This article originally appeared in The Hub.
By Heather Exner-Pirot, August 10, 2026
In a world where electricity demand is outpacing supply, an all-of-the-above approach to generation has overtaken a narrow focus on renewables that dominated the previous decade. This shift has spurred renewed interest and investment in nuclear energy across the Western world. In Canada, the opportunity manifested in June in the nation’s first-ever Nuclear Energy Strategy.
This unabashed support for nuclear energy and recognition of Canada’s advantages in the sector is very welcome and long overdue. It was only four years ago, after all, that the Trudeau Liberals excluded nuclear from their inaugural Green Bond framework alongside fossil fuels, weapons manufacturing, tobacco, and gambling. The strategy rightly recognizes that Canada’s significant uranium fuel-cycle capabilities, proven reactor technology, skilled workforce, and respected regulator position us very well to compete in this growing and geopolitically significant industry.
But I have a quibble.
Rather than provide a framework, the strategy explicitly puts its thumb on the scale for a particular reactor type: the CANDU. For many, this is entirely defensible and logical, as CANDU is synonymous with nuclear energy in Canada; the development of a successful native reactor design is a point of pride.
But times have changed, and there are other Canadian-owned and/or operated technologies in the mix. The role of the federal government should be to create an environment in which the Canadian nuclear sector can be successful at home and globally. Instead, it crosses a line into picking winners and losers.
Three good choices
After a long drought—the last commercial nuclear reactor to enter service in Canada was Darlington Unit 4 in 1993—Canada has found itself with three very good choices for reactor technology for new builds.
The first, of course, is the CANDU. Developed in the 1950s and ‘60s, the defining feature of the CANDU is that it uses unenriched, or natural, uranium for fuel by using heavy water (D20) as both its cooling and neutron moderator. By contrast, the vast majority of global nuclear reactors use light water (H20), which requires enriched uranium to sustain the chain reaction.
Because only a handful of countries can legally and economically produce enriched uranium fuel, the CANDU option is attractive for limiting dependence on foreign suppliers. While the majority of CANDU reactors are in Canada (Ontario has 16 of the world’s 25, with one in New Brunswick), South Korea, China, Romania, Argentina, and India each also operate a small number of CANDU units, and India has adapted its own heavy water design.
To be competitive in the 21st century, the CANDU design needed to be updated to be safer, more modular, and generate more power. Atkins Realis is doing this work for a model it is calling the Monark. The federal government announced a loan of up to $304 million to the company in March 2025 to fund the development of the modernization. One of the objectives of the new federal nuclear strategy is to have a “cost-competitive CANDU design” available by 2030. This would be the CANDU choice for new large reactors.
However, the next nuclear reactors in Canada will not be CANDUs but light water reactors—the GE Vernova Hitachi BWRX-300, a first-of-a-kind small modular reactor currently under construction by OPG at its Darlington site, based on an existing large Japanese reactor model. OPG is likely to build a total of four of the reactors at that site, serving as the global blueprint for the technology, and several other major utilities and countries are now actively planning and executing deployments.
Finally, Westinghouse’s AP1000, with six reactors currently operating and 14 more under construction, is now Canadian-owned since Toronto-based Brookfield and Saskatoon-based Cameco acquired it in a 51/49 split in 2023. The AP1000 has the full political and financial backing of the U.S. Department of Energy as the only licensed large-scale advanced commercial reactor operating in the United States today, and is critical to their objective of having 10 new large nuclear reactors with complete designs under construction by 2030.
An uneven playing field
In this competitive environment, the federal government’s full-throated support of CANDU requires greater justification to Canadian taxpayers. As has been pointed out elsewhere, the federal nuclear energy strategy mentions CANDU 42 times, Westinghouse three times, and GE Vernova Hitachi just twice. Because it has explicitly stated it will use federal funding to back a fleets-based approach (i.e. it will push for a single reactor model for on-grid applications to achieve an economy of scale), its intervention is material.
The disparity is all the more glaring as Ontario has taken a decidedly different approach. Both private sector-owned Bruce Power and Ontario-owned OPG are moving ahead with plans for new large reactors: up to 4800 MW at Bruce C, on the existing Bruce Power site; and up to 10,000 MW at the OPG Wesleyville site, with proposals for both already in progress with the Impact Assessment Agency and Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission. They have made the submissions explicitly technology-neutral, i.e., approval could accommodate different reactor types.
In addition, the Ontario government has established a New Nuclear Technology Panel, including senior leadership from OPG, Bruce Power, and the IESO, to coordinate technology selection and timing of announcements. The panel is prioritizing safety, cost effectiveness, energy security, and economic and job benefits in Ontario.
Such a deliberative approach is missing from the federal strategy, and we should demand better, because whatever reactor model is chosen will push Canada down a particular path for decades.
Are Canada’s interests best served by being a big player in the small market for heavy water reactors, or by moving more thoroughly into the larger global light water reactor market? Should Canada preserve a natural uranium option, or seek to enrich uranium fuel for the growing global nuclear market itself? Are there affordability implications for ratepayers from choosing one technology over the other?
Reasonable people can debate the pros and cons of the different reactor types. But the federal government should be the one guiding the debate, not tilting the playing field from the outset.
There will be economic and political tradeoffs, whatever the choice. Canadians should be told what they are.
