CALGARY — The worldwide battle to control greenhouse gas emissions to fight climate change is the best thing that’s happened for growth in the nuclear energy industry in decades, its proponents say.
They add that the development of smaller, scalable nuclear reactors to churn out reliable, emissions-free energy at a much lower than traditional cost makes nuclear an option that’s become impossible to ignore.
“Thirty years ago, the vision was that nuclear energy is going to be so cheap that we’ll be giving electricity away for free,” said Robby Sohi, president and CEO of Global First Power Ltd., a company trying to build Canada’s first small modular reactor or SMR.
That early potential was short lived, though, as project costs escalated and Canada ran out of regions with enough power demand to justify a big expensive nuclear reactor.
“The biggest change is it is going to be just about impossible – I don’t see how – you can ever meet a 2050 (net-zero) target without nuclear in the mix,” said Sohi.
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