Hair metal might never come back into fashion, but another ’80s trend is: nuclear reactors.
What happened: Canada’s nuclear regulator gave Ontario Power Generation (OPG) the all-clear to begin construction of a small modular reactor (SMR) at the Darlington nuclear site in Clarington, Ontario. It will be Canada’s first nuclear reactor built since the mid-1980s.
Catch-up: Plans for a new nuclear reactor at the Darlington site have been in play since 2006, but it wasn’t until 2021 that OPG announced it had chosen an SMR — an innovative type of reactor expected to be quicker to build and generate clean energy at a lower cost.
- The main difference between SMRs and traditional nuclear reactors, as the name would suggest, is that SMRs are smaller.
- They generate less power — aimed at bringing electricity to smaller areas — and are designed to be transportable.
Why it matters: As the first reactor of its kind in the G7, the project will demonstrate to other Western jurisdictions interested in SMRs whether the technology lives up to the hype.
- Alberta, Saskatchewan, and New Brunswick jumped on the SMR ship alongside Ontario, signing a memorandum of understanding to pursue reactors of their own.
What’s next: OPG plans to have the reactor up and running in 2029, though it still needs to jump through a few more bureaucratic hoops, including a final authorization for operations. OPG plans to build three other SMRs at the site, each of which must be approved.—QH
