Pens have been signed to Memorandum of Understanding by the governments of Saskatchewan and Alberta aimed at advancing the development of nuclear power generation.
Saskatchewan Crown Investments Corporation Minister Dustin Duncan and Alberta Affordability and Utilities Minister Nathan Neudorf signed the MOU at a ceremony at the Saskatchewan legislature on Thursday, May 2. According to a news release, this MOU is to support collaboration and information sharing in key areas of nuclear power generation, including nuclear supply chains and workforce development, security of supply of fuels, and development and regulation of nuclear reactor technologies, including small modular reactors. The provinces will also work to advance industrial decarbonization and enhance electrical grid capabilities.
This follows on the heels of an earlier MOU signed in 2019 between Saskatchewan, Ontario and New Brunswick to advance SMRs in Canada; Alberta signed on to that same MOU in 2021.
This MOU is touted as supporting both provinces’ quest to achieve net zero by 2050.
“This builds upon the work that we started over the last number of years,” Duncan said. “Beginning with New Brunswick, and Ontario and Alberta joined that MOU a couple of years ago. This is now specific to working directly with Alberta, as we’re doing our work in evaluating the potential of deploying an SMR here in Saskatchewan. There’s a lot of work that needs to go on behind the scenes in terms of impact assessment work, regulatory work with the federal government, working with communities, working with the company that is in going to be building the technology, as well as ensuring that we have a trained workforce, a supply chain in Saskatchewan that could be a part of the buildout of potentially nuclear in Saskatchewan, so Alberta and Saskatchewan are joined together as a part of this MOU to share and collaborate on some of that work. They certainly have an interesting in what Saskatchewan has been doing over the last number of years of pursuing SMRs, and so this just formalizes that relationship so that when we’re doing studies, when we’re doing evaluations of technology, when we’re doing work with understanding the regulatory environment, we’re going to be happy to share that work with Alberta because they have an interest in not only seeing Saskatchewan proceed down this road but potentially for Alberta as well.”
Duncan also said there was a shared interest in industry to “how do we decarbonize industrial processes in Saskatchewan and Alberta and obviously the direct tie with our interconnects and how can we work up in a more collaborative nature to see whether or not there’s more that we can do on interconnection.”
“We have a very strong and long lasting relationship with Saskatchewan and in the area of nuclear technology and development, Saskatchewan is a leader in Canada, and Alberta is very proud to partner with Saskatchewan to learn from them and grow with them, as this will strengthen our electricity grids across borders,” Neudorf said. “We think they have taken a strong leadership role in Confederation and we want to join them in that. Reliability, sustainability and getting a carbon neutral future with a clear path forward based on technology and achievable realities is really important, so this is a very strong and important step forward for both of our provinces and very proud to work with Minister Duncan to get this MOU to this stage.”
Neudorf said Alberta has an ambitious goal of being carbon neutral 2050 and “we think technology is the way to get there.”
“We’ve had limitations on what renewables are able to do and able to manage. We know that dispatchable baseload power is incredibly important to the reliability of our grid, and we think nuclear is a tremendous opportunity to make that happen in a realistic way. Small modular reactors have many advantages for our rural remote and heavy industry, and again working with Saskatchewan and the leadership they’ve shown on this file will strengthen both of our provinces.”