Firm to build first service centre for small reactors in Ontario

STEPHANIE HUGHES and LAYAN ODEH

Ottawa Citizen
Jun 24, 2025


Ontario will have the world's first service centre for a new, smaller kind of nuclear plant, as the province embraces a technology that's been touted as a way to meet surging power demand from artificial intelligence.


GE Vernova Hitachi Nuclear Energy has committed $70 million to build an engineering and service centre outside Toronto for small modular reactors. The announcement comes less than two months after Ontario gave the green light to a $20.9 billion project to build such reactors.


The service centre will be based in the Durham Region east of Toronto, near the Darlington nuclear site where new BWRX-300 reactors will be located. It's expected to add about 300 jobs, according to a statement from the Ontario government.


The investment “underscores Ontario's global leadership in nuclear innovation,” Ivette Vera-perez, head of the Organization of Canadian Nuclear Industries, said in the statement.


Interest in nuclear is increasing as technology companies and governments seek clean, stable electricity to meet rising demand. Ontario's electricity needs are set to jump 75 per cent by 2050 and nuclear power will play an important role in boosting generating capacity, the government says. Canada's most populous province is home to multiple nuclear plants, which already provide around half of its electricity.


Supporters of SMRS say they can be built on locations not suitable for larger nuclear plants and will be eventually cheaper and faster to install than their conventional counterparts. Earlier this month, Amazon.com Inc. doubled its deal to buy nuclear energy from Talen Energy Corp. for data centres, with the companies also exploring the potential to build small modular reactors in the state of Pennsylvania.


In May, Ontario Power Generation announced it had won approval to build the first of four small modular reactors designed by GE Vernova Hitachi, which are expected to be the first to be deployed in a Group of Seven country. Each would be large enough to provide about 300 megawatts of electricity, the equivalent of the power needed for 300,000 homes.

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