The major news in the world of nuclear energy this month is the collapse of the Carbon Free Power Project in the United States. The project was to build six NuScale small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs). Given NuScale’s status as the flagship SMR design not just in the U.S. but even globally, the project’s cancellation should ring alarm bells in Canada. Yet SMRs are touted as a climate action strategy although it is becoming clearer by the day that they will delay a possible transition to net-zero energy and render it more expensive.
Read the full article in the NB Media Co-op, HERE. (Published first in The Hill Times)
Tag: Other Org Action
Small nuclear reactors in Canada: at what cost? • Petits réacteurs nucléaires au Canada : à quel prix ?
Media release from CRED-NB and collaborators. Le français suit…
From:
Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility
In collaboration with and endorsed by:
Coalition for Responsible Energy Development in New Brunswick
Inter-Church Uranium Committee Educational Cooperative (Saskatchewan)
Le Regroupement des organismes environnementaux en énergie (Quebec)
The Society of High Prairie Regional Environmental Action Committee (Alberta)
For immediate release
November 13, 2023
Small nuclear reactors in Canada: at what cost?
The sudden cancellation last week of the first small nuclear reactor project in the United States, the NuScale project, calls into question the economic viability of Canada’s plans to develop and deploy small modular reactors.
Potential customers in Utah balked at the soaring projections for the cost of electricity the NuScale reactor would generate, and the project was unable to recruit other customers to buy its power.
Today, in response, civil society groups across Canada are demanding transparency and accountability for the costs of other small nuclear reactor designs planned in this country.
“Canada should stop writing blank cheques to nuclear promoters who cannot deliver on their promises of cheap, reliable electricity,” said Gordon Edwards, President of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility.
Transparency requirements in the U.S. forced NuScale proponents to disclose the projected costs of electricity to potential investors on a regular basis. This is not the case in Canada.
Earlier this year, the target price for electricity from the NuScale project rose by over 50 percent to $89 US per MWh ($122.99 Canadian) with indications that future increases would be forthcoming. Investor confidence was shaken, and the project was scrapped.
The NuScale reactor design has been in development for more than 15 years and the company’s first commercial joint venture with electrical utilities in Utah was launched in 2015.
Governments in New Brunswick, Ontario, Saskatchewan and Alberta have committed to building small reactors, while the Quebec government is conducting feasibility studies.
However, none of the Canadian nuclear proponents have laid out the projected costs of electricity production. In New Brunswick, the government has changed legislation to force the electricity utility to purchase power from new nuclear reactors even when it is not the lowest cost option.
Three years ago, more than 140 civil society groups across Canada signed a statement calling the proposed new reactors a “dirty, dangerous distraction,” from real climate action.
Nuclear critics have consistently said these new reactor designs will take too long to develop, and will cost too much compared with existing proven renewable energy option, to deal effectively with the climate crisis that requires immediate action.
To date, federal and provincial taxpayers have subsidized these reactors through a $970 million low interest loan to Ontario Power Generation, more than $100 million in grants to private companies and public utilities in Ontario, New Brunswick, Saskatchewan and Alberta, and millions more to research fuelling requirements for small reactors at Chalk River.
Civil society groups are demanding accountability for these costly nuclear developments. Without full transparency, taxpayers and ratepayers will be forced to subsidize these experimental reactor projects and pass on an unwanted economic debt legacy to our children and grandchildren, along with the radioactive waste legacy that all nuclear reactors are adding to every day.
Quotes:
Michael Poellet, President, Inter-Church Uranium Committee Educational Cooperative:
“Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) were meant to remedy the grossly excessive, over-budget costs of nuclear power generation. With the price of renewables dropping precipitously the economics of SMRs has only worsened. The cancellation of the NuScale project with its utility partner Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems demonstrates that commercial electrical generation with SMRs is not economically viable. Canadian federal and provincial governments must allow the economic realities to break the spell that enchantment with SMRs has over them.”
David Geary, Writer and Researcher, Clean Green Saskatchewan:
“Our group, Clean Green Saskatchewan, was always confident that NuScale and all other SMR startup enterprises, GE-Hitachi included [a new reactor design selected for Ontario and Saskatchewan], would fail because of the ‘bottom line’ … i.e., the economics, the ‘financials’. They simply cannot compete in the energy marketplace…compared to any other electrical energy producing technology.”
Jack Gibbons, Chair, Ontario Clean Air Alliance
“The failure of the most advanced small nuclear project in the U.S. to come even remotely close to being financially viable should be a wake-up call for politicians in Canada dreaming about castles in the sky. Counting on unproven new nuclear technology to provide low-cost power is like counting on snow in July. It is time for Premier Ford to follow Hydro Quebec’s example and develop a financially prudent plan to meet all of Ontario’s future electricity needs by investing in energy efficiency, renewables and storage. It doesn’t make sense to waste public money on high-cost, high-risk nuclear projects when we have much cleaner, safer and lower cost options to keep our lights on.”
Susan O’Donnell, Spokesperson, Coalition for Responsible Energy Development in New Brunswick
“Our provincial government is backing two nuclear start-ups and their experimental small reactor designs. These two designs are based on earlier reactors that never operated successfully commercially despite billions of dollars in public subsidies in other countries. We believe that despite the tens of millions of public dollars given to the start-ups so far, their costly boondoggles will never be built. In effect, our government is kicking the can down the road, delaying real climate action by betting on unicorns and fairy dust.”
Gordon Edwards, President, Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility
“Public utilities are owned by the government. People elect the government. So every citizen is a shareholder in the utility company and deserves to be kept informed of all business decisions that they will ultimately have to pay for. In the midst of a climate crisis and crippling inflation, Spending Money Recklessly (SMR) is a terrible strategy. We should not delay climate action by wasting our time, our money, and our political will on speculative reactors that are all ‘first-of-a-kind’ experiments.”
Jean-Pierre Finet, Porte-parole, Regroupement des organismes environnementaux en énergie
“There is no social acceptability for nuclear energy in Quebec. Small modular reactors are not only costly, they take away government funding that would be better used on proven technologies such as heat pumps and heat storage. It is time that the Canadian government comes clean about the cost of this pseudo clean energy.”
***
De :
Regroupement pour la surveillance du nucléaire
En collaboration avec et endossé par :
Coalition for Responsible Energy Development in New Brunswick
Inter-Church Uranium Committee Educational Cooperative (Saskatchewan)
Le Regroupement des organismes environnementaux en énergie (Quebec)
The Society of High Prairie Regional Environmental Action Committee (Alberta)
Pour publication immédiate
Le 13 novembre 2023
Petits réacteurs nucléaires au Canada : à quel prix ?
L’annulation la semaine dernière du premier projet de petit réacteur nucléaire aux États-Unis, le projet NuScale, remet en question la viabilité économique des projets canadiens de développement et de déploiement de petits réacteurs modulaires.
Les clients potentiels de l’Utah se sont montrés réticents face à la montée en flèche du coût de l’électricité produite par le réacteur NuScale, et le projet n’a pas été en mesure de recruter d’autres clients pour acheter son électricité.
Aujourd’hui, en réponse à cette situation, des groupes de la société civile de tout le Canada exigent la transparence et l’obligation de rendre compte des coûts des autres projets de petits réacteurs nucléaires prévus dans ce pays.
“Le Canada doit cesser de signer des chèques en blanc aux promoteurs nucléaires qui ne peuvent tenir leurs promesses d’une électricité fiable et bon marché”, a déclaré Gordon Edwards, président du Regroupement pour la surveillance du nucléaire.
Les exigences de transparence aux États-Unis ont contraint les promoteurs de NuScale à divulguer régulièrement les coûts prévus de l’électricité aux investisseurs potentiels. Ce n’est pas le cas au Canada.
Au début de l’année, le prix cible de l’électricité produite par le projet NuScale a augmenté de plus de 50 % pour atteindre 89 dollars américains par MWh (122,99 dollars canadiens), avec des indications que d’autres augmentations allaient suivre. La confiance des investisseurs a été ébranlée et le projet a été abandonné.
La conception du réacteur NuScale est en cours de développement depuis plus de 15 ans et la première coentreprise commerciale avec les services publics d’électricité de l’Utah a été lancée en 2015.
Les gouvernements du Nouveau-Brunswick, de l’Ontario, de la Saskatchewan et de l’Alberta se sont engagés à construire de petits réacteurs, tandis que le gouvernement du Québec mène des études de faisabilité.
Toutefois, aucun de ces promoteurs nucléaires n’a présenté les coûts prévus de la production d’électricité. Au Nouveau-Brunswick, le gouvernement a modifié la législation pour obliger la compagnie d’électricité à acheter de l’électricité provenant de nouveaux réacteurs nucléaires, même si ce n’est pas l’option la moins coûteuse.
Il y a trois ans, plus de 140 groupes de la société civile du Canada ont signé une déclaration qualifiant les nouveaux réacteurs proposés de “distraction sale et dangereuse” par rapport à une véritable action en faveur du climat.
Les détracteurs du nucléaire n’ont cessé de répéter que la mise au point de ces nouveaux réacteurs prendrait trop de temps et qu’ils coûteraient trop cher par rapport aux options existantes en matière d’énergies renouvelables, qui ont fait leurs preuves, pour que l’on puisse faire face efficacement à la crise climatique qui exige des mesures immédiates.
À ce jour, les contribuables fédéraux et provinciaux ont subventionné ces réacteurs en accordant un prêt à faible taux d’intérêt de 970 millions de dollars à l’Ontario Power Generation, en accordant plus de 100 millions de dollars de subventions à des entreprises privées et à des services publics en Ontario, au Nouveau-Brunswick, en Saskatchewan et en Alberta, et en consacrant des millions de dollars supplémentaires à la recherche sur les exigences en matière de combustible pour les petits réacteurs de Chalk River.
Les groupes de la société civile demandent des comptes sur ces développements nucléaires coûteux. Sans une transparence totale, les contribuables et les usagers seront contraints de subventionner ces projets de réacteurs expérimentaux et de léguer à nos enfants et petits-enfants une dette économique non désirée, ainsi que les déchets radioactifs que tous les réacteurs nucléaires ajoutent chaque jour à l’héritage.
Citations:
Michael Poellet, président de l’Inter-Church Uranium Committee Educational Cooperative :
« Les petits réacteurs modulaires (PRM) étaient censés remédier aux coûts excessivement élevés et hors budget de la production d’énergie nucléaire. Avec la chute vertigineuse du prix des énergies renouvelables, la situation économique des PRM n’a fait qu’empirer. L’annulation du projet NuScale avec son partenaire Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems (UAMPS) démontre que la production commerciale d’électricité avec des PRM n’est pas économiquement viable. Les gouvernements fédéral et provinciaux du Canada doivent permettre aux réalités économiques de rompre l’enchantement qu’ils éprouvent à l’égard des petits réactreurs modulaires. »
David Geary, écrivain et chercheur, Clean Green Saskatchewan :
« Notre groupe, Clean Green Saskatchewan, a toujours été convaincu que NuScale et toutes les autres entreprises de démarrage de “petits réacteurs modulaires” (PRM), y compris GE-Hitachi [un réacteur choisi par l’Ontario et le Saskatchewan], échoueraient à cause du “résultat net”… c’est-à-dire de l’économie, des “finances”. Ils ne peuvent tout simplement pas être compétitifs sur le marché de l’énergie … par rapport à n’importe quelle autre technologie de production d’énergie électrique. »
Jack Gibbons, président de l’Ontario Clean Air Alliance
« L’échec du projet de petite centrale nucléaire le plus avancé des États-Unis, qui n’a même pas réussi à s’approcher de la viabilité financière, devrait être un signal d’alarme pour les politiciens canadiens qui rêvent de châteaux dans le ciel. Compter sur une nouvelle technologie nucléaire qui n’a pas fait ses preuves pour fournir de l’électricité à bas prix, c’est comme compter sur la neige en juillet. Il est temps que le premier ministre Ford suive l’exemple d’Hydro-Québec et élabore un plan financièrement prudent pour répondre à tous les besoins futurs de l’Ontario en matière d’électricité en investissant dans l’efficacité énergétique, les énergies renouvelables et le stockage. Il est insensé de gaspiller des fonds publics dans des projets nucléaires coûteux et à haut risque, alors que nous disposons d’options beaucoup plus propres, plus sûres et moins coûteuses pour maintenir nos lumières allumées. »
Susan O’Donnell, porte-parole, Coalition pour le développement énergétique responsable au Nouveau-Brunswick
« Notre gouvernement provincial soutient deux entreprises nucléaires en démarrage et leurs petits réacteurs expérimentaux. Ces deux modèles sont basés sur des réacteurs antérieurs qui n’ont jamais été exploités commercialement avec succès malgré des milliards de dollars de subventions publiques dans d’autres pays. Nous pensons qu’en dépit des dizaines de millions d’euros versés jusqu’à présent aux start-ups, ces coûteux projets ne seront jamais construits. En fait, notre gouvernement fait traîner les choses en longueur et retarde l’adoption de véritables mesures climatiques en pariant sur des licornes et de la poussière de fée. »
Gordon Edwards, président du Regroupement pour la surveillance du nucléaire
« Les services publics appartiennent au gouvernement. Les citoyens élisent le gouvernement. Chaque citoyen est donc un actionnaire de la compagnie d’électricité et mérite d’être informé de toutes les décisions commerciales qu’il devra finalement payer. Dans un contexte de crise climatique et d’inflation paralysante, dépenser de l’argent de manière inconsidérée est une stratégie terrible. Nous ne devrions pas retarder l’action climatique en perdant notre temps, notre argent et notre volonté politique dans des réacteurs spéculatifs qui sont tous des expériences “premières du genre”. »
Jean-Pierre Finet, analyste et porte-parole, Regroupement des organismes environnementaux en énergie
« Il n’y a pas d’acceptabilité sociale pour l’énergie nucléaire au Québec. Les petits réacteurs modulaires sont non seulement coûteux, ils privent le gouvernement de financement qui serait mieux utilisé pour des technologies éprouvées telles le solaire, l’éolien et le stockage. Il est temps que le gouvernement canadien révèle clairement le coût de cette énergie soi-disant propre. »
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How much public funding will new nuclear reactors require?
CRED-NB is part of a national network of groups publishing the new SMRs Information Task Force bulletins. The second one addresses the question: How much public funding will new nuclear reactors require?
Nuclear power is heavily subsidized by federal taxpayers as well as those in Ontario and New Brunswick. Much of the money spent on designing, building and operating new reactors will be direct public funding. Of course, consumers will eventually pay all the costs through their electricity bills or taxes.
Federal subsidies for new reactors have topped $1 billion. Indeed, a Canada Infrastructure Bank “low-interest” loan of $970 million is approved for Ontario Power Generation to work on a U.S. designed reactor (the BWRX-300) for the Darlington site. The loan is for the costs of project design, site preparation, procurement of long lead-time equipment, utility connections, implementation of a digital strategy, and related project management. Such costs ought to be paid by the vendor before construction begins. Subsidies will simply be folded into electricity rates and taxes paid by consumers.
Read the rest of the bulletin HERE.
Why are SMRs a dog’s breakfast of designs?
CRED-NB is part of a national network of groups publishing the new SMRs Information Task Force bulletins. The first one addresses the question: Why are SMRs a dog’s breakfast of designs?
As of 2023 roughly 50 small modular reactor (SMR) designs are under development, with electrical generating capacity varying between 5 and 300 megawatts.
Compared to the current generation of larger nuclear reactors, SMRs would require smaller capital investments and provide options for deployment at remote locations with smaller power demands. But as reactor size goes down, unit cost goes up, as does the amount of radioactive waste per unit of electricity generated.
Different technology options attempt to address the concerns that plague the nuclear industry: safety, cost, radioactive waste, and weapons proliferation. However, designing for “passive safety”, opting for “waste recycling”, or providing “proliferation resistance” all involve trade-offs. With no clear “best” design, and no sizeable market, there is no justification for building a factory to mass-produce “modular” components to bring down costs.
Read the rest of it, in both official languages, HERE.
Gordon Edwards at CHCO-TV in St. Andrews
Dr. Edwards was in New Brunswick last week for the CEDAR events at St. Thomas University. After the conference in Fredericton, he visited St. Andrews where he was interviewed for the Southwest Magazine TV show by host Vicki Hogarth. You can watch it here:
New Brunswick confirms its nuclear plans: Another $7M for SMRs
Premier Higgs was in Ottawa on Oct. 17 looking for federal funding for New Brunswick’s plans to green the electricity grid and make the province “net-zero” by 2050. He confirmed that developing new reactor designs is a provincial priority, along with converting the NB Power coal-fired plant at Belledune to burning biomass. In response, the federal government announced $7M for the ARC-100 project and $2M for a feasibility study for Belledune. This is in contrast to the Nova Scotia plan that focuses on offshore wind generation. CRED-NB core member Susan O’Donnell wrote a short article about it for the NB Media Co-op, HERE.
New Brunswick Indigenous communities and all New Brunswickers need facts, not sales hype, about SMNRs
Governments and other nuclear proponents are failing both Indigenous and settler communities by promoting sales and publicity material about small modular nuclear reactors (SMNRs) instead of sharing facts by independent researchers not tied to the industry. A commentary by Peskotomuhkati Chief Hugh Akagi and CRED-NB core member Susan O’Donnell was published by The Hill Times, the Telegraph Journal and the NB Media Co-op. Read it HERE.
Fredericton, Thursday, October 12 @ STU– Professor M.V. Ramana: “Nuclear Energy and the Bomb”
When thinking about energy transitions, the issue of nuclear weapons rarely comes to mind. Yet the connections between generating nuclear energy and the ability to make nuclear weapons have been evident since Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed. One connection is separating plutonium from used nuclear fuel, the technology proposed for Point Lepreau in New Brunswick. Other connections include the overlap in technical expertise and institutions.
M.V. Ramana is the Simons Chair in Disarmament, Global and Human Security and Professor at the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada.
7pm • Kinsella Auditorium • 9 Duffie Drive • Fredericton • More info HERE.
Everyone is invited to this free public talk at St. Thomas University in Fredericton. Hosts are the CEDAR project and the Environment and Society Program at St. Thomas University and co-hosts the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War Canada (IPPNWC), the Coalition for Responsible Energy Development in New Brunswick (CRED-NB) and the NB Media Co-op.
Will an experimental nuclear reactor on the Bay of Fundy escape federal impact assessment?
On June 30, NB Power registered an environmental impact assessment with the province of New Brunswick and filed a licence application with the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) to prepare a site on the Bay of Fundy for the ARC-100, an experimental small modular reactor (SMR) still in early design.
Making information public about the project – which includes not just a reactor but also new aquatic infrastructure in the Bay of Fundy and new radioactive storage – as well as testing the veracity of claims made about safety, risk and impacts will be difficult if not impossible without a federal Impact Assessment, which has so far been denied.
Relying only on the provincial assessment or the CNSC’s review to inform understandings of adverse effects and impacts is a major step backwards. The provincial process has limited opportunities for public input. The CNSC’s licensing process is narrowly defined by the stage of activity being licensed (i.e., site selection, construction, operations and eventual decommissioning), meaning a review of impacts and opportunities for public engagement are spaced decades apart.
Read the full article by Susan O’Donnell and Kerrie Blaise in the NB Media Co-op HERE.
Wishful thinking about nuclear energy won’t get us to net zero
This commentary was published by The Hill Times and the NB Media Co-op.
Wishful thinking about nuclear energy won’t get us to net zero
M. V. Ramana and Susan O’Donnell
On June 20, the Canada Energy Regulator (CER) released its 2023 Canada’s Energy Future report, developing scenarios for a path to net zero by 2050. These scenarios project roughly a tripling of nuclear energy generation capacity in Canada by 2050, seemingly reinforcing former Natural Resources Minister Seamus O’Regan’s statement in 2020 that there is “no path to net-zero without nuclear.”
However, underlying both the scenarios and O’Regan’s contention is wishful thinking about the economics of nuclear energy and how fast nuclear power can be scaled up.
The new nuclear capacity that the report envisions consists of so-called small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs), which have so far not been built in Canada. Aside from refurbishing existing CANDU reactors, the CER does not think any more standard sized nuclear reactors will be built in Canada. Most of this buildup is to happen between 2035 and 2050, meaning that nuclear power will not help meet the government’s stated goal of decarbonizing the electricity grid by 2035.
But can SMRs be built rapidly after 2035? Only two crown companies in the business of generating electricity for the grid have proposed to build SMRs: NB Power in New Brunswick and Ontario Power Generation (OPG).
The reactor designs proposed for New Brunswick are cooled by molten salts and liquid sodium metal. Despite decades of development work and billions invested, major technical challenges have prevented molten salt reactors and sodium cooled reactors from commercial viability, making it highly unlikely that the New Brunswick designs can be rapidly deployed in the time frame envisioned by the CER.
Assuming that OPG’s chosen design – the 300-megawatt BWRX-300 – is the one to be deployed widely, then around 70 SMR units would need to be built and operating effectively on the grid between 2030 and 2050. The BWRX-300 design is yet to be even approved by any safety regulator anywhere in the world.
But the report has an even more serious problem: economics. Nuclear power cannot compete economically, which is why its share of global electricity generation has declined from 17.5 percent in 1996 to 9.8 percent in 2021. Because SMRs lose out on economies of scale, they will produce even more expensive electricity.
The CER’s scenarios for nuclear power are based on the Electricity Supply Model, meant to calculate “the most efficient and cost-effective way to meet electricity demand in each region.” Such models are widely used in energy analysis and policy making but their utility depends on the validity of the assumptions used; garbage in, garbage out.
Two key parameters underlie the report’s scenarios—the capital cost of an SMR and how that cost evolves with time. The CER’s assumptions in the two Net Zero scenarios are that a SMR costs $9,262 per kilowatt in 2020, falling to $8,348/kW by 2030, and to $6,519/kW by 2050. Both these assumptions are ridiculously out of touch with the real world.
Consider the CAREM-25 SMR designed to feed 25 megawatts of electricity into the grid, being built in Argentina since 2014. Its original cost estimate of $446 million (2014 US dollars), has escalated significantly since then, but even using these original costs, the project costs nearly $30,000 per kilowatt in 2022 Canadian dollars.
The NuScale design, arguably the closest to deployment in the United States, has been in development since 2007 with the build not yet begun. The January 2023 cost estimate for six NuScale SMRs with a total capacity of 462 megawatts is $9.3 billion, or over $26,000 per kilowatt in Canadian dollars.
Finally, the cost of the 5-megawatt Micro Modular Reactor Project at Chalk River in Ontario was estimated by the proponent in May 2020 to be between $100 and $200 million. In 2022 Canadian dollars, that works out to $22,000 to $44,000 per kilowatt.
In other words, the CER’s cost assumptions are wild underestimates, 2.5 to four times lower than the current evidence.
The second incorrect assumption is that costs will decrease with time. Both in the United States and France, the countries with the highest number of nuclear plants, the trend was the opposite: costs went up, not down, as more reactors were built. In both countries, the estimated construction cost of the most recent reactors being built—Vogtle in the United States, and Flamanville-3 in France—have broken new records.
We need government organizations to do better. The climate problem is too serious for such unrealistic modelling exercises. Wishful thinking will only thwart our ability to act meaningfully to lower emissions rapidly.
M.V. Ramana is the Simons Chair in Disarmament, Global and Human Security and professor at the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, University of British Columbia. Susan O’Donnell is adjunct research professor and primary investigator of the CEDAR project at St. Thomas University in Fredericton.