Updated Feb. 16, 2023: The role small modular nuclear reactors should play in New Brunswick’s energy future was the subject of hearings this week at the legislature’s standing committee on climate change and environmental stewardship. 

MLAs heard from experts, Indigenous leaders, citizens group, environmental organizations and industry proponents Feb. 14-15. 

The Conservation Council’s Louise Comeau, director of climate solutions, and Moe Qureshi, manager of climate policy, presented on Feb. 15, telling legislators that New Brunswick doesn’t need more political interference in NB Power or unproven SMR technology— it needs a clean electricity strategy.  

You can watch the webcast recording here. Follow along to the Conservation Council’s slide presentation here.

Qureshi told legislators that battery storage can provide reliable base power for when the sun isn’t shining, the wind isn’t blowing (or is blowing too hard) or when extreme temperatures at either end of the thermometer spike demand. He noted battery costs are “steadily declining and consistently declining” and that “decommissioning of batteries is in the order of years or less—not 200,000 years such as nuclear.”

Comeau told MLAs she has no faith that SMRs will be ready by 2030 when companies say they’ll be—”I think we’ve fallen into the deep pit of hype,” she said.

Instead, she said legislators better be ready to invest heavily in home energy efficiency retrofits for low-to-moderate income New Brunswickers—”you need a strong energy efficiency package; 3,700 homes a year is not cutting it”—and that the energy system of tomorrow will look a lot different than today.

“The future of electricity is a very cooperative, collaborative system.”

On the first day of hearings, Susan O’Donnell, spokesperson for the Coalition for Responsible Energy Development in New Brunswick (CRED-NB), told MLAs that the latest peer-reviewed research into SMRs shows the technology will not be commercially viable in time to help us transition from fossil fuels to non-polluting energy sources before catastrophe climate change is inevitable. 

“I hope you’re working on a Plan B,” O’Donnell told MLAs in her closing statement. 

“Our fear, actually, is that you’re going to stick with Plan A (small modular reactors) until 2029 when Belledune has to close, and then say, ‘Oh, hey, [the SMRs are] not working, we’re going to have to keep Belledune open.’ And so I’m just saying right now that we think, and a lot of people think, and the experts think, that it’s not going to work by 2029, not by 2030, not by a long shot. So you better work on your Plan B.”