NB Power is supporting a nuclear experiment called “ARC-100” for the Point Lepreau site on the Bay of Fundy.
The ARC company promoting the project is a U.S. start-up that has never built a nuclear reactor before.
The ARC company moved to Saint John, New Brunswick in 2018 and started asking governments in Canada for money to develop its experimental nuclear reactor design.
Recently (June 2024) several news reports indicated the ARC project is in trouble, possibly lacking the financing to develop the reactor design.
So far, New Brunswick has given ARC $25 million. The federal government gave ARC $7 million. ARC says it will need $500 million to develop the design (it takes hundreds of engineers many years to develop a new reactor design), and then $600 million more in power purchase agreements.
New reactors typically take many billions of dollars to develop and build.
Where will this money come from? Nobody knows.
The government has said the money it gave ARC is supposed to be ‘seed’ funding to attract private capital. But few private investors are interested. ARC has no confirmed customers for its experimental reactor.
CRED-NB is concerned about the ARC project for many reasons.
One is that the reactor design is called ‘sodium-cooled’ meaning the reactor will be cooled by liquid sodium metal. Sodium burns when it comes into contact with air or water.
A sodium-cooled nuclear reactor has never operated successfully on a commercial electrical grid, mostly because of many fires occuring from sodium leaks.
That’s why New Brunswickers deserve a federal environmental impact assessment, so information about the project can be thoroughly examined.
But the 2019 Impact Assessment Act says nuclear projects meeting certain conditions of size and siting, like the ARC project, do not need a federal impact assessment.
The federal Environment minister can also designate a project for an impact assessment.
CRED-NB and its partners twice – in 2022 and 2023 – submitted a detailed request to federal Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault to designate the experiment for an impact assessment.
Both times our requests were denied. However, we continue to request that this nuclear experiment undergo a federal impact assessment.
Our requests to Minister Guilbeault are detailed briefs prepared with legal counsel – we encourage you to download and read our numerous questions and concerns about the ARC nuclear experiment. Our briefs are linked here: July 2022 and March 2023.
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Given that both requests for a federal Impact Assessment were denied, the province of New Brunswick – which also funds and promotes the ARC project – is going ahead with a “comprehensive” provincial Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA).
NB Power applied for the provincial EIA in June 2023.
In our submissions to Minister Guilbeault, we explained why a provincial EIA is insufficient, including the lack of opportunities for the public to learn about the project and have their say.
In June 2023, NB Power also applied to the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) for a “licence to prepare the site” for the ARC-100.
CRED-NB will contribute however we can to the provincial Environmental Impact Assessment process as well as the future CNSC hearings. We want to ensure that the public is as informed as possible about this proposed experiment.
The first opportunity for comments on the draft provincial EIA guidelines closed on Oct. 28, 2023. The CRED-NB submission to the government is HERE.
Thank you to all CRED-NB champions and others who also submitted comments! Your participation is greatly appreciated.
The government released the final provincial EIA guidelines on November 27, 2023. They are available in English at www.gnb.ca/modularreactor and in French at www.gnb.ca/réacteurmodulaire.
We are now waiting for an opportunity to contribute to the next phase of the EIA as well as the first phase of the CNSC process.
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We will continue to advocate for a federal impact assessment for this project. Among many other concerns with the current process, the provincial and CNSC review will not consider the objections of Indigenous nations in Ontario.
The ARC experiment, if built, will produce new kinds of radioactive pollution, with the worst of it slated to be sent eventually to Indigenous territory in Ontario.
The Indigenous nations in Ontario do not want the toxic waste produced in New Brunswick!
Read these short articles to understand why this reactor needs a federal, not a provincial, impact assessment:
1) Will an experimental nuclear reactor on the Bay of Fundy escape federal impact assessment?
3) No legitimate reason to support the controversial nuclear technology planned for New Brunswick
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So why haven’t you been hearing the concerns about this nuclear experiment? Because the government and NB Power are only sharing nuclear industry promotional materials with the public.
Unfortunately, except for several exceptional articles, the corporate New Brunswick media are not doing their job consistently on this file. There are many developments with little or no corporate media attention.
That’s why we need independent media. The NB Media Co-op has consistently published articles and commentaries about the ARC-100 project, SMRs, and nuclear energy and the nuclear industry more generally.
The ARC-100 is a start up by venture capitalists in the US with no experience building a nuclear reactor. As we wrote earlier on this page, their design is based on an experimental reactor in a U.S. research facility – the EBR-2, Experimental Breeder Reactor version 2.
However ARC may be changing its reactor design, according to recent reports. The main problem is the lack of HALEU fuel outside of Russia but the reactor design has many other problems, in addition to the big problem of finding the funds to develop it.
The EBR-2 ran for several decades in a research compound in the Idaho desert. The reactor was fuelled primarily with ‘enriched’ uranium fuel, highly enriched, way higher than the 20% enrichment level currently ‘allowed’ in countries complient with the IAEA.
The EBR-2 stayed a research reactor for its entire lifecyle and was never hooked up to a commercial electrical grid.
NB Power is calling the ARC version a “proven” concept. It’s far from it.
So far, New Brunswick taxpayers have given $25 million, and federal taxpayers $7 million, to the ARC company to develop its nuclear experiment.
NB Power is spending millions more on salaries for its “SMR unit” to promote the project but those funds are subsidized (maybe entirely) by the federal government. Your federal and provincial tax dollars, hard at work.
But even those millions are not enough. The ARC head honch (CEO) said the ARC-100 will cost $500 million to develop and $600 million more in power purchase agreements to move the project forward.
Of course, that $1,100,000,000 (one billion, one hundred million) initial ask is only the start. Everyone interested to do a little digging will learn that the cost of nuclear reactor builds invariably triple and more.
Who will pay? Clearly taxpayers, of course, and NB Power ratepayers, because there’s no way this project will ever make any money for the province of New Brunswick.
In addition, from all the research we’ve read, we doubt the ARC-100 will work, if they can find the billions to build the thing.
The ARC-100 design – for a ‘sodium fast reactor’ – has been tried many times in the past by countries with far more experience with nuclear reactors than Canada, let alone New Brunswick.
This reactor design has never been commercially successful, despite tens of billions of dollars in public funds spent in those other countries. Now, it seems, it’s New Brunswick’s turn to be the guinea pig and piggy bank.
We will add information to this website as more information becomes available.
Read our commentary:
11 reasons why nuclear power has no future
What’s the alternative you ask? Read it here:
Energizing the future for New Brunswick
Thank you for your interest. Questions or comments: info@crednb.ca