Province seeks public feedback on nuclear energy
By Lethbridge Herald on September 9, 2025.
Editor,
I want to address Scott Sakatch’s Aug. 27 opinion piece, “Nuclear power in the wrong hands isn’t an option” where he incorrectly says that Alberta faces regular rolling brownouts on an “aging grid” and wrongly suggested the Nuclear Energy Development Survey is for those who can’t speak to the advisory panel.
Alberta has one of the most reliable electricity grids in the country. In 2024, more than 3,000 megawatts of baseload power were added to the grid that can be dispatched at a moment’s notice.
Additionally, our government introduced a requirement for natural gas power plants to be online in times of high demand if there is not enough supply to meet Alberta’s needs.
Combined, these measures are why Alberta now has a surplus of supply, and why Albertans have not seen a single grid alert due to insufficient power supply since last summer. We have significantly reduced the risk of future grid alerts and Alberta is not at risk of rolling brownouts.
At the same time, we understand people across Alberta are increasingly relying on electricity to power their everyday lives. With new energy-intensive technologies like AI emerging, we need to make sure that our power grid is ready to meet future demands.
Nuclear energy holds a lot of promise, and that’s why we’re exploring the potential of adding it to Alberta’s energy mix.
Unlike wind and solar power, which don’t produce when the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining, nuclear energy is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It is incredibly reliable, emissions-free and could be a valuable addition to our energy mix.
However, we also recognize that there are concerns around nuclear energy from incidents in the past.
The Nuclear Energy Development Survey is designed to help our government understand where Albertans are at, what opportunities and concerns they may have, and what they’d like to learn more about. It will help inform and guide future engagement activities, which is why it is open until Sept. 25th. It is not meant to replace direct engagement with the panel and the activities they will undertake over the course of the next year.
I hope everyone in Lethbridge and across Alberta will take the opportunity to participate in the survey, and look through the other engagement materials on alberta.ca/nuclear-energy-engagement.
Nathan Neudorf,
MLA Lethbridge-East,
Minister of Affordability and Utilities
15-14
I did the survey and expressed my zero support for nuclear energy.
If we’ve added 3 GW of ‘baseload’ generation already, why do we need nuclear power?
Enjoy your trip to Japan, Nathan, to explore nuclear power. I wish you and the government showed as much enthusiasm for renewables and emerging grid management technologies.
There are legitimate concerns with nuclear power. Storage of the waste, as well as a potential catastrophic disaster. When the Alberta PCs were in power, they wanted to explore the option of getting nuclear power for Alberta. Albertans said no to that.
I’m not convinced we haven’t fully explored renewable energy without bias towards nuclear power. I’m under the impression that the UCP has decided to support nuclear power and wait for Albertans blowback before saying they were misunderstood like previous failed policies. Enjoy ur taxpayer funded holiday Nathan.
Better google this. It’s all been tried before in Alberta and it failed. Bruce Power told us it wasn’t financially feasible. Our populations are too small.
But if these Reformers can use it to fill their pockets with our money and get a free trip out of it you can bet they will.
“ Bruce Power Officially Scraps Alberta Nuclear Option “ Dec. 2011.
They love treating Albertans like morons because it’s so easy to do, isn’t it?
curious how we “invent” things, such as “mined coins” and now, ai, and feel we need to have that stuff at any price. so much we “create” and then come be beholden to, no matter how much it taxes the health and balance of our natural world. indeed, what with the ai god coming to stay, we had best get ourselves all nucleared up so as to be a good host and all. so much of our energy will of course be needed to appease the great ai god; and the great ai does not care as to from where that energy will come.
as for nathan heading to japan to talk nuclear, you would think that country will have had enough of radiation fallout by now. but, we still have the economy god, “capitalism greed”, to keep on appeasing, despite how that has undermined the planet’s health and balance.
My question is did you waste more of taxpayers money going overseas to talk to people about Nuclear Power knowing what you know?
Especially after Bruce Power scrapped its plans to build in Alberta in Dec. 2011. We were told it wasn’t financially feasible, and no one wanted it in their backyards. We doubt that’s changed.
While your Reformers were spreading the lie that it was Rachael Notley and Justin Trudeau who destroyed the creation of cheap electricity using coal, and tried to blame them for the high cost of electricity that was created by Klein’s deregulation now you find it smart to take responsibility for it?
How stupid do you think we are ,we knew it was Stephen Harper all along and my late father a Power Plant Engineer fully agreed with it.
Can you tell us what was smart about canceling the 24,000 jobs and $33 billion investment for green energy that would have been huge for this province. Are you going to take responsibility for destroying that?
You always make great points. I do remember when the Alberta PCs wanted to get nuclear power for Alberta. Albertans said no, because of the environmental risks. Where would the nuclear waste be stored?
Given how the UCP were with their negligence with the tailings pond leaks in northern Alberta, how they wasted $20 billion to help pay for the $260 billion messes left behind by the oil companies in Alberta, which Ralph Klein caused, and how the UCP have rescinded Peter Lougheed’s 1976 Coal Policy, and made us pay $16 billion in settlement costs to coal mining companies, so they can do more damage to the mountains and the water, how can we trust them with nuclear power?
It was CPC Environment Minister, Jim Prentice, who said in 2010, that coal fired power plants must be decommissioned by the earlier part of this decade, because they are very polluting, with GHG emissions. Jim Prentice was the last of the Alberta PC premiers, and he wanted coal fired power plants in Alberta decommissioned for the same reasons, while wanting more wind and solar power for Alberta. Alberta was the first jurisdiction in Canada to get wind power, in 1993. In the 2015 provincial election in Alberta, all the political parties in Alberta were campaigning on closing down coal fired power plants in Alberta, and they were all campaigning on getting into more green energy sources.
It was Ralph Klein who did the well over $30 billion electricity deregulation debacle and the $10 billion Power Purchase Agreements debacle, which started the huge spike in power prices. In 2010-11, TransAlta was manipulating power prices in Alberta, and in 2015, they were found guilty and were given a $56 million fine, which they have only passed onto the power consumers in Alberta.
The UCP removed the NDP’s cap on power prices in Alberta, which increased power prices even more. The UCP also blew billions of dollars on various voter bribery schemes, including making it look like they were reducing power prices for Albertans, but this was merely a loan to the power companies in Alberta, which Albertans must now pay back on their power bills. The UCP’s economic witholding, power price gouging debacle, has also cost Albertans in excess of $150 billion, since June of 2020.
Furthermore, the UCP are responsible for the power blackouts we had in Alberta, in 2014. It was because in 2019 the UCP switched back to an energy only system for power, from a capacity based power system. The NDP put in the capacity based power system to avoid power blackouts.