April 19, 2026
Version published in The Energy Mix, April 9, 2026
At the end March, the NB Power Review Panel report recommended considering building a new large nuclear reactor at the Point Lepreau site in New Brunswick. That recommendation raises a series of questions, not least whether the province can afford a new reactor, how it would be paid for, and its impact on electricity rates and the province’s overall financial position. The situation in New Brunswick would have wider implications as well, particularly smaller provinces considering nuclear projects, like Saskatchewan.
In the case of New Brunswick a new reactor has been in the cards since 2023, when NB Power and the provincial government published plans calling for 600 megawatts (MW) of new nuclear power by 2035 at the Point Lepreau site on the Bay of Fundy.
The original plan was to build two small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs). After spending almost $130 million in public funds for SMR development, New Brunswick found it couldn’t attract the private investment needed to move forward.
The NB Power Review Panel strongly advised against SMRs, echoing a statement by New Brunswick Energy Minister René Legacy six months ago. He rejected the notion of building first-of-a-kind SMRs because of the technological and economic risks associated with their incomplete and unproven designs.
Instead, the review panel recommended that the province consider “initiating the planning assessment phase for an additional large scale, proven technology nuclear plant to be sited alongside the Point Lepreau facility.”
The last new full-scale nuclear reactor project in Canada, the Darlington nuclear power plant east of Toronto, was completed more than 30 years ago. The enormous cost overruns on that project contributed significantly to the effective bankruptcy of the province’s utility, Ontario Hydro, leading to its eventual break-up.
As the memories of these previous experiences with large nuclear construction projects have faded, new projects are now being proposed. These projects, and experiences with the handful of new-build nuclear projects initiated in Europe and the United States in the last two decades, give us some indication of the large reactor options, and their potential costs.
In Ontario and Alberta, two reactor designs, the CANDU MONARK and the Westinghouse Electric AP1000, have been considered for the expansion of the Bruce Nuclear power plant on Lake Huron, a proposed 10,000-MW Ontario Power Generation plant at Wesleyville on Lake Ontario, and the proposed 4,800-MW Peace River Nuclear Project in Alberta.
The 1,000-MW CANDU MONARK, intended as a successor to the existing CANDU reactors in Ontario and New Brunswick. Although it’s being aggressively promoted to potential international customers, the MONARK design remains incomplete. The situation has already led the Alberta project’s proponents to switch their proposal to favour the AP1000 design by Westinghouse Electric.
Cost information is available on the AP1000 reactor, as two units were completed in 2024 at the Vogtle nuclear power plant in Georgia. The total estimated cost of those two 1,100-MW reactors was US$36 billion, or about $26 billion per reactor in 2026 Canadian dollars. The plant has been described as “the most expensive power plant ever built on Earth.” When it went into service, Vogtle resulted in a nearly 24% increase in Georgia Power’s electricity rates, the largest jump in the utility’s history.
AtkinsRéalis (formerly SNC Lavalin) is currently pitching the CANDU MONARK to Poland, with a reported estimated cost of $45 to $50 billion for a three-reactor plant, or about $15 billion per unit.
The implication of these experiences and proposals is that a new 1,000-MW reactor could carry a price tag of $15 to $26 billion. Estimates of the costs of electricity needed to cover the capital costs of new nuclear plants, if they’re financed through electricity rates, range from the mid-20¢ to more than 40¢ per kilowatt-hour. In the case of New Brunswick , that would nearly double to even triple current consumer electricity costs. Such increases would undermine energy affordability, economic competitiveness, and any plans for decarbonization through electrification.
A province could also try to finance the costs through its general tax base. That is the approach that Ontario seems to be taking, at an estimated cost to the provincial treasury of $7 to $8.5 billion per year. Electricity subsidies now account for more than half of Ontario’s deficit, exceeding annual capital expenditures on education and health care by wide margins.
In the case of a small province like New Brunswick, the annual costs of that approach, even spread over the decade or more of construction, could exceed the province’s current, record $1.39 billion deficit, and match or exceed its entire annual capital spending plans in all other areas. Adding the cost to New Brunswick Power’s current $6-billion debt would further cripple the utility and likely put it on a path to the kind of de facto bankruptcy that befell Ontario Hydro.
Saskatchewan, for its part, has another idea – asking the federal government to pay three-quarters of the cost of the province's first nuclear reactor, a contribution of between $11 to $20 billion from federal taxpayers.
In addition to the financial risks a single large reactor in a relatively small electricity system would repeat and magnify a key problem associated with the original Lepreau project in New Brunswick —putting very higher portion of a province’s electricity supply eggs in a single, very expensive and high-risk basket.
All of this should suggest a great deal of caution among provinces considering adding large nuclear components for their electricity systems, and a need to think about other ways of decarbonizing their electricity systems while ensuring their affordability and sustainability.