The Globe and Mail reports in its Saturday edition that in the 1970s and '80s, Montreal's AtkinsRéalis, the former SNC-Lavalin and owner of Candu nuclear technology, captured 33, or about 5 per cent, of the global nuclear reactor market of around 600. The Globe's Eric Reguly quotes AtkinsRéalis boss Ian Edwards saying: "Most of these 600 reactors are near the end of their lives and need replacing. But the world needs double the amount of baseload electricity. So there is probably a market for 1,200 reactors. That's a multitrillion-dollar market. If Candu does 5 per cent again, that's 50 to 60 reactors." A single large nuclear reactor costs $10-billion, so the math suggests that AtkinsRéalis's potential revenues could be $600-billion. "This is a real opportunity for Canada and AtkinsRéalis, obviously, in a net-zero world," he says. The last Candu reactor sold in Canada went into service in 1993; the last one to go into service abroad was Romania's Cernadova-2 reactor, in 2007. Mr. Edwards insists Candu is not an orphan despite its history of cost overruns and lavish government subsidies under its old guise as part of Atomic Energy of Canada, the Crown corporation that happily punted Candu to SNC for a pittance in 2011.