Second nuclear plant ‘potentially a very good asset for New Brunswick’: energy minister

Fallout from a review of NB Power continued on Tuesday.

New Brunswick Energy Minister René Legacy says the idea of moving forward on a second nuclear generating plant at Point Lepreau is “potentially a very good asset for New Brunswick,” adding he doesn’t want it to be a first-of-its kind technology.

Legacy spoke with reporters on Tuesday, one day after the release of a major review looking at the future of NB Power. Amongst the 50 recommendations offered by the review’s three-person panel is a pitch to begin assessments for “additional large scale, proven technology” at Point Lepreau, about 25 minutes west of Saint John.

“We are the only site in Canada right now that has a licence to operate new nuclear,” says Legacy. “There’s a lot of study to be done. Is there demand around it? Can the risk be mitigated? But it doesn’t change that when I walk around to Ontario or other provinces, we are the only other province except Ontario that has that capacity. In my mind, it’s potentially a very good asset for New Brunswick.”

Legacy says the earliest timeline for any new nuclear plant operating at Point Lepreau is the late 2030s or early 2040s, if assessment planning began now.

Site development for what’s long been dubbed ‘Lepreau Two’ first began with the province’s exploration of small modular nuclear reactors. Legacy says site development at Point Lepreau has to this point been “very technology agnostic.”

“We’ve asked that whatever the proposal looks like it has to take care that we are not going to be first-of-a-kind proponents, or one-of-a-kind proponents,” says Legacy. “Because that also consists of risks. And when I say risks, it could consist of extra dollars.

“Other jurisdictions are larger, they might want to take some of those risks. We’re not in a position to do that right now. And there’s enough technology being developed at this point that we feel for the timing we’re looking at, we’ll be ready at the right time, at the right moment to enter if we are going to go into further nuclear.”

Legacy was presenting 2026-27 budget estimates for the Department of Energy on Tuesday at the legislature, where he was asked about the panel’s review and the province’s future with nuclear energy.

“I think if it can be to the benefit of New Brunswickers, and to the ratepayers and the taxpayers, I’d like to look at it,” says Legacy.

New Brunswick Green Party Leader David Coon says its “mind boggling” the province is considering adding more nuclear development at Point Lepreau, calling it the most expensive source of energy in the world.

“It would only drive our power costs into the stratosphere, toward the moon,” says Coon.

With both scheduled and unscheduled outages during the 2024-25 fiscal year, Point Lepreau only operated 27 per cent of the time.

When Point Lepreau is offline, it costs the utility $1 million-to-$1.5 million a day in replacement power costs. An unplanned 15-day shutdown in December cost as much as $4 million a day.

NB Power signed an agreement in October with Laurentis Energy Partners – a subsidiary of Ontario Power Generation – for nuclear engineers to work out of Point Lepreau over the next three years. The agreement is worth $25 million each year, with room for up to $8 million in bonuses should the agreement result in measurable improvements. The agreement is scheduled to officially begin on Wednesday

The review panel is also recommending Point Lepreau “be operationally separated from the other NB Power assets,” stopping short of detailing how that might work. On Monday, review panel member Duncan Hawthorne said he envisioned NB Power’s responsibilities at Point Lepreau transitioning to be “more contractual than governance.”

Legacy says all 50 recommendations outlined in the review will be addressed by the provincial government in some way, adding he would like to incorporate every recommendation “as much as possible.”

“If it’s not moving forward and implementing, it’s at least moving forward and explaining why we didn’t move ahead or picked an alternative solution to whatever problem was identified,” says Legacy.

The provincial government says it will release an action plan on the review’s recommendations by late May.

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