The exterior of the Point Lepreau Nuclear Generating station in Lepreau, N.B.Kevin Bissett/The Canadian Press
More than a year after the parent company of New Brunswick nuclear technology developer Moltex Energy Canada Inc. entered into a British insolvency proceeding, “advanced” negotiations with a potential buyer are progressing, according to an insolvency practitioner supervising the sale.
The parent company, Manchester-based Moltex Energy Ltd., began the proceedings in March, 2025, with the objective of rescuing itself as a going concern. A report by insolvency practitioner Jonathan Mark Amor published this week said exclusive talks with a new bidder have been in progress since December last year.
“Although the sale negotiations with the preferred purchaser remain ongoing, their technical due diligence and stakeholder engagement in relation to the proposed transaction are at an advanced stage,” Mr. Amor wrote in his report, which didn’t include further details such as the possible purchaser’s identity or a sale price.
Rory O’Sullivan, chief executive of the wholly owned Canadian subsidiary and a director with the British parent, said the bidder is Canadian. If concluded, the sale “would bring all of the Moltex assets under Canadian ownership,” a prospect he welcomed.
Mr. Amor added that a previous bidder for the British company (which he did not identify) made an unconditional offer last year, but withdrew in October after a period of due diligence, for reasons he refused to disclose. So the company was put up for sale again and received four offers late last year, leading to a period of exclusive talks with the current bidder that ended Mar. 31.
The insolvency proceedings are part of the denouement of New Brunswick’s ill-fated dalliance with small modular reactors.
Moltex was one of two vendors selected by New Brunswick Power in 2018 to build first-of-a-kind nuclear reactors at its Point Lepreau nuclear power plant southwest of Saint John. Moltex had been developing a reactor called the Stable Salt Reactor-Wasteburner, along with a method of reprocessing spent fuel from Canada’s Candu reactors for reuse.
New Brunswick government rethinks nuclear reactor plans
The second selected vendor was a U.S. company, ARC Clean Technology Inc., which promised to build and commission a new reactor called the ARC-100 by the end of this decade.
NB Power had envisioned dozens of those reactors built in Canada and worldwide, with some components manufactured in New Brunswick and royalty payments flowing into provincial coffers. The federal government provided $50.5-million in financing to Moltex in 2021; the province supplied lesser sums to both vendors.
But the two companies struggled to raise the huge sums required to design and license their reactors, while NB Power has had its own financial difficulties. By 2023, provincial officials began to acknowledge that target deadlines to construct the reactors would be missed.
By last year, building either reactor in New Brunswick had become a distant prospect. In an interview with The Globe and Mail in February, NB Power CEO Lori Clark said there was limited ability to spread the costs of first-of-a-kind reactors in a province of 400,000 residents. NB Power is now watching closely to see which reactors Ontario – home to Canada’s largest reactor fleet by far – selects for its own proposed nuclear plants.
“While I don’t want to rule out any technology at this point in time, I do think we do not want to be first-of-a-kind,” she said, referring to a reactor model that has never been built previously.
“And we don’t want to be only-of-a-kind in New Brunswick, because there’s always additional costs and risks.”
Mr. O’Sullivan said the British insolvency proceedings limited what his company could accomplish. Moltex scaled back its Canadian staff to fewer than 10 people and reduced spending, but continued some research and development activities. Mr. Amor reported the parent company provided Moltex Energy Canada with £300,000 in working capital over the past year to plug shortfalls.
Once under new ownership, Moltex Energy Canada plans to re-evaluate its target markets, including New Brunswick.
“What’s extremely appealing now is the speed that vendors are able to move to get prototypes developed in the U.S.,” Mr. O’Sullivan noted, particularly at sites controlled by the U.S. Department of Energy. And this week that same department called for applications from the private sector to advance U.S. capabilities for recycling spent nuclear fuel.
“We’re going to be exploring that as an alternative option in the coming months,” Mr. O’Sullivan said.
As for ARC, it completed an early prelicensing review of its proposed reactor with the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission last summer, but now appears to be pursuing opportunities well outside New Brunswick. It announced earlier this month an early-stage agreement for possible development and deployment of the ARC-100 in Turkey.