Ontario Pours Concrete on West's First Grid-Scale SMR as Goldman Lifts Uranium Demand Forecast 17%
Ontario Power Generation's Darlington construction milestone and a Goldman Sachs model revision place nuclear's uranium demand trajectory on a firmer footing.
A 953-tonne slab of steel and concrete was lowered into a 35-metre shaft at Ontario Power Generation's Darlington nuclear site on or around June 24 (2026-06-24), marking the start of physical construction on the Western world's first grid-scale Small Modular Reactor. The project — compact enough to fit on two soccer fields yet large enough to compete with baseload capacity — puts Canada ahead of every Western peer in a technology race that is simultaneously reshaping the uranium market.7
The timing intersects with a significant revision to Goldman Sachs's demand model. Analyst Brian Lee's latest Nuclear Nuggets update added cumulative SMR deployments of nearly 46 GW by 2045 to the bank's forecasts, lifting its long-run nuclear generation outlook by 6% and adding 62 million pounds of uranium demand — a 17% upside to the prior long-term estimate. Uranium spot prices were holding in the mid-to-high $80s per pound with term pricing near $90 per pound at the time of the note, published in May (2026-05-19).5,6
The Darlington project is the commercial test of a technology that has attracted attention across the Atlantic and the Pacific. The United States government, which currently operates approximately 98 GW of nuclear generating capacity, is targeting 400 GW by 2050 — a four-fold increase that has animated deals including an $80 billion agreement announced in late May (2026-05-21) for Westinghouse to build new reactors for AI data-centre power demand. The scale of that ambition is what is pulling SMRs from paper into concrete.2,1
The uranium supply picture remains concentrated. Cameco produced roughly 17% of global uranium output in 2024, second only to Kazakhstan's Kazatomprom at 21%. The World Nuclear Association expects uranium demand to rise approximately 28% by 2030 and more than 100% by 2040. With term pricing already near $90 per pound, any sustained SMR buildout arriving ahead of new mine supply adds to upward pressure on long-dated uranium contracts.1,5
Russia's role in the fuel chain is the more immediate market variable. Historically, Russia's Rosatom supplied enriched uranium and fuel assemblies to utilities across Europe and Asia; the Economist reported that Europe's reliance on Russian enriched uranium fell to 24% of its needs from 38% the prior year, as the Sapporo Five — the United States, Britain, Canada, France and Japan — committed at least $4.2 billion to new enrichment investments in 2023.3
For power markets, SMRs occupy a specific niche: each unit delivers around 300 MW or less, less than a quarter the output of a large conventional plant at 550 to 1,500 MW, but with a footprint and construction timeline that utilities say is more manageable. The Darlington project will establish whether those claims survive contact with actual construction schedules. A comparable large-scale project in France reportedly cost around $35 billion — more than double its initial estimate — and finished seven years late.2,3
The Robinson Unit 2 plant in South Carolina, a 759 MW conventional reactor, was approved under new accelerated federal timelines to run until 2050, signalling that US regulators are treating existing nuclear as a bridge asset while the SMR pipeline develops. That parallel approach — extending old reactors and building new formats — reflects the gap between nuclear's theoretical capacity additions and the pace at which new build can realistically proceed.4
Argentina is developing its own SMR programme, though the Darlington project's claim on Western precedence holds: Argentina's CAREM-25 is a 30 MW prototype rather than a grid-scale commercial unit. The Canadian project's 35-metre shaft and steel-and-concrete pour represent the point at which the Western SMR industry shifts from regulatory licences and investment models to tested construction methods and actual delivery timelines.
Uranium spot and term prices, the pace of US enrichment capacity additions, and Darlington's first concrete-to-grid timeline are the near-term signals that will determine whether Goldman's 17% upside to uranium demand proves conservative or optimistic.5