Updated November 2025

See below for the original 2024 post reporting $1.6 Billion in funding for Atomic Energy of Canada.

In June of 2025, the North Renfrew Times reported that AECL funding topped $1.9 B in 2025. https://northrenfrewtimes.ca/news/aecl-funding-tops-1-9-billion/

Most of this funding goes to the multinational consortium under the GoCo contract, but it is difficult to determine exactly how much. AECL itself is a small organization; privatization by the Harper government in 2015 reduced its staff complement from several thousand to just 57 employees. According to a recent financial statement from AECL the organization’s annual operating costs are under $100 million therefore it seems reasonable to conclude that the multinational consortium’s contract with the Government of Canada is now worth in excess of $1.5 billion annually, up from about $400 million in 2016.

The most recent publicly reported value for the GoCo contract was in this Globe and Mail article which reported that the GoCo contract to operate Canadian Nuclear Laboratories is worth about $1.2 billion annually. 

AECL to get almost $1.6B

March 6, 2024

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Another year, another record level of funding for Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd.

AECL will receive almost $1.6 billion in funding next year, to support both decommissioning and development at the Chalk River Laboratories, according to the federal government’s main spending estimates, published last week.

Total funding for AECL will be $1.591 billion for the fiscal year 2024-25, which begins April 1.

The funding is broken down into two components: $1.196 billion for “nuclear decommissioning and radioactive waste management” and $394.8 million for “nuclear laboratories.”

The money allocated to the laboratories includes $235.8 million in operating funding and $159 million for capital projects.

This is the ninth year in a row that funding for AECL, CNL and Chalk River has remained at unprecedented levels.

Federal funding for AECL was approved at $1.541 billion this year, up from $1.326 billion in 2022-23.

Meanwhile, funding beyond this year seems less certain.

The company’s latest five-year corporate plan notes that current rates of funding are only approved until the end of the current GoCo (government owned, contractor operated) contract for CNL in September 2025…

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