By Jeff Kucharski, March 11, 2026
Pessimism is growing concerning Canada’s ability to capitalize on its first-mover advantage in deploying small modular reactors. Few in Canada’s nuclear sector are willing to publicly acknowledge the strategic missteps that now threaten the country’s ability to turn its SMR leadership into international project sales.
Nuclear power is experiencing a “renaissance” across the world as countries race to supply clean, stable baseload power to meet growing electricity demand from decarbonization initiatives, AI data centres, and greenhouse gas emissions goals. As our just-published report, Small Modular Reactors in the Indo-Pacific, points out, SMRs are expected to capture an increasing share of a growing global market for nuclear power. In fact, Canada is poised to achieve first-mover status by being the first Western country to have a commercially operating SMR when the first of four reactors is completed at Ontario Power Generation’s Darlington site as soon as 2029. Yet Canada is facing significant hurdles that may prevent it from fully capitalizing on this advantage.
Canada’s Small Modular Reactor (SMR) Action Plan, built on the 2018 SMR Roadmap and first formulated in 2020, sets out federal policy to develop, demonstrate, and deploy SMRs both domestically and for export. Framing SMRs as a technology with economic, social, geopolitical, and environmental benefits, the plan positions Canada – drawing on a 75‑year nuclear heritage and successful CANDU exports – as a potential global leader. The action plan advances a coordinated “Team Canada” approach that aligns federal departments, provinces, industry, research institutions, and academia to pursue domestic deployment, influence international standards, secure investment, and seize export opportunities.
Export promotion is a core objective of the action plan: federal messaging and supporting agencies, such as Global Affairs Canada and the Trade Commissioner Service, will help firms access markets, negotiate Nuclear Co-operation Agreements, and advocate for SMR‑friendly export controls. The initiative cites a projected global market for SMRs of roughly $150–$300 billion by 2040. Parliamentary and industry studies in 2022 reinforced Canada’s export potential and recommended capitalizing on domestic capability. The federal government continued to signal commitment through Natural Resources Canada ministerial statements in 2022 and industry endorsements, and implementation momentum increased in 2025 when Prime Minister Mark Carney announced a $2 billion investment package and referred SMR projects – including four units at the Darlington New Nuclear Project – to the Major Projects Office, framing the move as both a domestic energy strategy and a boost to the Canadian nuclear supply chain. While there have been few public updates to the action plan since 2022, it appears to remain an active policy framework guiding interagency coordination, export promotion, and project‑level financing.
Canada is increasingly focused on the Indo-Pacific as a critical market for export diversification and lessening reliance on the US market, and our report shows that the region represents a growing market for nuclear power technology. There are emerging opportunities for both large-scale reactors (LSRs) and SMRs, especially in the emerging nuclear states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). SMRs in particular are being viewed favourably by countries in ASEAN who are concerned about gaining public acceptability and who have particular geographic, industrial, and electricity system challenges.
Canada’s early leadership in domestic SMR deployment provides a foundation for market engagement, but converting this advantage into international commercial success faces serious challenges. While official plans, statements, investments, and Canada’s Trade Commissioner Service activities continue to promote SMRs and Canada’s international nuclear opportunities, behind the scenes among some nuclear industry and government stakeholders, there is deep skepticism about Canada’s potential for exporting SMR projects in international markets. As pointed out in our report, Canada’s first-mover status in domestic SMR deployment is hampered internationally by the fact that it does not possess any licences to export foreign SMR reactor designs and therefore cannot currently offer an integrated turnkey project that many countries are looking for. Canada faces challenges competing for projects against other state-backed turnkey offerings (e.g., KEPCO’s Barakah nuclear project in the UAE) that include engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) services, financing mechanisms, capacity-building programs, fuel supply and long-term partnership commitments.
Canada’s nuclear supply chain cannot become internationally competitive by competing only in the domestic market. With respect to large-scale nuclear power plants, Canada is actively pitching CANDU reactors for international projects, such as Poland’s second nuclear plant, where Energy Minister Tim Hodgson highlighted it as the optimal choice to reduce coal dependence. AtkinsRéalis is also promoting CANDU for Poland amid competition from Westinghouse AP1000 designs. Ongoing refurbishments, like Romania’s Cernavoda Unit 1, are helping to sustain the global presence of CANDU units. Canada’s CANDU technology also has a heritage in the Indo-Pacific and those countries view Canada as a stable and reliable partner, an advantage that can be leveraged.
SMRs, with their smaller footprint, passive safety features, and quicker build times, are expected to capture an increasing share of a growing market for nuclear power and may even surpass the number of large-scale reactor projects globally. If Canada wants to fully participate in this new nuclear renaissance, SMRs will need to be a component of Canada’s nuclear power export portfolio in order to ensure our domestic nuclear supply chain has ongoing orders that can help sustain it over time as a competitive force in the international nuclear market. In fact, SMRs could be one pillar of a three-pillar strategy that also includes large-scale CANDU reactors and enriched fuel services. Such a nuclear strategy could form an integral part of Canada’s value proposition as an “energy superpower.”
In hindsight, it now seems to have been a mistake by Canada’s nuclear sector to rely on US SMR reactor designs instead of pursuing a domestic Canadian design. SNC-Lavalin (now AtkinsRéalis) developed the CANDU Small Modular Reactor (CSMR) as a domestic SMR design, but Canadian utilities never built it, choosing US designs they viewed as more technically and economically advantageous. In fact, all of the SMR designs being considered for deployment in Canada today are US designs, which creates a dependence on the US for the enriched fuel supplies required for these reactors.
Making matters worse, Canada has not pursued fuel enrichment. Given the political and economic threats that Canada now faces from the US administration, a potential disruption in nuclear fuel supplies is a risk that cannot be dismissed. Russia continues to dominate enrichment services globally and Canada is well-positioned to build on its large uranium supply and conversion capacity to mitigate domestic and global supply risks by pursuing enrichment services in this country.
In short, Canada’s SMR buildout now faces a higher level of risk than could have been imagined even eight years ago. In 2018, it may have seemed possible to obtain a licence to sell US designs as part of a Canadian SMR project offering. But today, that decision appears to have been naïve at best, and at worst, a strategic blunder. The question is what to do now?
Canada needs to consider diversifying its domestic SMR portfolio to include non-US reactor designs. There are well-advanced reactor designs available in South Korea, Europe, and other like-minded countries that Canada could partner with on project offerings in international markets. South Korea in particular has an internationally competitive supply chain and, amid an increasingly close economic and security relationship, could be an ideal partner for Canada.
However, there may be new possibilities for Canada emerging as a result of PM Carney’s recent visit to India. Canada and India have agreed to expand their civil nuclear co-operation to include collaboration on SMRs and advanced reactors, alongside a large new uranium supply contract that underpins India’s ambitious plans to deploy 100 GW of nuclear power by 2047. As our report notes, India has allocated 200 billion rupees (C$3 billion) to develop and operationalize at least five indigenously designed SMRs by 2033. India is leveraging decades of experience with CANDU-derived Pressurized Heavy Water Reactor (PHWR) technology to develop SMRs with reduced technical risks, and optimized costs. Partnering with India could be a significant opportunity for Canada to leverage its long-standing nuclear power relationship with India into a globally competitive design that would not involve the risks associated with highly enriched fuels.
Canada’s federal and provincial governments and nuclear power sector clearly need to rethink and update the country’s domestic nuclear power strategies and action plans, including for both SMRs and large-scale CANDUs, and consider how to create a sustainable competitive advantage that can be leveraged in international markets. Achieving such a goal would go a long way toward making Canada a true energy superpower.
Dr. Jeff Kucharski is a senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute and holds a Doctor of Energy Science degree from Kyoto University in Japan. His current research is focused on energy security, international trade, the geopolitics of energy and the Indo-Pacific. Kucharski and a Japanese colleague recently published a groundbreaking study on the market for small modular reactors in the Indo-Pacific. Funded by Global Affairs Canada, it can be found here.
