When Tim Hodgson, Canada’s natural resources minister, announced the federal government’s plan to dramatically expand the nuclear energy industry, he cited a project in the U.K. as a model.

That plant, Sizewell C on the Suffolk coast of England, is set to cost 38.2 billion pounds ($72.3 billion Cdn). But a key detail is that private investors are taking a 55 per cent stake in the project by sharing the construction costs.

Hodgson wants to emulate that model to achieve his government’s lofty target of building up to 10 new reactors in Canada.