NB Power has found a sweetener as it prepares to drop tens of millions getting Atlantic Canada’s only nuclear station up to scratch.
The public utility wants to start making and selling medical isotopes at the Point Lepreau Nuclear Generating Station that would be used for diagnosing and curing scores of cancer patients.
CEO Lori Clark divulged the news last week during a media tour of the sprawling facility just west of Saint John on the Bay of Fundy.
“We’re very optimistic that there is a revenue stream that will come back to New Brunswickers and to our customers and help to offset some of the rate pressure that we know is coming,” the executive said on Thursday.
“It’s early days, and it would depend on the technical evaluation and the business partners that we work with, but we do know that based on the experience in other utilities, it could be worth tens of millions of dollars.”
Few details were released about the plan. NB Power says it needs to find the right partner to help develop the medical isotope scheme and then make simple changes to the plant that would allow the product to be partially developed and then shipped for finishing at an off-site processing plant, likely run by a private partner.
Clark described it as a new opportunity because the technology has advanced such that isotopes can now be created at a Candu reactor like Lepreau while the facil- ity is still running, without having to shut it down.
“It’s a really good news story for New Brunswickers, good for employees and employees’ morale,” she said of the plant’s 900 workers. “But also good for New Brunswickers and our customers, and for the medical community.
“Life-saving medical isotopes is really exciting for the utility.”
Clark never mentioned the American firm Cross River Infrastructure Partners, which last month pitched the idea of building a new, smaller reactor in southern New Brunswick to develop isotopes.
NB Power officials provided tidbits bolstering its case, mentioning that nuclear medicine benefits over 40 million patients annually, including a million Canadians.
Given the growing popularity of isotopes for medical use, Canada’s nuclear medicine market is expected to reach up to $1.6 billion by 2030, most of it supplied by nuclear plants in Ontario.
About two in five Canadians can expect to be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetime.
Asked about how long it would take an initial investment to pay off for ratepayers, Clark replied that NB Power wouldn’t move ahead unless there was a positive business case.
“But I’m not concerned about that, given the opportunity that’s out there,” she said, without committing to a timeline. “The timeline is dependent on the commercial arrangement that we make and the business partners that we work with. There are all sorts of different industry models to follow. You know, there are some cases where we wouldn’t have to make any investment at all.”
But a nuclear critic said it would be tough for New Brunswick to compete with Ontario in the space, given that other nuclear plants already have a leg up on making medical isotopes.
“New Brunswick Power has fallen prey in the past to many ventures that turned out to be disappointing, to say the least,” said Gordon Edwards, president of the nonprofit organization Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility, in an interview from Montreal.
Still, Edwards did not discount the idea of producing isotopes outright.
“You have to do the necessary research,” he said. “What’s the market like? How many competitors do you have?” Edwards, who has a doctorate in math, warned that NB Power might be a “Johnny come lately” to a saturated market.
“It would need to have an independent body take a look at the business case. The reliability of the reactor itself has been under question because of all these repairs that they need to make. That’s going to hamper a steady stream of production of isotopes. So, all of this really should be subject to an independent review by people who have a good business head on their shoulders.”
Point Lepreau has been beset by breakdowns the last few years. The plant is considered a workhorse among NB Power’s fleet of 14 generating stations, providing stable, affordable electricity for about one-third of the province’s needs when it is running properly.
In 2017, its capacity factor – basically the amount of time it can produce electricity throughout the year – was just above 90 per cent, close to the industry average.
But in recent years, it has been tripped up by planned and unplanned outages. In 2024, for example, the plant only ran about 31 per cent of the time.
Steve Bagshaw, NB Power’s new chief nuclear officer, told reporters that investments in Point Lepreau are beginning to pay off. He pointed out in the first financial quarter of last year, April, May and June, the plant ran 100 per cent of time.
But that was just before another planned outage that also led to a short breakdown in December.
“It is important that we make ongoing capital investment in our nuclear power plant, here at Point Lepreau, to improve the reliability,” he said. “We’ve been making that capital investment. We’re starting to see the dividends from that capital investment with improved reliability, with increasing capacity factor.”
In January, Point Lepreau was running full throttle during a cold snap in which New Brunswick sold power to Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, helping the two neighbouring provinces avoid rolling blackouts and making money for its bottom line.
NB Power last year signed a deal with Laurentis Energy Partners, a subsidiary of Ontario Power Generation, which runs several nuclear plants in Canada’s most populous province, that will channel into its wider expertise, given its experience with refurbishments.
Clark has said repeatedly that the big refurbishment at Point Lepreau completed in 2012 mostly took care of the nuclear side of the plant, neglecting the conventional side, where upgrades to aging equipment are badly needed.
This has led to poor performance at the plant and created higher costs for NB Power’s more than 400,000 residential and business customers.
Electricity prices in New Brunswick have increased 23 per cent in the last three years alone, with the utility seeking another 4.75 per cent hike this April, causing a public outcry.
“We put together a long-term capital plan, understanding that we need to increase the investment over the next few years,” Clark said.
“We were dealing with an ageing asset, and we know to be best in class, it’s in the neighbourhood of between 60 and $100 million that’s required for capital investments in a station of this size, and to stay top quartile in our production.”
By John Chilibeck, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
Original Published on Feb 09, 2026 at 14:34
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