Closing Manitoba’s clean energy demand gap through small modular reactors

By John Gorman, President and CEO,

Canada Nuclear Association

An energy transition is underway in Canada, and for now, Manitoba has a leading edge. Not only is the province home to some of the nation’s richest natural resources, from agriculture to electricity, oil, mining, and forestry, but it has one of the cleanest electricity grids in the country thanks to abundant hydroelectric resources. As businesses look to reduce their own carbon footprints, they will be looking to jurisdictions such as Manitoba as sources of clean energy to power their operations.

However, beyond electricity, Manitoba faces a challenge shared with the rest of the country: significant reliance on fossil fuels for transportation, agriculture, buildings, and industry. As of 2019, approximately three quarters of all energy used in the province comes from oil or natural gas. There also continues to be heavy reliance on high emitting diesel for many remote communities, with Manitoba’s diesel demand at 25 per cent above the national average per capita. Closing the province’s clean energy gap by shifting these sources of energy demand to electricity, or potentially other energy carriers like hydrogen, will be a massive challenge. While Manitoba has historically relied on a single source of clean electricity in hydro, the future electricity mix is likely to be much more diversified. One potential source of clean power for Manitoba is nuclear. Manitoba already has a history of nuclear expertise, having been home to Whiteshell Laboratories for over 40 years. The work done at Whiteshell was one part of the success story that is nuclear energy in Canada, which was one of the first countries in the world to generate electricity from a nuclear reaction and today maintains a robust and growing nuclear power sector and supply chain.

Other provinces in Canada are currently working to either expand their existing nuclear sectors, such as Ontario or New Brunswick, or enter the nuclear sector, such as in Alberta or Saskatchewan. While in the past, nuclear power in Canada has focused mainly on providing electricity at a large scale, the future of nuclear in Canada is going to be more diverse: different types of reactors, different sizes, and different use cases. In particular, Canada is becoming a world leader in the development and deployment of small modular reactors, or SMRs.

SMRs have the potential to create three major benefits for Canada. First, they will help create the clean power required for further electrification. Second, they can provide clean energy to remote communities (including those that are off the grid and that are reliant on diesel). And third, they can help to make the process of extracting natural resources much cleaner by providing non-emitting process heat and power, a challenge currently facing Manitoba’s oil & gas sector.

Canada is already an established world leader in clean nuclear energy, with an impeccable safety record that spans several decades. We already have 19 nuclear reactors that generate approximately 15 per cent of the country’s electricity and are one of the world’s largest exporters of nuclear medicine. We are also set to be the first G7 country to build and connect a grid-scale SMR, with the Darlington SMR project set to come online in 2028.

Through the 2023 federal budget, the federal government has indicated its clear and strong support for nuclear power playing in indispensable role in the countries clean energy transition and in ensuring domestic energy security. Looking to the future, there’s no doubt that non-emitting nuclear energy will play a fundamental role in helping Canada meet both its provincial and national emission reduction goals on our path to building a future green economy. v