WNA reported in late 2020 that about 15% of Canada's electricity comes from nuclear power, with 19 reactors mostly in Ontario providing 13.5 GWe of power capacity. Canada had plans to expand its nuclear capacity over the next decade by building two more new reactors, but these have been deferred. For many years Canada has been a leader in nuclear research and technology, exporting reactor systems developed in Canada as well as a high proportion of the world supply of radioisotopes used in medical diagnosis and cancer therapy.
The Canadian Nuclear Association estimates that the Canadian nuclear industry employs approximately 30,000 people, and creates another 30,000 jobs indirectly through contracting. The industry generates revenues of approximately $6.6 billion and contributes $1.5 billion in federal and provincial taxes. In recent years there have been two notable developments in Canada's nuclear situation: the first based on the 2015 Ontario decision to approve refurbishment (lifetime extension) of the four nuclear units at Darlington and the remaining six units at Bruce (the first two units were already refurbished). This C$26 billion 15-year program is one of the largest clean energy projects in North America. The first unit at Darlington, unit 2, started its refurbishment outage in October 2016, and was returned to commercial operation in June 2020. The first Bruce unit to undergo refurbishment is unit 6, which started its outage in January 2020.
The second development relates to international leadership regarding small modular reactors (SMRs). In 2018 Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) issued its SMR Roadmap, a plan for nuclear technology development based on SMRs. In December 2019 the provinces of New Brunswick and Saskatchewan agreed to collaborate with Ontario in advancing the development and deployment of SMRs to address climate change, regional energy demand, economic development, and research and innovation opportunities. Along with this, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) has a pre-licensing vendor design review process to assess nuclear power plant designs based on the vendor's reactor technology – for about ten small reactors with a wide range of capacities up to 300 MWe. Also, Canadian Nuclear Laboratories (CNL) invited expressions of interest resulting in almost 20 proposals for siting an SMR at a CNL-managed site. CNL aims to have a new SMR at its Chalk River site by 2026.
In December 2020, NRCan released its SMR action plan, which responds to the 53 recommendations in the SMR Roadmap and lays out the steps for the development, demonstration and deployment of SMRs at home and abroad. The plan envisages the first units to come online in the late 2020s.
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