Part 3 of 3 Parts (Please read Parts 1 and 2 first)

The timeline for the first SMR is to complete construction by the end of 2029 and be in service in 2030. The remaining three SMRs will be completed in the mid-2030s. Preparation work on the site has been moving forward for all four SMRs, ahead of the construction approval.

The Conference Board of Canada estimates that the deployment and operation of the four SMRs will increase Ontario’s GDP by twenty-five and a half billion dollars over sixty-five years and Canada’s GDP by twenty-seven and a half billion dollars. It will also sustain eighteen thousand jobs during the construction phase and twenty-five hundred jobs over the projected sixty years of operation. The economic multiplier is the ratio of increased GDP to spending. It is estimated at ninety one percent for the SMR project. One dollar spent will boost GDP by ninety-one cents.

The Ontario Energy Board will review the recovery of the costs for the project in future proceedings for OPG’s regulated electricity prices. Ontario is exploring potential financial policy tools that would benefit ratepayers. OPG “continues to explore optimal financing arrangements in support of funding requirements for the planned capital investments”. OPG will be recouping the cost of the SMRs from customers’ bills over the sixty-year generating life of the SMRs and says the projected cost of about fifteen cents per kilowatt-hour would be comparable with alternative renewable energy sources. OPG mentions Ontario’s Independent Electricity System Operator evaluation of the new nuclear project against viable non-carbon emitting alternatives which found that replacing the project with wind, solar, and battery storage would require five thousand six hundred to eight thousand nine hundred megawatts of capacity at a cost of thirteen and a half to nineteen cents per kilowatt-hour compared with the fifteen cents per kilowatt-hour for the SMRs.

Nuclear energy is often seen as producing baseload clean energy, without the harmful climate emissions of fossil fuels. However, the construction and fueling of nuclear reactors do generate carbon emissions. Nuclear reactors also require less land and transmission infrastructure requirements associated with alternative renewable energy sources. It produces energy about ninety percent of the time. Nuclear power can help in terms of energy security for Canada and help power things such as data centers which need huge amounts of reliable energy.

In the past couple of decades, the promise and potential of small modular reactors has been well documented. There are more than seventy different designs currently in development and numerous new projects are being proposed. You can get more details on SMRs from the World Nuclear Association Information Paper on Small Modular Reactors.

By proceeding with the Darlington project, Canada looks set to have the first commercial SMR operating in North America, or anywhere in G7. (Russia and China are currently in the lead with SMR construction projects and Argentina has a pilot SMR under construction). Poland, the U.S. and the U.K. are among a variety of countries currently looking at BWRX-300 deployment. OPG says that “as the first mover on small modular reactors, the Darlington SMR project will create jobs for Canadian workers, contracts for Canada’s booming supply chain and showcase Canada’s capabilities and expertise to the world to further grow the industry while strengthening Canada’s energy security”.

GE Vernova Hitachi Nuclear Energy

Part 1 of 3 Parts

A small modular reactor (SMR) is defined as a nuclear reactor that produces up to a maximum of three hundred megawatts. That output is about a third, or a quarter, of the output of traditional large nuclear power reactors. These reactors are called modular because they will be factory-produced with many of the components being preassembled on a production line, and then final assembly taking place on-site. They will take up a lot less space than a traditional nuclear power plant. One SMR and associated building structures will take up about the same space as a football field.

Commercial SMRs have been designed to deliver an electrical power output as low as five megawatts of electricity and up to three hundred megawatts per module. SMRs may also be designed purely for desalinization or facility heating rather than to generate electricity. These SMRs are measured in megawatts thermal. Many SMR designs rely on a modular system which allows customers to simply add modules to achieve a desired electrical output.

SMRs were first designed mostly for military purposes in the 1950s to power ballistic missile submarines and ships (aircraft carriers, ice breakers, and power barges) with nuclear propulsion. There has been growing interest from technology corporations in using SMRs to power data centers.

Modular reactors are expected to reduce on-site construction costs and increase containment efficiency. These reactors are also expected to improve safety by using passive safety features that do not require human intervention. This is not specific to SMRs but rather a characteristic of most modern reactor designs. SMRs are also claimed to have lower power plant staffing costs, because their operation is fairly simple. They are claimed to have the ability to bypass financial and safety barriers that inhibit the construction of conventional reactors.

The go-ahead has been given to Ontario Power Generation to start building the first of four small modular reactors (SMR) at the Darlington New Nuclear Project site. This is Canada’s first SMR project with a total projected cost is fifteen billion dollars.

On the 8th of May, the Province of Ontario announced its final investment decision to give the green light to Ontario Power Generation (OPG) for construction of the first operating commercial SMR in any G7 country. The plan is to have four GE Vernova Hitachi Nuclear Energy’s BWRX-300 SMRs at the site. Each of these reactors will generate three hundred megawatts, enough to power about three hundred thousand homes.

The BWRX-300 SMR is a three hundred megawatt water-cooled, natural circulation reactor with passive safety systems that are based on the design and licensing basis of GE Vernova Hitachi’s fifteen-hundred-megawatt reactor traditional large-scale ESBWR boiling water reactor. The total cost of the four-SMR project is estimated to be fifteen billion dollars.

The first SMR is estimated to cost four billion three hundred million dollars. Additionally, a series of infrastructure and services will be needed to be developed for the site including such things as roads, sewers, bridges, ancillary buildings, fiber lines and tunnels for cooling water supplies. This infrastructure will eventually service all four SMRs. The estimated cost of this infrastructure is about one billion dollars. So, in total there is an estimated budget of about five and a half billion dollars for the first SMR and the shared or common infrastructure.

Ontario Power Generation

Please read Part 2 next

Part 6 of 6 Parts

The fact that Helion is trying something new would appear to be an additional reason for skepticism about their timeline, rather than confidence. However, Kirtley’s statement does have the virtue of being true. Helion hasn’t published much about its approach to fusion, but the information it has made public verifies that Helion’s technology isn’t one with a long history of research and tests behind it. The company isn’t using DT fuel, and it claims it doesn’t need a blanket because it’s going to generate electricity directly from the expansion of its plasma. Helion claims that its “system is built to recover all unused and new electromagnetic energy efficiently” from its plasma, rather than going through the intermediate step of capturing neutrons.

Because Helion hasn’t published the details of this system, no experts have been willing to comment on the plausibility of this design. However, given the challenges that more conventional approaches to fusion face, it’s hard to believe that Helion’s technology will succeed on the timeline they’ve claimed. The good news is we won’t have to wait long to find out.

Even with all these difficulties, it’s possible that commercial fusion power will become a reality in the next few decades. The scientific and engineering challenges are significant, but there is little reason to think that they are fundamentally insurmountable. Feasible solutions have been proposed for many of them.

Nearly all those solutions are entirely theoretical, and most would require substantial research effort to construct even as prototypes, much less commercially viable products. Ma says that “If we had enough funding, if the world said—and I’m saying not even just the U.S., the world said—’Oh, this is an existential threat. We need fusion. We need all hands on deck. Let’s go Manhattan Project style or Apollo style, let’s really concentrate on it,’ I do think we could accelerate fusion energy on the grid. But barring that and looking at the history of funding, it will take longer [than 10 years].”.

While we wait for commercial fusion power to arrive, there’s a danger that the hollow promise of near-term fusion will be floated as a panacea, used as an excuse to ignore faster avenues to decarbonization and to use even more energy right now. Altman, who has other nuclear-energy investments beyond Helion, already seems to be doing this. He said in a January interview that ‘quickly permitting fusion reactors’ was the best way to meet climate goals without slowing down the growth of AI companies.

It is possible that Commonwealth or Pacific or another company will demonstrate net power from fusion within the next five or ten years. But that is still a long, long way from having fusion power on the grid at a competitive price any time soon. Until more research is carried out and more science and engineering problems are solved, humanity can’t count on fusion power to show up in time to save us from climate change, even with funding far beyond current levels. It is dangerous to assume otherwise. Loarte said, “Some people want to believe…that fusion is something that can be an energy source that will actually provide a replacement to other sources of energy, like nuclear or thermal power, or coal or gas in the next decade. I don’t think it is realistic.”.

Ma said, “We’re all rooting for each other. I would love for any one of these fusion companies to meet their goal of five years, ten years, whatever…..But that being said, the magnitude of the challenges remaining mean it will still take considerable work, and some time, to solve.”.

Helion Energy