Alberta has now signed or joined four nuclear and grid agreements since 2022, by our own count, the newest of them on 14 September 2026 with Saskatchewan and the Northwest Territories. The new memorandum names no reactor capacity in megawatts and no site. It sets no cost and fixes no date for first power. Every earlier document in that count is named inside the release announcing this one.
A memorandum of understanding is an agreement to work together on a listed set of problems. This one lists reactor technology selection and development, financing approaches, environmental assessment, regulatory and federal approval pathways, uranium fuel supply and transportation, nuclear waste management, and new and expanded interties between the three grids. None of those items commits anyone to build a generating station, and none of them was meant to.
That deserves more patience than it usually gets. Sorting out fuel transport rules and waste custody across three jurisdictions is slow legal and technical work that nobody puts on a podium, and it has to be finished before a reactor is more than a drawing.
Key facts
- Alberta, Saskatchewan and the Northwest Territories signed a memorandum of understanding on nuclear generation technologies and electricity interties on 14 September 2026, per the Government of Alberta news release of that date.
- The 14 September 2026 memorandum covers reactor technology selection, financing, environmental assessment, regulatory and federal approval pathways, uranium fuel supply and transportation, nuclear waste management and new interties, and states no capacity figure in megawatts, no cost, no site and no in-service date, per the Government of Saskatchewan news release of 14 September 2026.
- Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario and New Brunswick released a joint strategic plan on small modular reactors and conventional nuclear development in March 2022, and Alberta and Saskatchewan signed a memorandum on nuclear generation and grid capabilities in 2024, per the Government of Alberta news release of 14 September 2026.
- Alberta’s peak electricity demand reached 12,785 megawatts on 11 December 2025, 3.2% above the previous record set in January 2024, per the Alberta Electric System Operator 2025 Annual Market Statistics.
- The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission licenses a nuclear power plant in five phases, starting with a licence to prepare site and continuing through licences to construct, to operate, to decommission, and to be released from regulatory control, per the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission.
What the memorandum commits the three governments to do
The three governments agreed to examine their electricity system needs together and to coordinate on the legal and technical machinery that sits underneath any reactor program. Alberta’s release names the prior work it builds on. There is the March 2022 joint strategic plan with Saskatchewan, Ontario and New Brunswick, the 2024 Alberta and Saskatchewan memorandum on nuclear generation and grid capabilities, the interprovincial and territorial Partnership Agreement on Transmission Interties of 6 March 2026, and the final report of the Nuclear Energy Engagement and Advisory Panel of 22 April 2026. Alberta’s nuclear energy roadmap is expected in early 2027.
Read that list as a work program and it holds together. Read it as procurement and it is empty.
What has to happen between a signature and a licensed reactor
The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission issues five separate licences over the life of a nuclear power plant. A proponent applies first for a licence to prepare site, then to construct, then to operate, with decommissioning and release from regulatory control covered by the last two phases. Each phase is its own application carrying its own evidence. The Commission decides through a public hearing process, and an application may require an environmental review before it reaches that hearing.
Nothing in that sequence can begin until a technology is chosen and a site is identified, because a licence to prepare site is an application about a specific piece of ground and a specific reactor design. The memorandum signed on 14 September 2026 covers technology selection and regulatory pathway. That is the work that comes before the first application, and the first application only opens the licensing regime.
Alberta holds a coordination agreement covering the steps ahead of phase one of that five-phase regime, with a roadmap due in early 2027 expected to name a technology and a pathway. Construction follows licensing, and licensing follows a named site.
What the interties still need before any electricity moves
The intertie half of the memorandum runs on its own track. Alberta joined the interprovincial and territorial Partnership Agreement on Transmission Interties on 6 March 2026, and the 14 September memorandum adds the Northwest Territories and nuclear generation to it. No route is named. No transfer capacity in megawatts is named, and no cost is attached to any of it.
A transmission project inside Alberta still needs an application to the Alberta Utilities Commission, the province’s independent utilities regulator, which reviews energy and utility project applications and holds hearings on them. That is a second approval track with its own evidence and its own schedule, and the memorandum does not shorten it. An intertie helps only when the jurisdiction at the other end has surplus generation in the hour Alberta is short.
The figure the memorandum leaves alone is the one that reaches a power bill. Alberta’s peak load hit 12,785 megawatts on 11 December 2025, 3.2% above the record set in January 2024. That is the hour of the year when the grid had the least room in it. Four agreements have been signed since 2022 against that number, by our count, and none of them adds a megawatt to the supply side of it.
Alberta’s nuclear energy roadmap is due in early 2027. Count it as the fifth document unless it names a site.
