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Yukon and Ontario and SMRs – Memorandum of Misunderstanding? 

The Yukon public and their elected representatives may not fully understand the implications of introducing small modular nuclear reactors into their electricity mix.

The governments of Yukon and Ontario recently signed a partnership agreement to share Ontario’s expertise about energy development, which includes evaluation of small modular and micro-reactors. The Yukon wants to reduce reliance on diesel while meeting increasing electricity demand. 

There are glaring problems with this memorandum of understanding. 

First: the Ontario government cannot share what it doesn’t know. There has not been a single successful commercial SMR built worldwide. Construction of the much-touted Darlington New Nuclear Project in Ontario has barely begun.

Second: There is little private investment interest in this technology due to: 

• the extraordinarily high cost ($7.7 billion for the first BWRX-300 SMR at Darlington), 
• long timeline to completion (nuclear reactors have taken years longer than expected to build) 
• risks associated with accidents

Third: The Ontario public bears the full cost of building and maintaining Ontario’s reactors, remediating environmental damage, the costs of decommissioning reactors at their end of life, and management of the radioactive waste for which there is no feasible solution. Can Yukon afford this expensive electricity source?

Fourth: Nuclear reactors are notoriously unreliable; some are offline for long periods of time, like Point Lepreau in New Brunswick (which operated only 27% of the time in the 2024-2025 fiscal year), requiring diesel or gas backup to meet electricity demands.

May 9, 2026 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Canada, Small Modular Nuclear Reactors