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Journalist Markham Hislop interviews leading energy experts from around the world about the energy transition and climate change.
Welcome to episode 328 of the Energy Talks podcast. I'm energy and climate journalist, Markham Hislop. I am a nuclear power skeptic. I feel the same way about nukes as I did about hydrogen in 2022. Show me.
Markham:When grandiose claims are made for an energy technology, as they are for nuclear, then let's thoroughly investigate the use cases. The practical economic cases for hydrogen have shrunk considerably over the past 2 years. I suspect the same will be true for nuclear. To discuss nuclear power's future in Canada, I'm joined by Brendan Frank, director of policy and strategy for clean prosperity, and lead author of the new report, Nuclear for a Net 0 Canada. Welcome to Energy Talks, Brendan.
Brendan:Great to be with you, Marco.
Markham:Yeah. It's good to have you back, man. I I mean, I really this is timely, because I have to say, the nuclear bros are in my threads all the time. You know, nuclear is the only way to get to net 0. Nuclear is the only response to China.
Markham:Nuclear blah blah blah. And I said as as I said in the introduction, I'm I'm a bit of a skeptic. Show me. Make the case for nuclear.
Brendan:So a careful reading of the paper, would show that it's not exactly making the case for nuclear. What we are really calling for is an honest accounting of the trade offs associated with nuclear. It offers things that no other generating source can. That is just a a brute fact. It also faces a lot of obstacles that other generating sources do not.
Brendan:So it's kind of high risk, high reward. And what we are saying is that there are some no regrets policies that we can implement now to ensure that if Canada's nuclear sector delivers on this next handful of projects that are planned in Ontario and New Brunswick, there are pathways for further success. We don't think that the path to net 0 necessarily has to have nuclear in it, but there are more pathways to net 0 with nuclear in them.
Markham:Let's explore that a little bit. What are some of the upside to nuclear that you're seeing with the projects that are currently being developed in Ontario and and New Brunswick, and, you know, that give you that suggest that they might be successful.
Brendan:So nuclear has a a lot of things going for it. Right? It's it's 0 carbon electricity in a world that is rapidly electrifying. It is large scale. You know?
Brendan:The the smallest reactors that Canada is building are 300 megawatts, so about as big as a small end gas plant. The the largest reactors are are much bigger than that. High capacity, very land dense, so you don't need a a ton of land to to build a a power plant. They're long lived assets. They can gen they can live for, you know, 30, 40, 50 years, even longer if they're refurbished.
Brendan:So there's there's a lot to to like about nuclear and the challenge that many, many countries have encountered despite that that upside is just cost. Right? How do you deliver these projects on time and on budget in a way that prevents you from going over budget by, like, molds, which which has happened in some very high profile cases. There's a reason to believe that there's a reason to believe that Canada might be an exception to that, and the evidence that we present is actually the refurbishments that are underway in Ontario. Ontario is refurbishing 16 of its 18 nuclear reactors.
Brendan:And to date, those are on budget and ahead of schedule, and they've actually primed the supply chains in Ontario necessary for building new reactors, which is admittedly a different undertaking than refurbishing an old reactor, but a promising sign nonetheless.
Markham:Professor, Mark, Winfield, from York University, I've I've had him on a couple of times to talk about nuclear in Canada and and the refurbishment issues in Ontario. And he points to a number of of concerns. 1 of them will be cost. He doesn't buy the on budget, argument yet. And he points out that the, the existing projects, the ones that are being refurbished, are perilously close, he says, to geological faults that could be become a problem, in the future.
Markham:And he concludes that the the risk is not worth the the benefit. How would you respond to that? What does the data look like?
Brendan:So I'd say we can we can have an open debate about safety. Canada's safety record for for nuclear power, we we think is is quite strong. Right? We are, we've been operating nuclear facilities for decades now, and the the the safety record speaks for itself. As far as seismicity, we, I will defer to the, the geologists and the seismologists on on that particular point.
Brendan:But, of course, sighting is is a vital consideration. We saw that with, Fukushima, for example, the the consequences of poor citing.
Markham:Oh, okay. So the the jury's still out. We we don't have enough, information at hand to have an informed opinion on that 1. I do wanna ask about this question of nuclear power leaders, or leaders who are constructing, nuclear power plants, because I came across an article yesterday that had a very interesting comment, about how the USA, you know, back in the 50, 60, seventies, was a leader in nuclear power. And then because of the various accidents like 3 Mile Island, essentially abandoned nuclear, and the the industry atrophied.
Markham:It lost its expertise. It lost the experience that it had. And now if it's gonna pick it up, it's gonna if there's AAA serious threat that it'll run into problems like it did with Vogtle, the Vogtle reactors in in Georgia, which were horrendously over over budget and over time. And and I wonder, is is the same thing happening in Canada?
Brendan:So it's a good question. I think nuclear is these are mega projects. Right? Like, bottom line, they are multibillion dollar projects. And in general, the west has kind of forgotten how to do that.
Brendan:Right? This is not unique to nuclear necessarily. There are plenty of other non nuclear energy related projects that have also struggled with with going over budget and over time. There are a ton of different reasons why nuclear goes over budget, you know, ranging from poor estimates to poor weather. It's really situation specific, but 1 common thread definitely is that that labor force.
Brendan:And that's actually part of why we are optimistic in Canada's case. Right? That same workforce that is refurbishing the reactors at Bruce and Darlington and, shortly, Pickering, they'll be around to help build these new reactors. They have valid and you usable experience that can be leveraged for future construction.
Markham:It I assume that the designs that will be used in Canada, should this go forward, will be the can do designs.
Brendan:So we should differentiate here. There are sort of 3 classes of reactors, sizes of reactors that we can we can talk about here. There are large reactors. So these all of Canada's 19 reactors are are large, either 500 megawatts or more. So some as large as almost 900 megawatts.
Brendan:Then there's the the small range, and small is a bit of a misnomer. The the quote, unquote small modular reactor that is under construction at the Darlington station is 300 megawatts. And then we have a class of of micro reactors, which are under 20 megawatts, and they have a lot of interesting use cases that we can talk about. But each has kind of a different story behind it. And when you say the the the can you reactors, those are large reactors.
Brendan:So Bruce, the Bruce station, which is 1 of the largest in the world right now, is considering expanding, constructing between 45 new reactors. The CANDU Monarch, which is currently, the license holder is Atkins Realis, formerly known as known as S&C Levelyn. That is 1 of 2 reactor types that is potentially under consideration. The other is the AP 1, 000, which is owned by Westinghouse, which was just acquired by Brookfield and Cameco. So there's a choice to be made there.
Brendan:It might be can do, but there's a world where that doesn't happen whether on the large side.
Markham:Okay. And before we get into SMRs, because in Western Canada, SMRs are a big deal. There's a lot of conversation going on about them. Alberta and Saskatchewan are both entered into, a memorandum of understanding with Ontario and New Brunswick, to develop SMRs. The federal government's on board with SMRs, so we'll get to those.
Markham:What I'm interested in is it seems like the the countries that really have still got nuclear power plant building capacity and have made advances in technology are China and Russia. I mean, China has got, I think, 30 reactors either under construction or some of them are under construction and others will be built by 2030. And and by all accounts, they do come in on budget and under, on schedule. Russia is not quite as accomplished, I think, but is still recognized as being a nuclear power plant power, if I can if I can use that that phrase. And what what do what do you know about what what insights can you share with us about the role of China and Russia in the build out of nuclear?
Brendan:Yeah. So China has really cracked the code, so to speak, on nuclear. They're building large reactors repeatedly with success. There's very few cost overruns. They they basically figured out how to do this.
Brendan:And that really comes from leveraging the workforce. There are also, you know, regulatory hurdles and considerations that they don't have to worry about. That is not the case in Canada. The other piece that has really helped China build a long term vision for its nuclear sector is persistent growing demand for electricity. Right?
Brendan:That market signal is hugely important for nuclear. These are large scale projects that take anywhere between 5 10 years to build. You need to be really comfortable that the demand is going to be there if you're going to invest in such a massive long lived piece of infrastructure. And right now, in the Canadian context at least, Canada doesn't have a stable policy environment. We don't have the climate policies we need that signal to the market that nuclear is actually something that we should pursue in a in a serious way.
Brendan:And outside of Ontario and New Brunswick, we're not really pursuing it in a in a serious way yet.
Markham:Well, let's talk about about costs. If we're talking you know, I assume there's differences between technologies and countries and so on. Any idea what are the cost per megawatt hour in, say, China would be as compared to what it might be in a Russia or, sorry, an American or Canadian project?
Brendan:Yeah. So the cost per megawatt hour metric is kind of challenging for for nuclear, particularly for first of kind projects, which is what Canada is talking about right now. And that has a lot to do with the way that we actually calculate what is known as the levelized cost of of electricity. You have to apply a discount rate to the electricity that you generate in the future. And nuclear is such a long lived asset.
Brendan:Right? But the question of how you would value electricity that's produced in 20 70 or 20 80 is really complicated. So we should, know, take level levelized cost of electricity calculations per megawatt hour with with a grain of salt there. But there is, if we can just sort of take those flaws as they are and entertain the discussion for a moment, there is a wide range of of estimates for the cost of a future nuclear, and then there's a wide range of of estimates for nuclear that is is operating today. China seems to have gotten it under a $100 per megawatt hour, and in some cases, substantially below a $100 a megawatt hour.
Brendan:Canada, western countries are more in the ballpark of, like, a 120 to a 100 and 50 per megawatt hour.
Markham:Wow. Given the fact that that wind and and solar are flirting with $20 a megawatt hour, that that's a substantial difference. But but I have to ask the question. I hate the load, term base load power, and it's kind of gone out of out of fashion that we talk about dispatchable power. And and nuclear is dispatchable power, and it has a higher value than intermittent power, at least in in parts of the the day when the the wind is blowing and the and the sun isn't shining.
Markham:What role might that play in how we think about about nuclear? I mean, if dispatchable power has a higher value, what might it be?
Brendan:Yeah. So when I think about so firm clean firm, if you if you'd like, my mind first turns to industrial customers. Right? There are a lot of heavy industries, manufacturing processes, where even a millisecond interruption to the power supply means that you are offline for a week or more. Right?
Brendan:These are either big machines that take a long time to start up. So the value of base load power is is quite valuable for industrial customers. And I should maybe also say here that it's not necessarily the case that nuclear is going to be competing with wind and solar. Wind and solar are, I think Jesse Jenkins has called them fuel saving technologies. Right?
Brendan:If the sun is shining or the wind is blowing, that is natural you don't have to burn or batteries, charge that you don't have to dispatch it, etcetera. There will always be a need for for base load for reliable power in Canada.
Markham:Yeah. III can understand that, and a lot of that's gonna be met by hydro. Right? I mean, 60% of our our generation capacity already is hydro, 17% is is nuclear, and the idea, you know, I mean, I think it's generally well accepted that, wind and solar work really well with hydro. They act as hydro acts essentially as a battery for the the renewables.
Markham:And I get the there are particular provinces, like Alberta would be 1, where you could see, you know, where 75 to 80% of its of its load comes from industry and and big commercial. Where and that's 1 of the reasons why nuclear is, I think, praised. You know, it's a it's a technology of choice in Alberta. That's why they're pursuing it. But how much of it do we need?
Markham:Do we need, you know, another 10%? Do we need does nuclear need to be 40, 50%, or can we get by with, like, 20, 25 percent? I don't know. What's your take on that?
Brendan:Yeah. It's a good question. There are multiple grid architectures that can work. Just brief on hydro because he brought it up. So there are of course, hydro is is a viable alternative, as far as low carbon base load dispatchable power.
Brendan:But we've tapped out a lot of our best hydro sources already, and there are a lot of provinces that have very little to begin with. And secondly, climate change is making hydropower less reliable. So we shouldn't plan for a world where hydropower becomes the dominant power source. For example, like in Ontario right now, nuclear is producing about 50% of of the the electricity on the grid. Hydra is producing about a quarter.
Brendan:There's no upper limit on nuclear necessarily, right, in the same way that we are constrained by by the geography of of of hydro. As far as, you know, what role each generating source plays, I think we really need to keep it at a we really need to keep it at a system perspective. So wind and solar, you mentioned, are, you know, dirt cheap sources of generation power now. It's an incredible success story. But the cost of other aspects of the grid are going up.
Brendan:Right? Transmission costs are going up. Distribution costs are going up. And building a lot of wind and solar means building a lot of transmission. There's a trade off there.
Brendan:Whereas with nuclear, you can leverage sites that are already licensed to produce with minimal updates to the grid. You can leverage existing right of ways and permits and and so forth. We think that's a real advantage, and it's something that system planners should really take into consideration as they think about the future of their grid.
Markham:I wanna talk to you about, grid architecture because this has become I've had some conversation with grid planners in the last month or 2 that's got me thinking along these lines. And, these were grid planners in Alberta. And they really don't like or sorry, don't like renewables. The intermittency, Alberta, apparently, I think the frequency is supposed to be at 60 hertz on a regular basis, and it's dropped as low near 50, that leads to instability and unreliable unreliability. And so those planners say, look, we would be much better off to rely far more on gas when nuclear is ready, maybe it's SMRs or maybe we figured we could build a large reactor in Alberta, then we'll basically build nuclear and phase out gas, and so then we'll have a clean grid.
Markham:But the the advantage here is that the grid doesn't have to change much. The grid, basically, you can make some tweaks to it, integrate some of the new technologies, but it's not a major reengineering. Now if you go the second model here is where you bring in large quantities of wind and solar, they're intermittent resources. Now according to the IEA, according to experts that I've interviewed, you do have to reengineer the grid. You need tons of of storage.
Markham:You need demand response, you need, power electronics, you need digital controls, you need on and on and on and on. The grid for renewables doesn't look anything like the grid you need for for dispatchable power. And so the the folks in Alberta want the grid to stay the same. That's their their preference, at least the ones that I've talked to, and if you listen to Alberta premier Danielle Smith, clearly the 1 that she favors. So, the question becomes, in Canada, we don't have a power grid, we have 10 power grids.
Markham:What do other provinces think about? Clearly, Ontario and New Brunswick are on the nuclear bandwidth. Right? What about other provinces? Like, could you see Quebec building a a nuclear plant?
Markham:Can we see Manitoba, 1 of the other maritime provinces? What's your take?
Brendan:Yeah. So there are 5 provinces that either have nuclear facilities already operating or have expressed interest in recent years in constructing a commercial reactor. And then there are 5 provinces that have said everything from, you know, nothing to we actively do not want this in our in our province. The nuclear or nuclear curious provinces, if you will, are Ontario, New Brunswick, Quebec, Saskatchewan, and Alberta. And I offer that in sort of order of of preparedness.
Brendan:Quebec actually had a nuclear plant for decades, the plant. And it decommissioned in in 2012. The province is actually actively exploring options for redeveloping that site as a nuclear facility. Early days on that, but, they have the benefit of actually having a a site that has been licensed for production. Alberta and Saskatchewan are a little less advanced.
Brendan:They, the premiers have both expressed interest. Saskatchewan is expecting to make a final sighting decision next year for what would be its first reactor and then a final construction decision in 2029. And Alberta's a little bit behind, maybe, like, 3 to 5 years. There's talk about siting. Saskatchewan has narrowed their search.
Brendan:Alberta has not. And there are a lot of steps that need to happen between now and the construction of the reactor for that to be a reality.
Markham:Right. No. I I asked that question in the context of the 2 grid models that that I had, laid out. And, like, if I was Quebec, Quebec is also building wind and solar to work with its with with its hydro. But if it were to build new nuclear and, you know, some fairly large reactors, it could just, you know, integrate, connect it to the grid as it is without a lot of a lot of changes, and it's way to the way to the races.
Markham:Maybe Saskatchewan, which has a lot of coal, though it's switching to gas, could do the same. Is there any place in Canada that has said, you know what? That's cool. But we're gonna reengineer our grid. We're gonna go like California, and we're gonna do things differently, and and we'll we'll stick with the the renewables.
Markham:Any provinces that are going in that direction?
Brendan:Not to my knowledge, but I'm not the right person to ask that question either. What we talk about in the paper is we are sort of at an inflection point for nuclear right now. We have interest from the provinces. We have a lot of hype and and talk. What we really need is a supporting policy framework.
Brendan:We need a stable policy architecture to create a world where nuclear is even possible at scale in in Canada. You know, the the grid architecture conversation, I think, is is downstream of that. We talk about a couple pieces in the paper. The first of which is, yeah, electricity markets and specifically using carbon markets to signal that nuclear is actually something that whatever province you want to pick is is intent on pursuing.
Markham:Okay. So, for those listeners who who aren't familiar with, carbon pricing and, carbon the contracts for difference, maybe you could just give us a brief overview of that.
Brendan:So you mentioned that all provinces have their own electricity grids. It's kind of the same for carbon for a large. And these are big industrial facilities. So you think, you know, a cement plant, a steel plant, a large scale power producer, oil and gas, petrochemicals, and they're subject to a, a carbon price on a portion of their emissions. And if they perform well enough from an emissions perspective, they can generate credits that they can sell in the market, and that can be part of the business case for a lot of these new new carbon investments.
Brendan:Contracts for difference, since you you brought it up, is basically an insurance policy on the value of of those credits. The carbon price is expected to rise over time. The market's not acting like they're going it's going to rise over time. So contracts with difference are basically a way to provide, surety to specific that the values the value of the credits that they generate will have some sort of foreign price associated with it.
Markham:Right. It's essentially insurance against a change in government that brings in, you know, either lowers the carbon price or eliminates carbon pricing.
Brendan:Well, not just, a change in the upper end necessarily. There's just market risk here. Right? As these big bulky decarbonization projects come online, that's going to produce an oversupply of credits or risks producing an oversupply of credits in the market. We need a responsive system that can basically absorb those market shocks.
Markham:Okay. Fair enough. That's, contract for price on in in carbon markets. Let's now let's talk about small module reactors, because there's a lot of skeptic there's a lot of hype, in Alberta and Saskatchewan. I hear it all the time, but there's also a lot of skepticism.
Markham:And the reason is because, first of all, we haven't got a we haven't had I don't know if there are maybe 1 or 2 examples, and I think they're both in China, if I remember correctly. But the idea is that these are, you know, under 300, megawatt projects, and they're essentially built in modules in a factory. And the idea is that the, the SMRs would benefit from the same kind of learning curves, or at least they benefit from learning curves, to bring down prices just like wind and, oh, particularly solar. So what's in your report, what's the take on SMRs?
Brendan:So we dispute that language. They are not exactly small reactors. They're small relative to their their cousins, and they are not yet modular. Right? Modular is kind of like the end state that we are working towards.
Brendan:They're not modular just because they're small. We need the reactors to consist of parts that are replicable in a factory, and we need a workforce that can repeat the same project over and over and over again. Without those 2 components, a learning curve becomes really, really challenging, and we may, in fact, see the opposite case for costs rise from 1 reactor to the other. There are also some upper limit or some limitations on exactly how far SMRs can fall down the the learning curve. Now I'm sure a lot of your listeners are familiar with the the relationship doubling times, associated with production of a product and and cost declines.
Brendan:Reactors are so big that they just don't have as many opportunities to double. So there are estimates ranging anywhere from yeah. Reactors can the the nth of a kind reactor can be 10% cheaper than the first of kind all the way to, like, 50%. And the slope and eventual endpoint of that learning curve is going to be hugely consequential for the success of small modular reactors in the long run. Our thinking is that the first reactor that can successfully be built cheaper over time will kind of dominate the market.
Brendan:There are about 80 different reactors that could be called SMRs in various stages of development right now. I would expect a handful of those at most to make it to the finish line.
Markham:It seems to me that 1 of the benefits of SMRs is the ability to, lead I don't know if all of them do this, but certainly Molten Salt does because I've I've interviewed the company in New Brunswick that is working on it. But they claim that they can burn old spent fuel from, like, CANDU reactors. And that strikes me, it it addresses the issue of waste for starters, because whatever comes out at the end of the molten salt reactor is much less radioactive than than the fuel that went in. What about what about that? Is that a consideration?
Brendan:Yeah. So molten salt, sodium cooled reactors, there's a bunch of really cool technologies out there. Generally referred to as generation 4 reactors. Certainly some interesting and promising applications. But as far as Canada goes, we really wanna see standardization, not disruption or innovation.
Brendan:We need to get better at building 1 thing. We don't need to build 10 different things. Right? There are other countries that are much better placed to have breakthroughs on Gen 4 and Clear relative to Canada. Canada really needs to lean into its strengths.
Markham:Maybe you could just give us a a brief idea, compare, Gen 3 to Gen 4.
Brendan:Sure. Yeah. So, s m so the the lines are a little blurry, but it's generally differentiated by era. So the first set of of civilian commercial reactors that were built in the fifties, those are generally called generation 1. Starting in the seventies, you get generation 2.
Brendan:In the nineties, you get generation 3. And the the innovations from gen 1 to gen 3 are, again, a little porous. Gen 3 plus, which is what most small modular reactors that have a chance of realizing commercial scale in the next, say, 10 to 15 years. Those those are all gen 3. And then gen 4 is is a little bit beyond that.
Brendan:They all have what are known as passive safety features. That's kind of the key differentiator. So it doesn't they don't require any human intervention in the event of a malfunction. There's no extra power supply that needs to be tripped, anything like that. And then there's a range of, yeah, new technologies.
Brendan:A lot of them related to either the temperature that the reactor operates at or the moderators of coolants in the reactor. A little more exotic than just a typical boiling water reactor or pressurized water reactor. And those are a little further away into the future. We really think that Gen 3 plus, which is what the the BEWRX 300 Reactor that's under construction at the Darlington Station right now, the first SMR. We think that's where the promise lies for for SMART as we move southern gen 4, which is a little more experimental, a little more novel, very cool stuff.
Brendan:Not necessarily a game changer for time scales that are relevant to decarbonization.
Markham:This is not so much a question, Brendan, as an observation that I'd just like to get your reaction to. And and it comes out of the recent, for me, China popped up really popped on my radar about a year ago. And so there's been a tremendous discussion about, you know, China's lead in wind and solar and batteries and the enormous, rollout that's taking place in renewables in China. And it occurs to me that the electricity generation sources, the technologies of the future, are what China is really good at, and the the old technologies are the ones we're good at. You know, like, we're Canada and the US are very good at oil and gas, which we're trying frantically to get off of.
Markham:On top of which, I I think electric vehicles are now past their inflection point and and the electrification of transportation is is a foregone conclusion. The other old technology would be hydroelectric, which I think we both agree there will be 0 to very few new hydroelectric dams ever built in in Canada. So the 2 things we're good at, are not going to be the energy technologies of the future. The things we're not good at, we don't have a lot of experience, or we've lost the experience, those are the the technologies of the future. So with that as context, are we gonna catch up?
Brendan:I don't think it's realistic to expect that we would ever catch up to China. I think Canada is a, on balance, a technology taker in decarbonization. That doesn't mean there aren't a handful of things that we can't do really, really well. Right? We have a very educated workforce.
Brendan:We have very skilled engineers of of all kinds. And that sort of adaptability, that ability to learn continuously is something that will benefit Canada in the long run. China's building everything that the and going as fast as decarbonization as they reasonably can while maintaining social stability. Canada will benefit from the actions that China has taken in recent years. They will also will also benefit tremendously from the inflation reduction act.
Brendan:The question really is, how do we leverage what we do well and take those technologies once they're ready for us? I'm not sure that SMRs necessarily fall into that category, but there are certainly others.
Markham:Yeah. It's it's it's a complex, question, isn't it? Requires a complex answer because there are I mean, there's China, but then there's the the US with the inflation reduction act and the infrastructure act and the shift to the science act and other programs out of the department of energy, and then there's the EU with this green industrial pull and for them well, let's talk about the US. It is not just about decarbonization. It is not just about, being competitive in clean energy technologies.
Markham:It's also a a national security issue. It's a military issue. And, you know, they I think we're we're headed towards cold war 2.0, where the US is leading the west and and China is leading, leading the east. And the US has determined that they're not gonna rely on Chinese supply chains. So that puts us squarely in the US block and and working with them as as they build out their EV industries, their battery plants, their you know, we're mining minerals for them, that that sort of thing.
Markham:And then you wonder if just how competitive you have to be. I mean, you don't have to be as low cost as China to compete within that market because to some extent, it's gonna be protected. Right? Just the way the US has protected its, its auto industry with with tariffs. So, you know, does that change the calculation at all when we're looking at the energy technologies of the future?
Brendan:Well, I think we've certainly seen over the past few years a sort of fusion of climate policy with broader competitiveness, natural natural security, economic prosperity. I think those arguments all or that that fusion rather makes the argument for Canada to move faster. We are, in some ways, a whole bunch of the US. We have to move in lockstep with them on on some issues. Doesn't mean we have to do it on on all the issues.
Brendan:And, actually, nuclear is is 1 of those where Canada is is out in front a little bit, and doesn't necessarily have to hinge it the decision about whether or not to proceed with nuclear in serious way on the success of of the US.
Markham:Let's wrap up our conversation with a discussion of waste because 50 years ago, when I was just coming of age, waste would have been the number 1 issue. That would have let off our interview. And here we are, it's, it's the the last item we're gonna be discussing in this interview. How is that how is our perception of nuclear waste changed, and are we any better at storing it than we used to be?
Brendan:Yeah. So I think you see in public opinion polling that attitudes towards nuclear have encountered that have shifted a little bit in recent years. And I think more people are coming to the realization that waste is an acceptable trade off for the benefits that that nuclear provides. There are still significant hurdles to clear in Canada as far as a long term storage strategy for for waste goes. Community consultation and indigenous rights being, you know, 2 very, very important issues that have yet to to resolve.
Brendan:But we think they're manageable. We think that the the waste challenge is is often misunderstood, frankly. And it again, I we come back to the honest accounting of trade offs. Right? It is ultimately for communities to decide whether or want not they want to pursue nuclear.
Brendan:If communities say no, that's okay. But I think we have enough communities that say yes and view waste as a, an acceptable trade off that it's it's something that Canada will will proceed with.
Markham:Well, fair enough. Let I have 1 final question for you, and this you can be brief in this 1. For skeptics like me or show me types like me on nuclear, what do you see in the next 2 to 5 years that would push me over to be more pronuclear? What what's likely to happen?
Brendan:Yeah. I would also put myself in the show we can. This is not a slam dunk. This there are a lot of things that need to go right for nuclear to have a pathway to scale in Canada. As far as what happens in the next couple of years, I would keep an eye on the Darlington station.
Brendan:All of the action is going to be centered around there. We anticipate a final construction decision for that first small reactor, and construction will commence shortly thereafter. That project is scheduled to come online in 2029. And if it can come in on time and on budget, it really opens up a lot of new option space for for Canada. Saskatchewan is basically hinging the decision on whether or not to build the same model based on whether or not things go well at the Darlington station.
Brendan:And it's really on Ontario Power Generation, which is leading this project and its partners to to deliver. We are in the show me phase. Policymakers have put incentives on the table. We have what we need. We just need to build.
Markham:Okay. Well, we'll keep an eye on that. Brendan, thank you very much for this. Really appreciate it.
Brendan:Thank you, Mark.