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Capital Power and Ontario Power Generation partner to advance new nuclear in Alberta
- Thread starter DougB
- Start date
darwink
Senior Member
Great news. Hopefully they garner similar interest as carbon capture and storage with natural gas.
As long as any large government support is on the back end, this is a little downside thing.
As long as any large government support is on the back end, this is a little downside thing.
DougB
Active Member
It has plenty of downside as SMRs are still unproven. I'm expecting no government support whatsoever beyond not holding up approvals. I suspect this would be built at Genesee.
OPG should be able learn from SMR deployment at Darlington.
Mountain Man
Senior Member
Is this to be tied to the grid, or lower the carbon footprint of the Oil Sands? I recall discussion about the latter some time ago...
DougB
Active Member
Probably tied to the grid as an alternative to the once proposed Genesee 4 and 5 projects. No existing oil sand operation would take the risk on SMR or replace their existing steam plants. Perhaps a greenfield SAGD plant might, but those are unlikely to occur.
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darwink
Senior Member
Delivering at a repeatable and predictable cost is unproven.
I suspect as things get moving 'Canada' will be building/ordering one to two of these every year. That changes all sorts of supply chain risks. Getting to there from here though, you have 10 years of valley of death.
darwink
Senior Member
There is a different SMR company that is targeting industrial heat. Much smaller scale than these.
These 300 megawatt ones are less SMR in my mind, but more an optimization of size to derisk and leverage scale to try to achieve replaceable and interchangeable parts instead of bespoke builds.
DougB
Active Member
Let OPG take most of the risk at Darlington at see what happens
darwink
Senior Member
Bingo.
Feds are in for a billion https://globalnews.ca/news/9224597/ontario-small-nuclear-plant-construction/
Province is in for 4 reactors, which can hopefully show some scale benefits https://news.ontario.ca/en/release/...ll-modular-reactors-to-power-provinces-growth
Getting business and regulatory to the point of all but long lead time items seems smart though.The province has risked a lot more money on strategic things in the past.