Small or big, new nuclear reactors are not climate solutions

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By David Suzuki

Despite the efforts of industry and its supporters to convince us otherwise, coal, gas and oil are outdated, inefficient, polluting energy sources, especially compared to alternatives. Some people, including politicians, are touting nuclear power as a good alternative. Is it?

Proponents argue it’s “clean,” because it doesn’t generate greenhouse gas emissions. But considering its entire life cycle, it’s far from clean, and it’s rife with problems — from uranium mining and transport to building and eventually decommissioning nuclear power plants to geopolitical issues around fuel supply and site security to radioactive waste disposal and weapons production. Of course, renewable energy also comes with impacts, which is why reducing energy and materials use is critical.

Besides environmental and other issues, building nuclear power plants — even largely untested small modular reactors, or SMRs — is expensive and time-consuming.

As Andrew Nikiforuk writes in the Tyee, “Due to its cost and complexity, it will not provide cheap or low-emission electricity in timeframe or scale that matters as climate change continues to broil an indifferent civilization.” He notes, however, “That is not to say that nuclear technology won’t play a minor role in our highly problematic energy future.”

Nikiforuk points to a recent study of 401 nuclear electricity projects built between 1936 and 2014 in 57 countries. It found the average time to build them was 70 months, and average cost overruns were close to US$1 billion (on top of massive projected expenditures). Because nuclear only supplies about nine per cent of global energy, and many reactors are nearing the end of their average life spans, it’s unlikely to play a major role in bringing emissions down as quickly as needed.

The 2025 “World Nuclear Report” says that, “In 2024, total investment in non-hydro renewable electricity capacity reached a record US$728 billion, 21 times the reported global investment in nuclear energy. Solar and wind power capacities grew by 32 percent and 11 percent, respectively, resulting in 565 GW of combined new capacity, over 100 times the 5.4 GW of net nuclear capacity addition. Global wind and solar facilities generated 70 percent more electricity than nuclear plants.”

Consider that much of the push for SMRs is coming from people like Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, to fuel increased oilsands production, and tech billionaires, to provide the enormous amounts of power required for data centres and artificial intelligence. Canada is already set to pay more than $1 billion for SMRs and other nuclear projects. But the “World Nuclear Report” notes that the few SMR projects now in play are “in serious financial trouble.”

Nikiforuk writes that “to achieve an economy of scale would require the production of thousands of SMRs, which is not happening anywhere any time soon.” He also notes that “SMRs are not small (they occupy the area of a city block), cheap or, for that matter, any safer than large reactors.” Studies show they can actually produce more waste overall than conventional reactors.

Energy Mix reports that costs for renewable energy and battery storage are dropping rapidly while nuclear plant prices continue to increase.

The “World Nuclear Report” states that renewable energy technologies “are evolving towards a highly flexible, fully electrified energy system with a decentralized control logic, outcompeting traditional centralized fossil and nuclear systems.”

That’s a clue as to why so many hyper-capitalist forces are pushing nuclear over renewable energy: Centralized power systems are easier to control, monopolize and profit from than systems based on energy sources freely available everywhere. And it’s easier to shift costs of fossil fuel and nuclear power plants to the public in the form of subsidies, taxes and higher electricity bills.

Given the urgent need to quickly address global heating, it would be far better to put money into renewable energy and infrastructure, including a modern east-west renewable-powered electricity grid in Canada.

While energy from wind, solar and geothermal, along with storage, also comes with environmental consequences and requires mining and materials, it’s still far cleaner, more efficient and quicker and easier to deploy than fossil fuel or nuclear power. To reduce impacts, we must, as Nikiforuk writes, “systematically reduce our energy and material consumption at an unprecedented pace.”

Like fossil fuels, nuclear is an outmoded, overpriced way to produce power.

David Suzuki is a scientist, broadcaster, author and co-founder of the David Suzuki Foundation. Written with David Suzuki Foundation Senior Writer and Editor Ian Hanington.

Learn more at davidsuzuki.org.

REFERENCES:

Rife with problems:

https://davidsuzuki.org/story/clean-energy-transition-sparks-nuclear-reaction

Largely untested small modular reactors:

https://davidsuzuki.org/story/is-smaller-better-when-it-comes-to-nuclear

Andrew Nikiforuk writes in the Tyee:

https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2025/09/22/New-Nuclear-Fever-Debunked

Recent study of 401 nuclear electricity projects:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0360544214008925

2025 “World Nuclear Report” says:

https://www.worldnuclearreport.org