Quick Facts: Gentilly-2

• Gentilly-2 produces less than three per cent of Quebec’s electricity.
• Hydro Québec signed a deal with the federal government in 1973 to build Gentilly-2 a CANDU 6 design developed by Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL) in the early 1970s.
• Gentilly-2’s construction costs quadrupled to $1.36 million from $302 million—a billion dollar cost over-run.
• The Québec government declared a moratorium on nuclear power plant construction in 1978.
• Hydro-Quebec’s estimate for rebuilding Gentilly-2 has nearly doubled to $1.5 billion from $845 million.
• Gentilly-2 has already produced over 2,500 tonnes of high-level radioactive waste that must be isolated from the environment for a million years.
• Hydro-Quebec has not developed a long-term storage facility for radioactive waste, even though the reactor has operated for almost 30 years.
• In 1994, the environmental agency the Bureau d’audiences publiques sur l’environnement (BAPE) called on Hydro-Quebec to releasing all economic and technical studies for rebuilding Gentilly-2. Hydro-Quebec has not released this information.
• In 2005, BAPE called on Hydro-Quebec to propose a socially acceptable plan for managing its highly toxic radioactive waste. Hydro-Quebec has not released a proposal.
• The Gentilly-2 design predates the September 11th terrorist attack on the World Trade Centre. The design would not withstand such an attack.
• Since September 11th international regulators require new nuclear stations to be more able to withstand terrorist attacks. Gentilly-2 would not meet these standards.
• Gentilly-2 shares an inherent design flaw with the reactor that failed at Chernobyl. The design flaw— "the positive void coefficient"— can lead to an explosive pulse of power. International regulations ban the Gentilly-2 flaw in new reactors.
• Ontario abandoned plans to build a CANDU 6 reactor because of the need for extensive design changes to meet even the weak standards that govern nuclear reactor design in Canada.
• Greenpeace released a commissioned report by a nuclear safety expert in June 2008 that says none of the three reactors Ontario is considering should be licensed because of design flaws.
• The design for Gentilly-2 does not meet the flawed standards of the reactors Ontario is considering.

For more information, please contact:

Brian Blomme, Media and Public Relations Officer, (416) 930-9055