CALGARY — Alberta Premier Danielle Smith says she expects the private sector to lead the way on potentially bringing nuclear power to the province, but her government would set up a Crown corporation if needed.
"Because we have a power market where generation is privatized, we would anticipate that the private sector would pay for it," Smith said Monday as she announced a new panel to gather public feedback on the possibility of building reactors in Alberta.
"At the moment, we haven't seen a need for us to establish a Crown corporation like they do in every other jurisdiction in Canada. We're prepared to do that if we have to, if we cannot get enough baseload ... But we want to see the private market work."
The panel is to be chaired by legislature member Chantelle de Jonge, parliamentary secretary for the Affordability and Utilities ministry.
An online survey is available until Sept. 25. The Alberta government has also reached out to Indigenous communities to determine the best way to meaningfully engage. An online request for information from industry and local governments is open until Oct. 25.
In all, Affordability and Utilities Minister Nathan Neudorf said engagement should last about a year. If there's found to be an appetite for nuclear power, he said it could be a decade before any plant comes to fruition.
"We still have an entire legislative and regulatory framework to establish to allow for this novel — as in new — type of generation to happen within the province of Alberta," Neudorf said.
"And then because of our private market, it would take some time for private proponents to fully build out and then connect to our grid. So the whole of it could take several years."
Most of Alberta's power currently comes from natural gas-fired generation.
Smith said potential projects could range from small modular reactors powering oilsands facilities to full-scale plants feeding the grid.
The province is also looking to attract $100 billion in data centre investment, which Smith said would be one of the largest users of nuclear energy. Those facilities house the computing firepower needed for artificial intelligence and other applications, and it can take an enormous amount of power to run and cool them.
Meanwhile, the Pembina Institute clean energy think tank said last week that Alberta's renewable industry is continuing to struggle against the backdrop of new provincial regulations on that sector. Those include limitations on where wind farms can be built and how much financial security for reclamation renewable developers must pay upfront.
Pembina said since October 2023, 11 gigawatts worth of wind, solar and energy storage projects have been withdrawn from the provincial grid operator's connection queue — more than the province's average total power demand.
Some cancellations are to be expected, Pembina said, but for renewables it was 44 per cent of proposed projects in that time frame versus 11 per cent for natural gas.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 25, 2025.
Lauren Krugel, The Canadian Press
