⚛️ Canada Wants to Build the Biggest Nuclear Site in the World

Welcome to Nuclear Update, the newsletter powered by fission, caffeine, and an unhealthy interest in splitting atoms.

This is what I've got for you this week:

• 🇨🇦 Ontario Greenlights $300M for Bruce C, Could Become World's Largest Nuclear Site

• 🇺🇸 Brookfield and The Nuclear Company Take a Swing at VC Summer

• 🇬🇧 The UK's First Private Fusion Plant Just Found Its Team

• 🇯🇵 The U.S. Just Received the Largest International Uranium Shipment in NNSA History

But first, this week’s trivia question:

Last week, I asked: 

Which country operates the most nuclear reactors in the world?

You said:

🟩🟩⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ United States (27%)

🟥🟥🟥⬜️⬜️⬜️ France (41.9%)

🟥🟥⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ China (21.6%)

🟥⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Russia (9.5%)

The U.S. is the right answer. And yes, many thought there was a mistake as France had a lot of votes.

France gets the headlines because roughly 70% of its electricity comes from nuclear. But share of the grid is different than number of reactors.

The U.S. runs 93 reactors across 28 states and France runs 57.

Now, let’s dive into the good stuff! 💥

🇨🇦 Ontario Greenlights $300M for Bruce C — Could Become the World's Largest Nuclear Site

Let's start with a big number. 11,384 megawatts big.

That's what the Bruce site on Lake Huron could eventually produce if Bruce C gets built.

The existing Bruce A and B stations already make it one of the largest nuclear generating facilities on the planet at 6,584 MWe.

Add Bruce C's proposed 4,800 MWe on top, and you're looking at something that has never existed. The world's largest nuclear power station, at a single site, in Ontario.

On May 7^th, the province took its most concrete step yet toward making that happen.

Ontario directed its Independent Electricity System Operator to enter a cost-sharing agreement with Bruce Power worth up to C$300 million (~USD$220 million) to fund pre-development work through 2030.

That covers technology selection, workforce planning, site preparation, and community and Indigenous engagement.

The numbers behind the full project are impressive. 18,900 construction jobs, 6,700 permanent jobs, and a $238 billion contribution to Canada's GDP.

Ontario's grid planners expect demand to grow by up to 90% by 2050.

Nuclear already provides more than half the province's electricity today. So the question isn't whether more generation is needed, it's how fast it can be built.

Important to note that no reactor technology has been selected yet.

Please ignore the small amount of political talk in the video below. We do our best to stay out of politics here but this was the best clip available covering this news.

🇺🇸 Brookfield and The Nuclear Company Take a Swing at VC Summer

In 2017, construction of two Westinghouse AP1000 reactors in South Carolina came to a halt after costs blew past $20 billion and Westinghouse filed for bankruptcy.

It became the cautionary tale every skeptic reached for, proof the industry couldn't execute.

But on May 4^th, Brookfield Asset Management and The Nuclear Company announced a joint venture to project-manage the potential completion of VC Summer Units 2 and 3 (the two partially built AP1000s that have been sitting idle for nearly a decade).

The new company will focus exclusively on Westinghouse technology (AP1000 and AP300) and will handle end-to-end project management, licensing support, and construction oversight.

South Carolina's state-owned utility Santee Cooper is backing the venture's role on the project.

This isn't a long shot dressed up in a press release. Brookfield already owns Westinghouse alongside Cameco, and in 2025 all three entered a strategic partnership with the U.S. government to deploy at least $80 billion in AP1000 and AP300 reactors across the country.

VC Summer is the proving ground for that ambition.

A final investment decision is targeted for late 2027. An initial feasibility assessment is due by June 26, 2026, less than seven weeks away.

🇬🇧 The UK's First Private Fusion Plant Just Found Its Team

Fusion has a reputation for being 20 years away, permanently.

This week, three companies tried to put a closer number on it.

On May 6^th, Type One Energy, Tokamak Energy, and AECOM announced the UK Infinity Fusion Consortium. A partnership to develop the UK's first privately led fusion power plant.

The project centers on Type One Energy's Infinity Two. A 400 MWe stellarator design.

Unlike the more famous tokamak approach (think ITER), stellarators use a twisted magnetic geometry that allows for steadier continuous operation.

Watch below for a short visual explanation.

Tokamak Energy brings the superconducting magnet technology and AECOM brings the engineering muscle.

The UK government has committed over £2.5 billion to fusion across its various programmes, and recently published a formal UK Fusion Strategy outlining how it plans to move from world-leading fusion science to commercial deployment.

King Charles told the U.S. Congress last week that Britain and America are combining resources on fusion and then these three companies signed a piece of paper the next day.

Whether fusion's timeline finally gets shorter depends on whether teams like this can deliver. The ambition is real. The money is starting to follow.

🇯🇵 The U.S. Just Received the Largest International Uranium Shipment in NNSA History

On May 7^th, the NNSA announced the successful transfer of 1.7 metric tons of HALEU from Japan to the United States. That makes this the largest single international uranium shipment in the agency's history.

The material came from Japan's Fast Critical Assembly, a research reactor that has been shut down. Japan no longer needed it but the U.S. needed it badly.

HALEU is enriched to between 5% and 20% uranium-235, compared to the 3–5% used in conventional reactors. This is the fuel virtually every next generation advanced reactor is designed around.

TerraPower, X-energy, Oklo, Kairos all run on it. And right now, there is essentially no commercial domestic supply.

The material heads to the Y-12 National Security Complex in Tennessee, where it will be processed and fed into DOE's HALEU Availability Program to bridge the gap while domestic enrichment capacity is built out.

Although it’s great news, it doesn't solve the HALEU problem. DOE estimates domestic demand could reach 50 metric tons per year by 2050.

But this shipment buys time and every ton matters when you're building an industry from scratch.

⚡ Atomic Alternatives

Welcome back to Atomic Alternatives, where we find the places nuclear tech is already running your life without telling you.

This week, your smoke detector.

The most common type of smoke detector is the ionization smoke detector. It contains a tiny amount of americium-241, a radioactive element produced as a byproduct of nuclear reactors.

And by tiny amount we're talking about roughly one millionth of a gram.

Here's what it does.

The americium-241 continuously emits alpha particles. Theses particles are the weakest form of radiation. So weak you actually stop them with a sheet of paper!

Anyways, the alpha particles ionize the air between two electrically charged plates inside the detector which creates a small steady electrical current.

When there’s no smoke, the current flows.

But when smoke enters the chamber, the current drops and the alarm sounds.

Americium-241 is a decay product of plutonium-241 in spent reactor fuel. Which means the thing keeping your family safe from house fires is, technically, nuclear waste doing something useful.

Hard to argue with that.

💪Review of the Week

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