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Ontario unveils nuclear plant expansion plans
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CTV.ca News Staff
Date: Mon. Jun. 16 2008 7:08 PM ET
Ontario will build its first new nuclear reactor in 15 years at the existing, provincially-owned Darlington site east of Toronto on Lake Ontario.
Darlington, operated by Ontario Power Generation, won out over the privately-owned Bruce nuclear plant on Lake Huron near Kincardine. The Bruce site lands are leased from the province on a long-term basis.
The new Darlington plant will house two separate units.
Energy Minister Gerry Phillips had previously said that the limited transmission capacity from the Bruce area gave Darlington an edge.
Darlington is in Durham region, which is reeling from the loss of thousands of high-paying manufacturing jobs at General Motors auto plants in Oshawa.
"Hallelujah," Oshawa Mayor John Gray told CTV Toronto on Monday. "We need good news."
Gray said he expects the plant to bring hundreds of spin-off jobs and new residents to the community. The project is also good news for Durham College, which has a nuclear engineer training program, Gray said.
Both communities had been aggressively lobbying to host the projects.
Nuclear Power
Canada has 18 active reactors, with 16 in Ontario. In 2006, those 18 reactors provided 15.5 per cent of the country's electricity. There are five nuclear power plant sites -- three in Ontario, one in Quebec (Gentilly-2 plant outside Trois-Rivieres) and one in New Brunswick (Point Lepreau).
--Government of Ontario
However, Infrastructure Ontario said in a news release issued Monday that "the Ontario government also reaffirmed the importance of the Bruce Power nuclear site to Ontario's overall electricity plan."
CTV Toronto reported that up to four other nuclear units will be either built or refurbished at the Bruce plant. The exact mix has not yet been determined.
Infrastructure Ontario said the Darlington project will lead to the creation of 3,500 direct construction and engineering jobs between 2012 and 2018.
Three companies have emerged as "invited respondents":
- AREVA NP
- Atomic Energy of Canada Limited
- Westinghouse Electric Company
The government said there would be three key areas of evaluation for the company's bids:
- Lifetime cost of power
- Ability to meet Ontario's timetable to bring new supply on line in 2018
- Level of investment in Ontario
"If they don't deliver on their part of the contract, there will be penalties built into it," Phillips said Monday.
A supplier is to be chosen in November.
Ontario's plan is to get 14,000 megawatts (MW) of electricity from the nuclear sector, with Bruce continuing to supply 6,300 MW.
Ontario can currently meet a peak load of just under 25,000 MW. The province wants to cut peak demand by 2,700 MW by 2010.
The estimated cost of this new nuclear capacity is $26 billion.
When Darlington was built, it became a cost-overrun nightmare. Ontario NDP energy critic Peter Tabuns warned the same might happen again, and consumers will bear the cost.
"I have no idea what the two reactors will cost. I have no idea. The only thing that's clear to me is they estimated $26 billion for the cost of nuclear, and I think it's entirely reasonable to say that the cost will come in double (that)," he told reporters Monday.
John Yakabuski, energy critic for the provincial Progressive Conservatives, said the announcement came four years too late. As a result, Ontario is heading towards power supply troubles, he claimed.
Murray Elston of the Canadian Nuclear Association, an industry lobby group, said changes in construction techniques since the completion of Darlington 15 years ago should help keep costs under control.
All three competitors have recently completed reactors that were on time and on budget, he told CTV Newsnet.
"I think Mr. Tabuns and others will be very disappointed if they expect the cost overruns that they have speculated about," Elston said.
With files from CTV Toronto's Paul Bliss, Dana Levenson and The Canadian Press
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I applaud the budget, even though Health Care and education may stay unscathed. Sadly this cannot last and I worry to later this year where cuts will become enviable. If anything, this provides the Wildrose Alliance plenty of ammo when an election is called.
Please Add Comments( )
Uranium the the new "gold rush"
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Karen J Cao
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nobody wants to talk about the inconvenience of energy reduction, demand control etc. the OPA is politically bias towards nuclear (look at their board & exec members), and can only manage to produce dismal targets for energy conservation and demand control
ontarians need political leadership for real change in environmental behaviour
Mark M
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Wayne
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When the power produced by these methods is suddenly reduced, some other source of power has be to able to be brought on quickly to replace it. Otherwise, brown-outs can occur and electrical customers get upset.
So something like nuclear energy or other "dirty" sources need to be available to step in when the wind and solar sources aren't contributing much.
So there has to be a balance between the green and other energy supplies.
Steve
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Hans
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Nuclear is a great idea with an outrageous price tag. Ontario governments are not the wisest in this regard.
Electricity is the future, but must we suffer Ontario governments to get us there?
Suggestion: the govt. outline a plan of fiscal oversight monitored by an independent task force.
.
Col
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Maybe he read The Economist. That publication gave a book called `Small is Profitable` "Book of the Year" title a few years back (www.smallisprofitable.com). The book talks about how the world of electricity generation is going from a few large, monolithic plants to a large number of small plants spread out geographically. That is, electricity generation is to become `distributed` in the same way computing did. And this will happen because of technology and profit. Too bad for us Ontario tax-payers who have governments which talk about minimal interference with the market, but don`t walk that talk. If they had the guts to trust the market, we`d save a lot more money, reduce emissions and have a more secure electricy supply. Instead we`re going to have unreliable, expensive and dangerous nuclear plants that we`ll have to spend even more billions on to take down as they quickly become obselete.
C
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How about using the technology that Nikola Tesla invented almost a 100 years ago and that has been mostly repressed!Oh That's right! They can't enslave us and make money off of us if Tesla's "free energy" system is developed.
So it's business as usual, destroy the earth, enslave the people by forcing them to pay for every ressources they need to survive.
Nick J Boragina
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The only answer is a combo. We need not only more nuclear, not only cleaner coal, not only more power plants period, not only to invest in wind and solar, not only to conserve, but to do ALL of these and to do ALL of these WELL. We could build nuclear reactors as fast as we can, and even if we finished one a year (unrealistically fast) it will take us until 2020 just to break even (assuming we shut down the coal plants) and if you factor in increased demand, it will take us to 2035 to be where we should be today.
Anyone who tries to suggest that any one thing is the answer is just plain wrong. All of these are answers
Doug BC
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But I won't hold my breath waiting for the power. The enviro-nuts are surely going to hold this up for a couple of decades.We all know about the BANANA movement. Build Absolutely Nothing Again Near Anyone.
No drilling,no cutting,no damming,no mowing,no building,no mining.Hah.No living either.
And NOT ONE other solution from the enviro extremists that will actually work,and be built without using the entire GDP of the whole country,and generate electricity we can afford to pay for.
I still think we should be looking at a national strategy and east-west power lines.Of course that would mean our premiers would have to talk to each other.Not a likely scenario,I think.
L-P
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Ontario has grown exponentially over the last few decades and yet very little, if anything, has been done to meet growing demand.
asking for conservation is a neat and green idea but is not an answer.
Growth has been allowed to continue for too many years even though OPG was not able to fulfill demand. So now we are being asked to conserve. I think not! Plus, as noted above, solar and wind energy does not come close to supplying the equivalent to hydro dddams and nuclear. It's time we either build more huge stations and dams or we tell people to stop coming here. Take your pick people.
ARJAY
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Of course environmentalists are silent about nuclear, because it's preferable to burning coal or gas and oil. But if people had listened to environmentalists 30 yeas ago after the first oil crisis, developed alternative fuel and reduced demand, we wouldn't be forced to adopt nuclear to get us out of the current mess. It's just the best of several bad choices that we've been forced in to by right wing intransigence and denial. Now the right wingers are somehow vindicated about this? Give me a break!
ARJAY
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Actually Wayne the idea of both solar and wind energy is to dump power into the grid and share it across the continent, storing what is not used immediately. That way when the wind dies down or the sky is cloudy, we can still draw from places where conditions are better. :)
Ann
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RGP
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Think of all of the small rivers and streams that are to be diverted to smaller hydro generation plants, all of the new wind turbines that are already sprouting up along Lake Huron. Think of all of the NEW Transmission lines that have to be built. That power has to hit the grid somehow. Think of all of the GHG's created by the smaller natural gas plants (using up the already decreasing supplies).
What is needed is a cohesive plan that incorporates the removal of older technologies (old coal plants for new clean coal, nuclear plants and clean incineration technologies to reduce our need for new landfill sites), supplemented by localized green technologies (wind/solar/hydro) which will MINIMIZE natural effects rather than allow every Joe Six-pack to start diverting every stream that runs down a hill across his farm.
PBW
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I guess the other shoe has fallen. But I still don't hear the sound of environmentalists telling us nuclear is clean. . .
House
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1. Nuclear IS repliable. Understand 'reliability' before commenting on such a matter.
2. Huge cost over-runs at Darlington during its development, was largely attributed to GOVERNMENT interference. How do we not know this yet??
3. Warren Buffet did not invest in the proposed plant in CO, ONLY. He did NOT refuse to invest in Nuclear altogether.
4. Since when is Wind and Solar a reliable form of energy production? And thank you to the people who were wise enough to understand that wind and solar farms built large enough to meet demand of this magnitude, would have a whole lot of impact on the environment. Look at the land mass required (for wind or solar) to meet the capacity of one of Darlington's nuclear units. Please explain to me how that is better for the environment? Nevermind the life cycle of solar panels and the detrimental gases that would produce, nor the number of birds that die every year from the FEW wind turbines we DO have in Ontario. It's not that cut and dry, Greenpeace.
5. Nuclear is economically risky, yes; but it IS affordable, reliable, proven and the way many other countries are going. They cant all be so wrong, as some of you claim Ontario is.
6. There's a lot of houses outside S. Ont that require new doors and windows. Its not just S. Ontario wasting energy. We all are, so accept some responsibility and stop passing the buck.
G-man
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David fm NS
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Jon Davidson, Barrie, Ontario .
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Rob
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IAN
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C
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Nuclear's the way to go.
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John Palermo
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Sending power across the continent is wasteful. Electricity is lost in the transmission. The further the distance the more that is lost. Especially for low yielding alternative energy supplies, they are best kept closest to the point of use.
Uranium is the best interim choice.
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Eric
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Nick Ottawa
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Nuclear is clean, safe and reliable. Unless someone else has other options that equivalent to nuclear energy, I don't understand what the big deal is. The environmentalists say you can do this and that, but even then, sometimes more power is needed on the whole. I do what I can to conserve, but there are still 11 million+ other people in this province, and it's still getting bigger. I say go for it, we need to look at our needs now and for the future...
And yes, I do have my own electricity bill to pay.
Mark
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ARJAY
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Sorry, but the moratorium on nuclear didn't happen because of environmentalists' concerns over the sustainability of nuclear power. It happened because of Three Mile and Cherynobl, where the immediate impact of meltdown became evident even to the right wing. If we had listened to the environmentalists, we would have been actively developing cleaner, more sustainable alternative source of energy and conservation, and could have avoided the oil crisis, global warming, and building nuclear plants. But because we listened to Ronald Reagan, George Bush and the right wing, we find ourselves in this mess. Typically, the right wing wants to blame shift all of this onto the left, as if the left were the ones making energy policy over the last 30 years!
Look folks, no matter how you spin this, the fact is that our present way of living on the planet isn't sustainable because coal, oil, gas and nuclear are all ultimately non- renewable. Nor can we solve the energy and environmental problems by playing off one crisis against another. Arguing that we can't afford to protect the environment is an incredibly short-sighted response, because the costs of not fixing this are many times higher than the "savings". In the end, the only viable alternative to our present mess is to change the way we think and live. It's now a race against right- wing short sightedness, and sustainability for humanity. Pay me now or pay me later.
Mike
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Nick J Boragina
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you mention wind generation in ontario. As I said earlier, the "average" nuclear reactor (each "plant" has an "average" of 4) generates 750 MW of energy. From Ontario Power Generation's own website, the total wind and solar energy produced in Ontario is 7.009 MW. We have many coal plants, Nanticoke at 4GW (4000 MW) and Lambton and Lennox at 2GW. Both Pickerings (nuclear) total 3.5 GW while Darlington is 3.5 GW as well. Bruce, which is operated by a private company and not listed here, also generates between 3GW and 4GW.
Our only other source of power is hydro, and it's a big one. Niagara generates 2.3GW while Ottawa gives us 2.5 GW. We get an additional 2GW from various hydro sources in the north. The problem with these are that we've already tapped our hydro resouces, we cant easily just build more dams because we've already taken all the best locations. Where Hydro does come into play is when working in conjunction with Solar and Wind. You can use the power from a windy night, or a sunny quiet sunday afternoon that does not get used in the cities to pump water into an artifical lake; then when it's cloudy and the wind stops, open the gates and let that lake power hydro generators. In this way you can build a natural battery.
The more you know the more informed decisions you make and the more reasonable opinions you have. All this stuff is online if you look for it!
W. Merkley
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Geothermal is another alternative (Greenland, Iceland, Hawaii).....somehow the Big Boys of Uranium have sold themselves to Ontario and too many other parts of the world.
Then people have the audacity to whine about any country with nuclear bombs?
Sometimes the best sense goes over people's heads.
Nick J Boragina
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John A
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Anyone: Downside of a nuclear plant is the possibility of a bigger terrorist target. And of course it take forever to build one of these buggers.
Catherine Forks
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I have lived through years of only wood heat, coal came along, then oil, natural gas, and electricity.
Ontario remains one of the those provinces that must use nuclear energy to provide energy. Wind and solar cannot do it. It's that simple. We have already lost too much time.
SE
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Apparently nobody is aware at the moment that Germany is out to prove that you can run a country on solar power. Is anyabody aware of some big Oil Baron in Texas looking at Wind Power, (Albeit to turn a buck)
I lived near the Pickering Ont Plant when I was a kid, late seventies, was anybody informed there was a leak? No, the information came out years later. My problem is was do they do with the waste cause don't tell me there isn't any. I've worked in enough industrial plants to know there is always waste.
And as for using wind, or solar, there is a way of capturing the wind with out damaging wildlife, its called screens. And as for solar start researching what is out there. You would be surprized and man's ingenuity and disgusted by the industrialist reaction.
We need the energy. And unfortunately the powers at be, will always look to industrialist way.
Dale Wilson
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When you've exhausted the energy potential of the fuel, you put it right back in the ground where you found it originally, its been there for hundreds of millions of years and it can stay there for hundreds of millions more.
fitzz
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The creation of highly radioactive by-product, which will remain dangerous for many years will give future generations something to worry about. And why not? We're entitled to our "live better electrically" lifestyle, surely. We owe the future NOTHING!
Reg Moore
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We need to Stop making power plants and start using Magnetic motor technology. It's now or never. Look on youtube. Anyone can make them. I will make a company that will produce them for the public. They will power your home and vechicle with no emissions and no cost for the power. No toxic waste. What do you think? I also have plans for removing the toxic waste and already existing pollution. The time is now people. Take your power back. Theres no time to wait.
Nick Ottawa
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I forget which American airport (I think Denver) just put in solar panels to power the airport. It's an area the size of 3 football fields... How much land do you need to power a city then? Or an entire province.... Think of it.
Simple Numbers
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After all is said & (not) done, there is only one reason why we have all of our problems and once again it has to do with simple numbers: OVERPOPULATION. Until we control population growth, change the foundation of our (now worldwide) economic structure, and change technology itself, we're ALL dreaming on the way to self-destruction.
Nick Ottawa
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The nation’s fifth-busiest airport has announced plans for a 2 megawatt solar energy system to generate 3.5 million kilowatt hours of clean energy each year – about half the power needed to run the airport’s terminal-connecting underground train system.
9800 solar panels covering 7.5 acres... And can only provide half the power to run the underground trains... This system is now in use. Good idea, but not enough to meet the needs of all of society...
Ki-Som
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Dale Wilson
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Chernobyl was a horrible situation that resulted from a bad reactor design that was operated by unqualified individuals that were operating outside of strict rules of operation. Maybe you don't but I trust the folks at AEC and the various regulatory agencies to make the right decisions to avoid the situation here. This is Canada in 2008, not the USSR in the mid 80's.
As for Three Mile Island, while I admire Meryl Streep as an actress, lets keep in mind that exactly ZERO people were harmed in what was an example of rules and protocols working exactly as they were supposed to.
Edward T.
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Currently the waste (spent uranium fuel) is kept in large holding pools that look like large indoor swimming pools. I know for Pickering nuclear, they are at about 1/2 storage capacity and that is all the fuel used from present to way back in the 60's. So my guess is when they fill up, which will still be in 20 years out, they just find a larger place to put the spent uranium. Physically, the size of spent uranium is no big deal. It is the transporting that is of concern.
Linda in Vancouver
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We will have to make compromises unless overcrowded countries stop making babies.
Solar and wind power are expensive,and not reliable enough.They do allow BC to store water in hyro dams when the sun is shining,or the wind blowing.But not reliable enough to provide "hard" power.
One thing we should be doing,is setting a national goal for Canada to be energy independent,because one thing is certain,no matter how much oil we find,coal we mine,or electricity we generate,it will ALL be sucked out of here by bigger countries with massive populations and no pollution standards at all.
We have the resources we need,and energy independence would be a huge competetive advantage and an incentive for companies looking for places to manufacture products.
But we will need hydro and nuclear,with solar and wind as supplements.For the fear mongers,there are MANY nuclear plants all over the world which have been working very well,for a very long time.
Denise
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Kevin Storr
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DARREN CECCHETTO
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Matty
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Raul S. Lopez, P. Eng.
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The Crown-owned nuclear generating stations are operated by a private sector consortium (Bruce Power) under a lease-operate arrangement with the province of Ontario.
Tim
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north bc
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Ted in Toronto
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Having spend over 15 years living within 20 kms from the current Bruce site, I know that those folks are very dedicated to the quality efficiency of their work. Also the communities surrounding the site thoroughly support it and Bruce Power Corp.
The GM employees would love living there as well. Many of those now at the Bruce came from the GTA. Now thousands are retiring there!
gilles
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