This year, 2025, marks one quarter of this century. This time is close to the climate change goals of 2030 and far enough from those of 2050 to reflect on where we have come from in the nuclear field in Canada, where we are, and where we might expect to go in the future. 

Canada’s nuclear developments have primarily focused on the Canadian-designed and -built CANDU reactor. The CANDUs, developed over the years as increasingly powerful generating plants, have become the steady workhorses for the major proportion of electricity in Ontario and New Brunswick, and are now as well the source of many industrial and medical radioisotopes. The refurbishment of the reactors at half-life or beyond assures that such CANDUs will remain a major component of the energy life of many Canadians in the future, while new CANDU designs suggest a modernization of the reactor that leads into our future.

With the increasing overall demand for some additional reliable mid-sized non-carbon energy generation in other provinces and the need for smaller units in isolated off-grid locations, Canada is beginning to embrace non-CANDU reactors in several provinces, notably New Brunswick and Saskatchewan, possible Alberta, but also in Ontario.

The recent call at COP28 for the tripling of worldwide nuclear capacity encourages the build-out of reactors both large and small, with ramification on fuel-efficient reactor design, on long-term fissile fuel availability, on recycling of used fuel, and on safe disposal of nuclear material, such as used fuel remnants or activated structural components.

While many of these aspects are examined in detail in the CNS specialty meetings, be it SMRs or fuel, chemistry or maintenance, etc., a more general meeting such as the CNS Annual Conference can and should bring these aspects together for a comprehensive understanding of the interrelationships.

This conference is a focused effort to bring such a perspective to the field in the context of our past, our present and of our possible futures.