2024: The Best Is Yet To Come And The Advantage Of Being At The Right Place At The Right Time

June 19, 2023 was my first day with AtkinsRéalis . Since then, the summer months brought a CANDU technology seminar we headlined at the Toronto Region Board of Trade , and Ontario’s new build announcements of 6,000 MW of new nuclear power during the next 10 years between Bruce Power 's site and a total of 4 SMRs at Ontario Power Generation 's Darlington site. The Fall saw $3 billion in Canadian financing for Romania to build 2 new high-performing CANDU reactors at their Cernavoda site, plus a jam-packed week in Paris at the World Nuclear Exhibition where we launched our newest and most advanced reactor, the CANDU? MONARK?, and signed with Societatea Nationala Nuclearelectrica SA a $750 million deal to life-extend one of Romania’s CANDU reactors. Right from Paris, we made our way to Dubai for COP28, speaking to media, governments, utilities, and supply chain partners, while pledging AtkinsRéalis’ support to a multi-nation declaration to triple the world’s nuclear power by 2050.

In between were customer meetings, meet and greets with politicians, interviews with journalists, and the day-to-day realities associated with profit and loss responsibility and running a business segment with 1,500 staff.

Is this the first six months you’d want on a new job? For me, the answer is yes! I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Making the Move

Before I joined AtkinsRéalis, I was at OPG for 35 years of my career. It was the only other company I’d worked for. ?So, when the call first came from AtkinsRéalis about whether I’d be interested in joining, I had to think long and hard about why it would be worth leaving a company I loved, and the utility that supplies half of Ontario’s power.

I concluded that my allegiance lay with supporting nuclear power, and where I did that was secondary. I realized that the chance to lead a diversified portfolio, including building the G7’s first grid-scale SMR, and AtkinsRéalis’ involvement R&D activities such as managing the renowned Canadian Nuclear Laboratories ' sites, was enough to attract me to take on what was the right role at the right time.

The Right Place…

Having been in my position for six months now, I'm reminded why Canada is the second country in the world to ever generate commercial nuclear power and one of the few countries to have its own large reactor technology that has been successfully built here and overseas. It’s because of the calibre of expertise and brilliance of the people who work in this industry.

Remember that the Canadian supply chain delivered 23 CANDU reactors in 22 years- over one a year- between the 1970s and 1990s. And built the last 7 CANDU reactors in export markets on time and on budget. These things don’t happen by magic. It’s a testament to what Canadian engineering- small compared to our industrialized peers, but per capita far more mighty- can achieve.

This country has done some phenomenal things with science. The invention of insulin. The Canadarm. The snowmobile. The Avro Arrow. And don’t forget about the Zamboni. But then there’s our Canadian CANDU technology. It’s recognized as one of the top 10 major engineering achievements of the past century in Canada.

…At the Right Time

Why do I mention this? Because now, Canada needs to triple its power output by 2050 to meet Net Zero targets for a clean grid, rising electricity demands from population growth and increased electrification of industries and fossil fuel powered processes. So, we must build 3 times more power in the next 26 years as we did in the past 150. And that new power must come from sources that provide energy security (meaning reliable power free of import reliance), can be built quickly and capable of producing cheap electricity.

Assuming nuclear provided power to 25% of Canada’s grid, which is what our engineering analysis found in a realistic supply-demand scenario, that would mean building 20 large CANDU reactors and 45 SMRs by 2050, in addition to keeping online the assets we already have on the grid at Pickering, Bruce Power, Darlington, and Point Lepreau.

And this doesn’t consider the market beyond Canada, which is significant. That goes for both countries that operate CANDU technology and want to build more of it plus extend the assets they have, like Romania. But also, those countries who don’t yet use nuclear power, but who are interested in adopting it in their grid over the next 30 years. Think Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia, Oceania: there are so many untapped markets. Globally, we estimate that there’s a market for over 1,000 new reactor builds.

To meet all this demand, our Canadian nuclear business has grown by over 350 people in 2023 to now over 1,500 staff. And we’re targeting more concerted headcount growth in 2024. (PS- check out open roles on our careers site if you want to ride this wave of growth with us! https://careers.atkinsrealis.com/jobs?options=2698,6955&page=1)

A lot of those new hires are new grads and junior engineers in their early 20s. This is an industry that can offer someone an excellent career over decades- ranging from reactor design to project management and from reactor operations to decommissioning.? Careers that offer the opportunity to work on projects throughout the world, and roles that are well-paying, stimulating and rewarding, at that. One of the most heartening things I’ve realized from the public engagement I’ve done on nuclear power during the last few years (and this was highlighted at COP28) is that young people, including young climate activists, are overwhelmingly supportive of nuclear power. They get and support the role it must play as a clean energy source to stand-up renewables in a reliable grid that they will inherit as the next generation.

So yes, it was a good time to make the leap into this job.

The Road Ahead

Our CEO Ian Edwards used to ask our Nuclear team how we were going to grow the business in the future. Now he in fact asks us how we’re going to find enough people to deliver all the work staring us down in the years to come. We’re hiring hundreds of new people yearly in the Nuclear business in Canada. It works out to an average of one new person every day. And still, we are in the very fortunate position of worrying about whether we’re going to have capacity to keep up with client demand.

Engineering provides unique opportunities to create things that have lasting positive impacts. When it was announced that Canada would provide funding to Romania to build a further 2 CANDU reactors there, I was struck by what Romania’s Energy Minister Burduja said: “Romania took the historic decision to be the only country behind the Iron Curtain to develop a nuclear program based on Western technology…as the current geopolitical context has shown, this was the best decision that Romania could have taken at that time… we look at our neighbours, they all depend on Russian nuclear technology, on Russian nuclear fuel. We look West to our Canadian friends…. [our CANDU] Unit 2 is the number one best-performing reactor in the world.”

Hearing these words, full of emotion and deep significance from the Romanians, resonated deeply with me as it reaffirmed our higher purpose at AtkinsRéalis: to Engineer a better future for our planet and its people. As Ministers Burduja and Wilkinson (Canada’s Minister of Energy and Natural Resources) pointed out, with two more of our world class CANDU units, an energy secure future can be provided not just to Romania, but Moldova and possibly Ukraine too, via purchases of surplus power.

And to a boy from a small town in Newfoundland, that’s an ok mandate for me to live up to. It’s my honour to serve a team of extraordinarily talented professionals here. They’re my teammates, serving shoulder to shoulder with me. From interns to SVPs; from those in the office to those on project sites; to those in our in-house manufacturing facility. As one team, in 2024 and beyond, we’re going to show what we, together, CAN-DU. (Sorry. Couldn’t help myself.) ?