OTTAWA — With Eastern Europe seeking to disengage from Russian energy sources, Canada smells opportunity for its fledgling industry in small modular nuclear reactors.

Politicians are making sales pitches. The federal nuclear regulator is making deals to share expertise with its counterparts in places like Poland, Romania and Estonia. Canadian suppliers are preparing to sell components for the comparatively small generators in new markets.

Germany just powered down the last of its nuclear plants, but other countries are getting into nuclear for the first time, with small modular reactors (SMRs).

“With the invasion of Ukraine and the associated energy-security concerns, the political landscape has evolved,” said a briefing note prepared for federal Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson last fall, just before he went to a summit on nuclear power in Washington. “This recalibration presents a significant strategic and economic opportunity for Canada’s nuclear supply chain and can further position Canada as a key partner in advancing the energy-security objectives of our international partners.”

There is money to be made, the note went on, and a chance for Canada to “secure the supply chains needed to enable future SMR deployments in Canada.”

The Logic obtained the note through an access-to-information request.

Slow-moving regulators have impeded innovation in multiple industries in Canada, but SMRs appear to be an exception—despite an anti-nuclear movement that has included Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault, and a disputatious, unfinished process for deciding what to do with nuclear waste.

Like large-scale reactors, SMRs require specialized fuels and produce radioactive waste. Unlike traditional nuclear plants such as the CANDU, they’re intended to be made more like cars, assembled in factories and then delivered to their destinations. Small ones could power remote communities or mines; larger ones could supplement electricity grids.

Canada has aggressive plans to test several SMR models, with provincial governments in Ontario, New Brunswick and Saskatchewan collectively working on five types at multiple sites.

The most advanced Canadian SMR project is at Ontario’s existing Darlington nuclear plant east of Toronto, where the Canada Infrastructure Bank is kicking in $970 million; site preparation began in December. That project is for a “grid-scale” SMR, a relatively big 300-megawatt model called the BWRX-300, made by GE Hitachi.

That reactor isn’t scheduled to start commercial operation until 2029, but the Ontario government is already trying to parlay the work supporting it into opportunities—including big sales—abroad.

The province’s energy minister, Todd Smith, went on a trade mission to Eastern Europe last fall, meeting counterparts from Romania, Estonia and the Czech Republic, and talking up Canada’s help for countries that want to disengage from Russian energy sources.

GE Hitachi, BWXT Canada and Poland’s Synthos Green Energy are working together on plans to use in Poland at least 10 small reactors of the type planned for Darlington, a spokesperson for Smith told The Logic.

“As a result of this deal, BWXT could manufacture a wide range of products in Ontario for deployment in other nations including reactor pressure vessels, reactor internals and other key components,” Michael Dodsworth wrote in an email to The Logic. “Orders for these products from BWXT Canada could be worth up to $1 billion and result in the creation of hundreds of new jobs in Ontario.”

Something else the GE Hitachi reactor has going for it: it doesn’t rely on a type of uranium that has only been available from Russia, though the United States has started working on alternative sources.

BWXT CEO Rex Geveden said the company now has “the pole position” when it comes to supplying customers building the BWRX-300. “A year ago we had one order—not even an order, but an announcement that Darlington was going to build one,” he added in a February earnings call. “A lot has changed in that last year. Two years ago, there was nothing.”

Laurentis Energy Partners, a subsidiary of the provincial utility Ontario Power Generation, sells Ontario’s expertise abroad; with Smith on the scene in Poland, Laurentis signed a deal to join the Synthos effort.

Laurentis also has an agreement with Estonia’s Fermi Energia, which is explicitly following in OPG’s footsteps.

“Based on the design and construction experience of the Darlington nuclear power plant near Toronto, the planning, design and construction of the Estonian nuclear power plant can also be gradually started,” said Fermi Energia’s announcement in February that it had settled on the BWRX-300 as the model it wanted to build.

Regulatory cooperation is part of the Canadian effort, too: by being among the global leaders in setting standards for SMRs, Canada’s rules can become templates for other countries. In a separate document The Logic also obtained through access-to-information law, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC)’s staff told its president Rumina Velshi in December that they were focusing on Poland, Romania and Estonia. Romania has a nuclear industry (built around two CANDU reactors); neither Poland nor Estonia does.

In February, Velshi signed a memorandum of understanding on SMR cooperation with her Polish counterpart, formalizing a relationship at a level the CNSC otherwise has with only the United States and Britain.

(Canadian, American and Polish regulators’ work overseeing the BWRX-300 is mirrored in a March deal among Ontario Power Generation, Synthos and the Tennessee Valley Authority to cooperate on finalizing the design, which all of them want to share. On top of that, the Tennessee utility’s CEO, Jeffrey Lyash, was the head of OPG until 2019.)

“The CNSC is seen by many as a leader in the regulation of SMRs given that we are the first G7 country to be reviewing a licence application to construct an SMR,” said commission spokesperson Braeson Holland by email, referring to Ontario’s plans for Darlington.

For a country such as Poland, which is starting to regulate nuclear power for the first time, the CNSC can share expertise both on the technology itself and on how to approach the task of overseeing it, he wrote. They’ll even exchange staff.

The goal is to harmonize standards and designs, Holland wrote, which promotes regulatory certainty, predictability, efficiency and ultimately safety.

If those harmonized standards are the ones used in Canada, though, then Canadian companies will already know how to meet them and have a head start serving the markets that adopt them.