Editorial | Begin nuclear discussion

In the face of the government’s agreement with a Canadian outfit to advance Jamaica’s ambition for nuclear energy, The Gleaner again – for the third time – urges an robust stakeholder engagement of the issue to ensure that there is a clear grasp of all the implications of this initiative and that all bases are properly covered.

For instance, it is not clear where nuclear power sits within the government’s medium to long-term energy programme given that the administration is yet to publish an updated Integrated Energy Resource Plan (the last one was in 2020), and whether nuclear is now considered among the suit of renewables which it says should produce half of the island’s electricity by 2037. In other words, will nuclear power be a diminution or displacement of alternatives like solar and wind?

Further, while there has been some discussion around the introduction of small modular reactors (SMR), there has been no wide-scale debate and analysis of the status of the raft of competing SMR technologies being developed, the economics of installing and operating SMRs, and a possible timetable for, and efficacy of, their deployment in small island states like Jamaica.

Additionally, establishing a nuclear power plant, even a decade from now, will likely have implications for the island’s Electricity Act, which Parliament is now revising, as well for the operating licence of Jamaica Public Service (JPS), the monopoly power transmission and distribution company, which is up for renewal/extension in 2027. Negotiations on that issue, if it has not begun, should start soon.

Critically, too, Jamaica has not yet begun to seriously talk about the need for, or availability of, the wide range of expertise necessary to operate and manage such facilities, and whether training systems have been, or are being, put in place to ensure that when these professionals are needed they are at hand. Prime Minister Andrew Holness, however, has suggested that this consideration is about to begin.

MORE COMPLEX

Nuclear power plants are considerably more complex than research/isotopes production facilities, such as the small slowpoke reactor at the University of the West Indies, Mona.

But while Mr Holness has said that it could be up to a decade for Jamaica to “reaps the benefits” from the memorandum of understanding (MOU) his government signed last week with Canada’s Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL) and Canadian Nuclear Laboratories (CNL), 10 years, in the context of all that Jamaica may need to do to accommodate these technologies – if there is a consensus that it is what the country should pursue – is far from a long time.

Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL) is a Canadian government agency mandated to drive the country’s nuclear-related technology development and managing its nuclear waste. AECL operates under what the Canadians call a GOCO model (government-owned, contractor operated). In this case, Canadian Nuclear Laboratories, a consortium of private firms, is the operator, overseeing AECL’s day-to-day activities and its facilities.

Indeed, AECL/CNL are deeply involved in research in SMR technologies at AECL Chalk River research laboratories in Ottawa, where they are also collaborating with a private outfit, Global First Power (GFP), in building a SMR plant. Founded in 2020 as a limited partnership vehicle, GFP is a subsidiary of a company called Ultra Safe Nuclear Corporation.

The Government first seriously raised the issue of nuclear power a year and half ago, when Minister Holness told manufacturers that the island had “to explore new technology in nuclear energy, small nuclear plants, to generate energy in Jamaica, which will be cheaper, more stable and more affordable”.

Shortly afterwards, the energy minister, Daryl Vaz, told Parliament that the government was discussing nuclear power with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), whose possible help included mobilising capital for the project.

“This way, we can ensure that as the first SMR and MMR (micro modular reactor) technologies commercialise across global markets, Jamaica is well positioned to take the lead and transition into this new era of energy production powered by a reliable, zero-carbon and cost-effective energy source, where we would no longer be dependent on costly fossil fuel imports or impacted by vulnerabilities of supply chain disruptions, a future where we can preserve our environment and ensure that our nation is resilient and self-sufficient,” he said.

SIGNED AGREEMENT

Then last November, in the margins of the COP28 climate conference in Qatar, Jamaica was among two dozen countries, led by the US, Canada, Britain and France, that signed an agreement to promote the doubling of the use of nuclear energy by 2050.

Since those developments, though, there has been no deep, coordinated, government-led public policy discussion of the subject.

At last week’s signing of the MOU, Prime Minister Holness suggested that nuclear energy, given its stability and cost, could be “a game-changer” for Jamaica’s and the global energy sector.

He added: “Of course, there are those who are going to say, why not wait until this technology is mature. The problem is that anything that has to do with nuclear requires a long period of time and it requires the development of local capabilities. If you don’t do it now, then not only will you have to import the capital and the actual small modular nuclear reactor, you’re going to have to import the technological skills and expertise as well, which will increase the cost of deployment. So Jamaica has to see what is going to come in the future.”

While several countries, including the US, Britain, Japan and South Korea, are into research and development on SMRs, and a handful of others are in development, only two of these plans are operational globally:

• Russia’s Akademik Lomonosov plant, a dual reactor float facility at the Port of Pevek in the country’s far north. Commissioned in 2019, it has a combined capacity of 70 MWe and 300 MW of thermal output for heading; and

• An onland facility at Shidao Bay in China’s Shandong province, with a capacity of 210 megawatts of electricity and 210 MW of heat.

These plants have thus far proven reliable and stable, but global analyses of the levelised cost of energy say that, up to now, it remains significantly cheaper and faster and less challenging to establish and operate solar power systems, the technology for the storage of whose power is expanding rapidly.

Indeed, as Mr Holness alluded, the management and regulatory systems for nuclear power are particularly involved, complex and politically sensitive. The bottomline: there is a serious discussion to be had.