BANFF — The urgent need for future electricity generation will partly need to be generated through nuclear power, an energy source that experts argued is entering a “renaissance,” attendees heard Friday at the Global Business Forum.
A growing push to build nuclear power plants and small modular reactors is partly being fuelled by the immense electricity demands that will be created by growing populations and artificial intelligence data centres, industry players and experts said.
“We are having a nuclear renaissance, in my view,” said Jackie Forrest, executive director of the ARC Energy Research Institute.
Edmonton-based Capital Power and OPG announced in January they have committed to assessing the feasibility of developing SMRs in Alberta. The province is also working with Saskatchewan to develop its regulatory framework.
Alberta’s approach to follow industry first adopters is in keeping with many other jurisdictions considering adding nuclear to their grids.
“There’s a real game of, ‘Someone else should move first on this,’” said Chris Levesque, CEO of Seattle-based TerraPower, a nuclear company founded by Bill Gates.
Kim Lauritsen, OPG’s senior vice-president of enterprise strategy and energy markets, said the nuclear company is taking the “first-mover risk” when it comes to funding. “Somebody’s gotta go first, and we’ve seen the benefits to our grid,” Lauritsen said.
“I’m a little concerned about the level of uncertainty. We actually still do need investments in Alberta. We have some new natural gas generators that came on (this year), but if you look at the projections out three, four years, we’re going to need new investment,” she said.
The Alberta government has sought to attract data centres into the province; Technology Minister Nate Glubish said earlier this year that he wants Alberta to be the data centre capital of Canada.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) has likewise predicted about a third of additional global electricity demand by 2026 will come from the data centre sector alone. (In Ireland, it notes in its analysis and forecast to 2026, data centres have come to account of 17 per cent of the country’s electricity demand — the equivalent to the consumption used by all urban dwellings.
Energy economist and author Peter Terzakian said he’s not confident that “we are going to be able to fulfill the surge in power demand that is potentially going to be coming from AI.”
As electricity grids move toward their targeted net-zero 2050 goals, nuclear should feed between 20 to 30 per cent of a region’s electricity needs to complete a carbon-free grid, Levesque said in a later discussion.
Increased public persuasion will also be needed during the years these projects are developed, as nuclear energy still does not have full public support, particularly in regions without any existing nuclear infrastructure, Lauritsen said.
“It’s the public perception that we have to deal with,” Lauritsen said.
“When we’re now looking to move into new jurisdictions, it’s leaving enough time to educate … we’ve had so far experience with that, it does take time.”
— With files from Chris Varcoe