Alberta looks to develop nuclear power, will hold public consultations this fall

Edmonton Journal

a day ago

The problem with conventional reactors has been their complexity, he said on the sidelines of the Global Energy Show in Calgary.
'If you ever get one built, you'll run it for the next 80 years, but they're hard to build and they're capital intensive to build,' Sell said.
'So our whole approach has been from the beginning: 'How do we make it simpler? How do we make it smaller? How do we have fewer components?''
X-Energy is pursuing opportunities to add power to Alberta's grid in general, as well as to link to steam-assisted gravity drainage oilsands projects that pull bitumen from deep underground through wells rather than mine it.
'Our plant is perfectly suited to perform that same mission on a small footprint,' Sell said.
OPG is looking at using X-Energy plants at industrial sites in Ontario.
A much larger conventional plant is also in the works in northwestern Alberta.
Energy Alberta is working on a power station in the Peace River area that would have two to four Candu reactors and a capacity of up to 4,800 megawatts. That would represent up to a quarter of the province's existing electricity generation.
'We initially thought, 'Wow, that would swamp our power grid,'' Smith said.
'And now with all the demands for AI data centres, we're thinking, 'Hmm, that's maybe exactly what we need.''
An initial project description was filed in April for the Peace River Nuclear Power Project, kicking off the federal review process.
In a speech to the Global Energy Show in June, Candu Energy senior vice-president Carl Marcotte said Alberta would benefit from adding nuclear to the mix.
'Whatever Albertans decide to build, you will. But you need a lot more power to do it — reliable power that runs 24/7, power that works in great weather and when it's -45 C … and it must be affordable — it really must,' he said.
'So yes, of course Alberta's abundant natural gas resources can and should do all that … But wouldn't it benefit from having a powerful, cleaner, reliable ally in that growth, providing important baseload electricity with low emissions?'
Scott MacDougall, program director of electricity for the green think-tank Pembina Institute, said nuclear could have a role to play as a clean power source, both to feed the grid and to reduce the carbon footprint of the oilsands.
But there is lower hanging fruit.
'If the problem that they're trying to solve is delivering that reliable, affordable, non-emitting power right away, there should be a much more all-of-the-above approach taken in Alberta, where we think renewable energy ought to be a more central pillar in that system,' said MacDougall.
'That's partly because renewables are much quicker to deploy and lower cost as well, and their costs are coming down every year as are the costs of battery and energy storage.'
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