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This transcript has been generated using machine learning technology. While this technology was trained with CIBC terminology, it may contain errors.
Tom Heintzman: Welcome to The Sustainability Agenda, a podcast series focusing on the evolving complexities of the sustainability landscape. I&#8217;m your host, Tom Heintzman. Please join me as we explore today&#8217;s most pressing issues with special guests that will give you some new perspectives and help you make sense of what really matters.
Daniel Sax: And really the only baseload power solution for the Arctic is micro reactors. We&#8217;ve been focused on this area for the last five years, really leading Canada in the micro reactor area, highly focused on the Arctic and delivering power for Canada&#8217;s sovereignty and for equity for Indigenous communities.
Tom Heintzman: Welcome listeners. As many of you will know, this spring CIBC hosted two related summits. The first one on electrification and another on nuclear power. The annual Electrification Summit explores the growing demand for electricity, largely from population growth, the electrification of industry, the rise of the digital economy, and of course data centers, as well as the range of solutions required to meet this growing demand. The Nuclear Summit explored the resurgence of nuclear power and Canada&#8217;s role in that resurgence. Today, we&#8217;re going to pursue the topic of nuclear energy a little further, and in particular, explore micro-reactors. Listeners are likely familiar with conventionally sized nuclear reactors and perhaps even small modular reactors or SMRs, but micro-reactors are less well-known. Micro-reactors are compact systems producing less than 20 megawatts, small enough to be transported by a truck and potentially mass produced in factories. Among other things, the Department of National Defense is investing $40 million to study the feasibility of deploying Canadian controlled microreactors at remote military facilities in the Arctic. To help me explore the subject of microreactors, I&#8217;m delighted to introduce my guest, Daniel Sax, Founder and CEO of Canadian Strategic Missions Corporation, a space and defense company developing micro nuclear reactors for remote and mission critical applications. Good afternoon, Daniel. Welcome and thank you for joining the show.
Daniel Sax: Yeah, good afternoon. Thank you for having me, Tom. It&#8217;s an honor to be here, a big fan of the podcast and really fantastic to see CIBC&#8217;s leadership in all of these areas. I was at the nuclear summit you guys hosted as well as the recent defense summit and it&#8217;s very impressive the people the bank is able to bring together and the conversations they&#8217;re able to drive forward.
Tom Heintzman: Well, thanks for participating in all those, Daniel. Let&#8217;s begin with the technology. Other than the obvious size, how do microreactors differ from SMRs and conventional reactors? To what extent are there differences in how the reactions occur, the cooling, the fuel? Also, one would assume that smaller projects do not have the same budget for safety precautions, but on the other hand, they&#8217;re also smaller. So are they more or less risky or dangerous than conventional reactors?
Daniel Sax: Great questions. Microreactors differ in that they are smaller. So it&#8217;s really just a power scale factor. You&#8217;re looking at SMRs being, let&#8217;s say, anywhere from 50 to 300 megawatts, some of which at a 300 megawatt scale like a Darlington SMR, the BWXR300, you&#8217;re really looking at something that looks more like a large reactor and has a similar footprint and security considerations. Microreactors, well, there&#8217;s a variety of technologies kind of within that category, much like any advanced reactor, are really just smaller footprint, some nearing kind of what can be termed as a nano reactor space below one megawatt, others upwards of let&#8217;s say 20 megawatts of power with various levels of modularity. The idea though is these are actually, whereas small modular reactors have not delivered on the promise of being factory manufacturable, they&#8217;re really similar to the traditional nuclear supply chains often kind of having to be built in place because of the scale of the reactors. Microreactors have this promise of being able to be built in single factories and deployed out of the factories, ideally in the future on a fully fueled basis, which is the direction that the US is showing leadership on. With the smaller amount of power and uranium, there&#8217;s a corollary scaling down of risk. Now, obviously, smaller reactors that are transportable provide their own kind of unique risks, all of which need to be addressed. From a security standpoint, I would say that&#8217;s an evolving landscape, right? Certainly in Canada, with CNSC, we have really one major framework for large reactors, even for small reactors, the security standards are going to have to evolve over time. That&#8217;s probably not going to happen right away, but we see it evolving over a much longer period of time. From a fuel standard perspective, in order to get the smaller footprint, you need enriched uranium. You cannot produce a micro reactor with unenriched uranium like you would a CANDU. You need that smaller kind of footprint and power density. And so that drives a lot of the market anywhere from what&#8217;s low enriched uranium and let&#8217;s say 5 % or enhanced LEU closer to like an 8%, upwards to 1975, what&#8217;s called HALEU; High-Assay Low-Enriched Uranium. And every company has different strategy in between, but that gives you the power density that allows for transportability and mobility facets.
Tom Heintzman: Got it. Okay. And so now walk me through the applications. I guess first question would be, to what extent are any microreactors currently in operation or what&#8217;s the status of them in terms of development? And if there are some in pilot phase or in development, where are they? And what are the ideal applications for microreactors?
Daniel Sax: So yeah, right now at this time, there are no microreactors operating globally. There are a number in various stages of development. CSMC has the most advanced microreactor in Canada in terms of tech development and readiness. The US has a number of programs that are pushing microreactors forward. The Advanced Reactor Program, which aims to turn on and push forward 11 criticality tests this summer. We&#8217;ll see how many make it over the line. And those are not full-scale microreactors. Those are just a low-power criticality test for the most part, as well as the JANUS program run by the US Department of War and Army, which aims to power three military bases in 2028 with microreactors. So there are a number of technologies being developed around the world. We&#8217;re of course focused primarily on Canadian markets. There&#8217;s a long history of dual use applications with nuclear and military uses driving the technology readiness forward.
Tom Heintzman: Interesting. Okay, so what about economics? On one hand, one could assume that larger units would have an economy of scale, and that the electricity from microreactors would be significantly more expensive. But on the other hand, you&#8217;ve talked about mass producing these reactors, which could result in a lower cost. So where will microreactors stack up on the cost curve?
Daniel Sax: I think energy is filled with dogma and really this zealous belief in these systems. I&#8217;m of the opinion that there&#8217;s room for all of these things in the right places. I have a hard time seeing micro reactors displacing large reactors for grid scale activity. But what we see is microreactors being very dominant in off-grid applications, in remote applications, and even scaling power in a number of different areas like data centers or military applications where you need kind of remote resilient power that is off-grid. So what we&#8217;re focused on is micro reactors for the Arctic primarily in remote and mine sites and things like that where the market right now is dominated by diesel generators, which are well past their lifetime, which are a logistical nightmare to maintain, requiring often quadruple redundancy, constantly going down and causing both challenges for military bases, for indigenous communities, which have to be evacuated overnight and kind of constant maintenance, and because of the remoteness of these areas, the transportation cost of the diesel is a magnitude over the actual cost of the fuel. So we are targeting areas where the price per kilowatt is in the dollar plus range, not where we&#8217;re competing against hydro power on a grid. Now, over time, it&#8217;s possible that micro reactors can get down to that really low level of double-digit cents per kilowatt. And we&#8217;re confident that that will happen in time.
Tom Heintzman: So Daniel, you mentioned the Arctic and the federal government is supporting the development of microreactors in the Arctic. Can you tell us more about the Arctic initiatives? What are their status? When would the microreactors be built and why are microreactors more appropriate than other solutions in the Arctic?
Daniel Sax: Great question, Tom. So first off, we commend the announcement from Minister Hodgson on creating a demand signal for micro reactors in the Arctic. We believe this is really the only way to power Canada&#8217;s sovereignty northern defense needs, as well as to get the Indigenous communities off of diesel generators. Right now, we are maxed out on our ability to bring more power to the Arctic with diesel. There are constant fuel runs happening with the military where the military ships up all of the diesel every summer requiring a number of barges, flights, Chinook helicopters, et cetera. It is a massive operation for the military of which we&#8217;re all really footing the cost of bringing that diesel up north. They cannot bring more diesel. So if we need to build infrastructure, if we&#8217;re building ports in the Arctic, we&#8217;re building military bases, and we&#8217;re increasing the economic development opportunities for Indigenous communities, we need to do that on a different power source, and we need baseload power. And really the only baseload power solution for the Arctic is micro reactors. And so that&#8217;s why we&#8217;re focused on it. We&#8217;ve been focused on this area for the last five years, really leading Canada in the micro reactor area, highly focused on the Arctic and delivering power for Canada&#8217;s sovereignty and for equity for Indigenous communities. What does the announcement from Hodgson mean? I think we&#8217;re still waiting to find out. And, you know, I think there&#8217;s risk in waiting. We are not waiting as a company. We are going and we are building, we are developing the technology. We are already under contract with D&amp;D, as well as NATO to develop this technology. And we don&#8217;t think Canada can afford to wait. If you look at the timelines within the JANUS program in the US, as I talked about, they&#8217;re delivering power in 2028. Canada doesn&#8217;t need a bunch of studies on feasibility. It needs to move. We need to move, as the prime minister said, at speed not seen in generations, we need to go out and execute as quickly as is safely possible. So we need to increase technology readiness. We need to prepare communities for this. We need to identify sites and we need to go out and capitalize. And that&#8217;s really what CSMC is hyper-focused on. So, you know, we&#8217;re very excited for the opportunity that is coming out from the federal government, but, you know, we need clear goals and timelines that are aggressive and bold. Canada was built by bold action, not by couch words.
Tom Heintzman: Daniel, we only have time for one more question, but it&#8217;s a question I&#8217;ve been dying to ask, the application of microreactors in defense and interestingly in space. Tell us more about these opportunities. How far away are they from being realistic and what challenges need to be overcome before these applications become viable?
Daniel Sax: Yeah, so it&#8217;s a fantastic question, Tom. I mean, we started as a space company in our humble beginning six years ago, and we started to work on nuclear power for the moon about five years ago. Seeing this as a crucial kind of gating factor for lunar exploration, base layer infrastructure that&#8217;s needed. All of the lunar plans, including the recent moon base announcement from NASA is all predicated really on being able to deliver baseload power and nuclear power is that architecture. We have been developing this system for Canada for the last five years. We have a capability that we believe is world leading, is lower mass than some of the competing solutions and mass is everything in space. It provides a flexibility cost, et cetera. And so we&#8217;re really focused on this. We believe it is a really fantastic opportunity for Canada to lead its international partners to contribute to the international framework and collaboration and deliver a strategic capability that few other countries in the world can match. So space nuclear will be a key growing area in the nuclear sector for decades to come. This is really a foundational point where the initial reactors will be deployed to the moon to orbit and we’ll provide the foundation of that industry. And this is an area that Canada can play in and win. And CSMC has those capabilities. There&#8217;s, of course, dual use facets to all of this. I think if you look at the development of these technologies in the US and in Russia, which has some nuclear capabilities for space. There&#8217;s an overlap between defense applications and civil applications. Some of the great programs in the US have come out of DARPA and have had a mixture of DARPA, DOE, and NASA funding. We believe that Canada could take a similar approach between a three CSD, three Canadian Space Division, which is our Space Force equivalent, the Maple Space Force. Between that, the Canadian Space Agency, and others. So we believe these are key capabilities and there&#8217;s a clear path and alignment. In order to get to a space reactor, you have to get to a terrestrial demonstrator on the ground. And so getting to a terrestrial demonstrator on the ground for a space reactor, what does that get you? It gets you a capability that you can deliver a microreactor then to the Arctic or to an austere environment. And so all of these things really align. We&#8217;ve seen great synergies across our business working on both of these things. And we see them as very well aligned for Canada&#8217;s long-term interests for its security and its prosperity.
Tom Heintzman: Thank you, Daniel, for taking the time to join the show today. Good luck with all your work at CSMC, and thank you to the listeners for tuning in.
Daniel Sax: Yeah, thank you, Tom. It&#8217;s been an absolute pleasure chatting with you.
Tom Heintzman: Please join us next time as we tackle some of sustainability’s biggest questions, providing you different perspectives to help you move forward. I’m your host, Tom Heintzman, and this is The Sustainability Agenda.
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Micro nuclear reactors: Building resilient power for Canada’s arctic development and lunar ambitions

Micro nuclear reactors: Building resilient power for Canada’s arctic development and lunar ambitions

Tom Heintzman

MD & Vice-Chair, Energy Transition & Sustainability

CIBC Capital Markets

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