BC election: Unpacking John Rustad’s call for nuclear energy

Amidst all the name-calling and mud-slinging in BC politics as the Oct. 19 provincial election approaches, candidates from across the political spectrum can agree on at least one thing: BC needs more power.

BC Hydro estimates electricity demand will grow 15 per cent by 2030, driven partly by efforts to provide cleaner power to emission-intensive industries like liquefied natural gas (LNG) and mining.

To meet the expected demand surge, BC Hydro has put out a call for power generation proposals such as wind, solar, biomass and geothermal. That’s on top of energy from the $16-billion Site C hydro dam, which is nearing completion on BC’s Peace River after more than nine years of construction.

But BC Conservative Party Leader John Rustad says the province should consider another source of power — nuclear energy.

“Wind and solar can be part of the mix, but they’re not baseload, they’re not reliable,” Rustad recently told attendees at the Union of BC Municipalities convention in Vancouver. “We’re going to actually have to have a conversation about the possibility of using nuclear power in British Columbia if we want to be able to increase the ability to have affordable, reliable, clean energy.”

Rustad isn’t alone in suggesting BC should take a look at nuclear.

The Canada Energy Regulator reached a similar conclusion in its Energy Futures 2023 report, which explored how Canada can meet its 2050 emission reduction targets. Achieving those targets would require nuclear power to become part of BC’s power mix by 2031 and account for about 13 per cent of power used in the province by 2040.

BC NDP Leader David Eby rejects that conclusion, pointing to BC’s abundant clean energy options, from long-standing hydro power generation to wind, solar and potentially geothermal.

BC Green Party Leader Sonia Furstenau is similarly dismissive of Rustad’s suggestion the province needs nuclear power, calling it “a nonsensical conversation to be having in BC”

“We have everything we need in BC to create an abundant amount of clean energy,” Furstenau told reporters at the convention. “We should lean into that with everything we’ve got and get moving into the 21st century.”

So which is it? Does BC need nuclear power or are nuclear power proponents just blowing smoke?

Rustad critiques nuclear energy ban implemented by BC Liberal government

About 15 per cent of the energy used in Canada comes from nuclear, but only Ontario and New Brunswick have operating nuclear plants.

BC’s Clean Energy Act, passed in 2010, bans nuclear power from being used to meet the province’s energy needs.

Rustad, who was a member of the BC Liberal government that implemented the ban, now calls the decision to take nuclear off the table a political move rather than one grounded in good policy.

Margareta Dovgal, managing director of Resource Works Society, a BC non-profit group that promotes resource development such as LNG, also wants the province to revisit its ban on nuclear generation.

“We know our energy needs are going to continue to go up and we need to have options to fulfill that — everything from solar, wind, small scale run-of-river, geothermal, nuclear and even hydrogen should be considered as part of that mix,” Dovgal said in an interview.

“It’s a clear no-brainer for me that we should at least have the pathway to allow nuclear electricity here in BC”

Dovgal called nuclear power “a well studied, well deployed technology with a large (and) really robust safety record globally” and suggested the private sector could step in to build nuclear in some circumstances if the government doesn’t want to.

But when things go wrong with nuclear power plants, the consequences can be severe. The legacy of nuclear disasters like Chernobyl and Fukushima is still top of mind for many.

“Whichever community lives near (a nuclear power plant) needs to realize that there is a small possibility that they may have to clear out of their houses because of radioactive contamination (and) never come back,” MV Ramana, a professor at the University of British Columbia’s School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, said in an interview.

A 2023 survey by Angus Reid found a majority of Canadians — including 58 per cent of BC respondents — were comfortable with the thought of nuclear power being produced in their province and half had no qualifications about living within 100 kilometers of a nuclear power plant.

Renewables a cheaper alternative to nuclear energy in BC, experts say

With renewables an established power source in BC, ramping them up to quickly meet increasing demand seems like the best bang for the government’s buck to Julie MacArthur, an associate professor in Royal Roads University’s faculty of management whose work focuses on energy transitions and the political economy of energy projects.

“We have all this pent up interest from across the province to develop other forms of power that are so much cheaper (than nuclear),” MacArthur, who is also the Canada Research Chair in reimagining capitalism, said in an interview.

“I’m not against conversations but I don’t want us to spend so much time talking and waiting and planning for some new future, not ready to roll out technology that we miss the opportunity to transition as quickly as we can, given the tools we already have that are quite effective.”

When it comes to getting new energy sources online quickly, nuclear power doesn’t win any races. The province would have to alter legislation and establish regulations for the nuclear power sector before serious planning for a nuclear power plant could get underway.

“If BC were to decide next year to start building a nuclear power plant, the earliest we would get electricity from that is in the 2040s and that’s not a solution to (the) energy demand crisis right now,” Ramana, who wrote a book on why nuclear power is not a viable solution to the climate crisis, said.

By comparison, wind and solar farms generally take just two or three years from the start of construction until they produce power, Ramana pointed out.

“We don’t have the luxury of time when it comes to dealing with climate change. Climate scientists on the intergovernmental panel on climate change, all of them tell us that we need to reduce our emissions very fast, and the timescale it takes to build nuclear power is not compatible with that.”

Merran Smith, a member of the BC Climate Solutions Council, a group advising the government on climate action and clean economic growth, said efforts to position nuclear as a viable power source for BC could divert time and money from more efficient power sources.

“We need to focus on existing technologies like solar and wind that are cheaper and are going to keep the electrical grid affordable and can be constructed in a timely way,” Smith, president of New Economy Canada, said in an interview. “There may be a role for nuclear, but let’s not get distracted by shiny objects for the future at this point.”

Cost comparisons don’t work out well for nuclear power either. Wind and solar power are cheaper than ever, costing between 3.2 cents and 13 cents per kilowatt hour. Nuclear power ranges from 19 to 30 cents per kilowatt hour, according to a 2023 assessment by financial analysis by Lazard.

Rustad and other nuclear power proponents point to small modular reactors (SMRs) — a new nuclear technology that promises to cut construction costs and timelines — as an innovation that could make nuclear power more competitive with renewables.

Small modular reactors, like traditional nuclear plants, produce energy via nuclear fission, but on a much smaller scale, which allows components to be made in a factory and transported to sites for assembly.

There are no small modular reactors operating in Canada. Installations in China and Russia have experienced construction delays and cost overruns, according to Ramana, while work to build one in Argentina started in 2014 and has yet to produce any power.

“We do have a little bit of data and this data all supports the idea that small nuclear reactors will not fix the problems of nuclear energy,” Ramana said, adding nuclear power tends to be heavily impacted by economies of scale — the bigger the plants are, the cheaper the power they produce.

“They are some of the most expensive nuclear power,” Smith said of small reactors. “They really will only make sense in remote locations, for example, for mines where the cost of building hundreds of kilometers of transmission line doesn’t make sense.”

The Alberta government is keen to deploy small nuclear reactors to help decarbonize its oil and gas industry, although a feasibility study concluded the technology might not be ready for a decade.

MacArthur doesn’t see much chance of nuclear stacking up favorably against renewables like wind and solar in BC

“We do want people to be aware of the options, but for me, it’s a pretty quick answer to say that (nuclear) isn’t the one we want to be focusing on for the province.”