Thank you for the question.
I doubt that the carbon tax will lead to growth in Canada's nuclear industry since the cost of building and refurbishing reactors is rising steadily.
Ontario, for example, is closing eight reactors. The province has put forward a plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, while also reducing the number of reactors. In other countries, such as Germany, good greenhouse gas emission reduction targets are set without resorting to nuclear energy. Like Quebec, Belgium and Switzerland are doing away with nuclear energy. These countries will use other technologies because renewable energies are more competitively priced than nuclear energy, and their costs keep dropping.
As I said in my presentation, we expect the cost of wind power to drop by 50% by 2050. There is a lot of innovation in this sector. The challenge facing the nuclear industry involves not only the costs of disposing of waste and the risk of accidents, but also the competition. Technologies are improving very quickly.
If you do a study of the cleantech industry, you will find, as Wayne Gretzky said with regard to hockey,
that's “where the puck is going”.
Everyone is going in that direction. Germany and Japan, which are the third and fourth largest economies in the world respectively, are doing away with nuclear energy while striving to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.
Investments in renewable energy are transforming economies and businesses everywhere. Companies such as General Motors, Google, and many others are setting targets and using renewable energy to meet their energy needs.
To answer your question, I doubt that a carbon tax will make nuclear energy more competitive. In addition to the costs, there is still the problem of the social acceptability of this source of energy.
As to small modular reactors, it takes at least 15 years to build a demonstration facility, and then buyers have to be found. So that would be too late to fight climate change.