electrical utility, to be spent on “predevelopment work” for up to 600 megawatts of new SMR capacity at Point Lepreau, located southwest of Saint John.
NB Power spokesperson Dominque Couture said Tuesday that the utility was looking to commission an SMR by the early 2030s, and that it would consider other vendors. Pre-development work includes preparing regulatory applications, engineering and environmental studies, and engaging with First Nations and other communities.
“In preparing for a potential project of this size, NB Power will be reviewing technologies in addition to those already considered,” she wrote in a statement.
Since 2017, NB Power had promoted reactors from two vendors for construction at Point Lepreau: U.S.-based ARC Clean Technology and Britain’s Moltex Energy. Demonstration units of both reactors were originally planned to have been operational by 2030.
However, NB Power acknowledged earlier this year that neither project was likely to meet that target. Many of ARC’s employees departed earlier this year, including former chief executive William Labbe, raising doubts about that project’s prospects.
The Globe and Mail was unable to reach ARC and Moltex for comment late on Tuesday.
Norman Sawyer, president of Ion Nuclear Consulting Ltd. who served several years ago as ARC’s chief executive, said public and private funding was slow in coming for the two SMR vendors, and their projects kept suffering delays. This has now become pressing, as New Brunswick faces the closure of its Belledune coal-fired station by 2030.
“I’m not sure they gave up ARC and Moltex, but they said it now looks like they can’t make it,” Mr. Sawyer said. “More and more, that’s becoming more confirmed. Therefore they have to look at others.”
He said NB Power’s decision to consider alternatives was a pragmatic one. Other candidates include Westinghouse’s AP300, GE-Hitachi’s BWRX-300 and other SMRs that are closer to commercial deployment.
The federal government has provided the lion’s share of funding for New Brunswick’s SMR program. It awarded Moltex $50.5-million in 2021, and $7-million to ARC last year. It previously awarded nearly $5-million to NB Power to help it prepare to deploy SMRs at Point Lepreau.
When NB Power enticed Moltex and ARC to set up shop in Saint John, each company committed $5-million to establish what the province called a “nuclear research cluster” in the city. The province matched those funds, and later awarded ARC another $20-million. NB Power and the provincial government continued to lobby Ottawa for substantially larger amounts, but met only partial success.
NB Power has not paid for its SMR program using its own resources, and has limited ability to pay for crucial steps such as the studies necessary to establish what the environmental consequences of the SMRs might be. Its budgets must be approved by the province’s Energy and Utilities Board, and in recent years, the utility has acknowledged that research and development efforts might have to be sacrificed to meet provincially-mandated debt-reduction targets.
Last year, NB Power applied to the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission for a licence to prepare the Point Lepreau site for a new reactor. It also applied to the provincial government to begin an environmental impact assessment to build an ARC-100 commercial demonstration unit at Point Lepreau.
Ms. Couture said the company continues to work on that environmental assessment. She added that NB Power “continues to provide technical support” to ARC and Moltex, but said that their “commercial demonstration unit projects are separate” from the recently announced pre-development work.
The existing reactor at Point Lepreau, which entered service in 1983, is of Canada’s homegrown Candu design. It has suffered substantial operational troubles in recent years, and spent most of this year out of commission. NB Power said it’s in the process of returning various plant systems to service and expects to reconnect the plant to the grid later this month.
Editor’s note: A previous version of this article incorrectly located Point Lepreau Nuclear Generating Station southeast of Saint John. It is southwest of Saint John. This version has been updated.