GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy, a North Carolina energy company, will build Canada's next nuclear power-generating plant in Darlington, Ont.

The new generator will be a small modular reactor (SMR), which is a recently invented type of generator, and widely seen as the future of the industry. SMRs are smaller, cheaper to build, and safer than older-style reactors.

The reactor that GE Hitachi will build for Ontario Power Generation (OPG), the province's energy-producing Crown corporation, in Darlington will be the first of its kind in Canada.

Darlington is east of Toronto, and is where OPG operates another of its nuclear power generating stations. The only other OPG-run nuclear plant is nearby too, in Pickering. The Crown corporation owns two other nuclear power generating stations, but leases their operations to Bruce Power, a private Ontario-based company.

Most energy generated in Ontario is nuclear, and OPG's nuclear facilities produce about 30 per cent of all electricity in the province.

OPG and GE Hitachi will work together in engineering, designing, planning, licensing and preparing the new SMR, a press release published by OPG on Thursday said. The Crown corporation plans to begin preparing the Darlington site for the incoming reactor next spring. It hopes the SMR reactor will be completed as early as 2028.

In announcing its deal with GE Hitachi, OPG did not disclose how much it's paying the company, but it's expected to be billions of dollars. Before selecting GE Hitachi to built it an SMR, OPG also considered two other companies, one of its 2020 financial statements says.

The Conference Board of Canada, a think-tank, said in a study last year that building and running one SMR for 60 years would add around 2,500 jobs, increase provincial revenues by more than $870 million, and add $2.5 billion to the gross domestic product.

Energy generated by one SMR can also power 300,000 homes, according to the Conference Board of Canada.

OPG estimates that the power generated by one SMR could eliminate between 0.3 megatonnes (MT) to 2 MT of carbon emissions per year, depending on where it's located and what kind of power source it replaces.

Ontario produces about 160 MT of carbon emissions per year. The government's goal is to shrink its emissions to 143 MT by 2030.

Energy produced by OPG mostly comes from non-emitting sources — including nuclear reactors and hydroelectric dams. In a climate change mitigation plan it released in November 2020, OPG committed to being a net-zero emitter by 2040.

“We know nuclear is a key proven zero emissions baseload energy source that will help us achieve net zero as a company by 2040, and act as a catalyst for efficient economy-wide decarbonization by 2050,” Ken Hartwick, OPG’s president and CEO, said in a press release.

Some environmental groups and scientists are against nuclear power generators, because they produce radioactive waste, which is harmful, and some of it must be stored for centuries before it can be safely disposed of. Most radioactive waste produced by Ontario's nuclear power generators are stored at the site where it's produced.

Last year, the federal government released its SMR "Action Plan," which outlines how it plans to make Canada a world leader in SMR production.

The governments of Ontario, New Brunswick, Saskatchewan and Alberta have also agreed to work together to build SMRs.

GE Hitachi to build new billion-dollar Ontario nuclear power generator

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