Ontario’s nuclear costs revealed: now that’s a price hike

A news story this week revealed that the cost of new nuclear plants for the Darlington site near Toronto has escalated to $26 billion from an initial government estimate of $6 billion.

Greenpeace nuclear campaigner Shawn-Patrick Stensil has been telling the government this for months. In November, he issued a news release and report that said nuclear costs were exploding and at least double what the McGuinty was consistently telling the public.

This scale of the price hike is staggering. The $26 billion costs submitted by the favoured bidder, Atomic Energy of Canada (AECL), for a never-built, prototype reactor, is the same figure that the McGuinty government said just a few years ago would be the cost for its entire nuclear plan, including the reconstruction of three nuclear stations with 12 reactors as well as two new reactors.

The only good news lately on the Ontario nuclear front was the recent announcement that the McGuinty government is suspending its purchase of new reactors because of the shocking costs. The government appeared to be admitting nuclear plants are unaffordable. But actually, it was looking for a handout from the Harper government so it can still move ahead with its nuclear plan.

This attempt by the McGuinty government to pass the buck onto the federal taxpayer is pure irresponsibility. Taxpayers from Nunavut to Newfoundland shouldn’t have to help buy Ontario overpriced reactors we don't need.

It is time for the McGuinty government to abandon the economic folly of nuclear reactors. Ontario’s own, powerful new Green Energy Act could be a key tool for encouraging the development of the energy future the province can have and needs. That’s if the government ends its commitment to building nuclear stations, a commitment that blocks the growth of green energy. 

Green energy technologies—conservation, renewables and local generation—are proven technologies, quick-to-build and affordable. For example, Germany generated as much renewable electricity last year as all of the nuclear reactors in Ontario. For $ 26 billion Ontario could build double the amount of green generation provided by the two expensive prototype reactors.

What should the Ontario government do?

Replace the aging Pickering nuclear reactors with proven green energy when they go off line in 2014 instead of wasting money on expensive and untested reactors. The electricity produced at Pickering must be replaced. Doing so with green energy could create 90,000 new jobs in a clean energy sector.