2026 will be a busy year for Cameco and parter company Westinghouse if they hope to meet goals set in 2025. 

Cameco’s President and COO Grant Isaac spoke at an energy and utilities conference in Florida Wednesday morning. He says 2025 saw the companies sign a notable, $80 billion deal with the US government to start construction on 8-10 new reactors by 2030.  This timeline means sites will need to be identified, and parts will need to be ordered sometime this year. 

Looking ahead, he expects even more growth, especially overseas. He says Poland and Bulgaria have also chosen to move forward with 8 total AP-1000s, which are reactors designed and sold by Westinghouse. 

“Poland wants to build six of them. The first three have been site selected. Bulgaria wants to build two.” Isaac says both countries are quickly progressing through the engineering and design processes.

Meanwhile Canada, a country that’s fully integrated in CANDU Reactors, has a choice to make. 

“And it’s a pretty stark choice. If it (Canada) wants to build gigawatt scale reactors and it wants to deploy them right now, it has to go with the AP-1000, because there is no generation three CANDU reactor.”

Alternatively, if Canada wanted to wait to develop one, he says it would probably take 20 years to complete both design and construction.