{"id":1639,"date":"2026-07-13T20:27:13","date_gmt":"2026-07-13T18:27:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/energianucleare.eu\/canada-lays-foundations-of-g7s-first-smr-at-darlington\/"},"modified":"2026-07-13T20:27:13","modified_gmt":"2026-07-13T18:27:13","slug":"canada-lays-foundations-of-g7s-first-smr-at-darlington","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/energianucleare.eu\/en\/canada-lays-foundations-of-g7s-first-smr-at-darlington\/","title":{"rendered":"Canada lays foundations of G7&#8217;s first SMR at Darlington"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On April 22, 2026, one of the world&#8217;s largest crawler cranes lowered a <strong>953-tonne<\/strong> module with millimetre precision into a 35-metre-deep excavation at the Darlington site in Ontario. That single piece of steel and concrete is the reactor basemat \u2014 the physical foundation of the <strong>Western world&#8217;s first grid-scale SMR<\/strong>. The project belongs to provincial utility <strong>Ontario Power Generation<\/strong>, and the reactor is the <strong>BWRX-300<\/strong> developed by GE Vernova Hitachi Nuclear Energy.<\/p>\n<p>Known as the Basemat, the structure measures 37 metres in diameter and serves as the shared foundation for both the reactor building and the containment structure. It was assembled as a single unit before being lifted into place, using a steel-concrete composite diaphragm construction method. This marks the first time in Canada that a reactor building foundation has been built using modular construction \u2014 a milestone OPG described as &#8220;putting the M in SMR.&#8221; Under international convention, the placement of a reactor foundation officially marks the moment a project becomes a nuclear unit under construction. From that day forward, Darlington is no longer a project: it is a reactor.<\/p>\n<p>The construction licence had been issued by the <strong>Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission<\/strong> in April 2025, followed within days by final approval from the Province of Ontario. The total approved budget for all four planned units stands at <strong>CAD 20.9 billion<\/strong> (approximately USD 15 billion), with the first reactor estimated at CAD 6.1 billion. The federal government contributed CAD 2 billion through the Canada Growth Fund, while Ontario added CAD 1 billion via the Building Ontario Fund. OPG has already filed an operating licence application with the CNSC \u2014 a prerequisite for loading fuel and connecting the unit to the grid. The target is to <strong>bring the first reactor online by 2030<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>The BWRX-300 is a 300-megawatt natural-circulation boiling water reactor equipped with passive safety systems. It derives its technical and licensing basis from the ESBWR, a design certified by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Each unit will generate enough electricity to power approximately 300,000 homes and is roughly one-tenth the size of a conventional boiling water reactor. Four units combined would bring the site&#8217;s total capacity to <strong>1,200 megawatts<\/strong>. The fuel is standard low-enriched uranium, the same type used by the majority of reactors worldwide. Each unit&#8217;s construction footprint is comparable to a football pitch. More than 100 Canadian companies have already secured supply chain contracts, with 80% of spending directed toward Ontario-based firms.<\/p>\n<p>Darlington is only the starting point. The <strong>Tennessee Valley Authority<\/strong> has filed a construction permit application with the U.S. NRC for a BWRX-300 at the Clinch River site, backed by a USD 400 million federal grant. In Poland, <strong>ORLEN Synthos Green Energy<\/strong> is targeting a fleet of around 24 units across six sites. Sweden, Estonia, Hungary, and the Canadian province of Saskatchewan are pursuing the same path. The economic case for SMRs hinges on standardisation: build the same machine repeatedly to drive down costs. Darlington is the reference unit. If construction stays on schedule, every subsequent project will have real-world data to underpin its forecasts \u2014 and the entire sector will shift to a new scale.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On April 22, 2026, Ontario Power Generation lowered a nearly 953-tonne basemat into a 35-metre excavation at the Darlington site, marking the official start of construction on the Western world&#8217;s first grid-scale SMR. The GE Vernova Hitachi BWRX-300 is targeted to connect to the grid by 2030.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":1636,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[124,122],"tags":[125,130],"class_list":["post-1639","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reactor-technology","category-reactors","tag-decarbonization","tag-smr-small-modular-reactors-en"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Canada lays foundations of G7&#039;s first SMR at Darlington - Energia nucleare<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Canada lays the basemat of the G7&#039;s first SMR at Darlington. 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