Canadian Press
Toronto Sun
April 20, 2006

Nuclear power may be the best option to fulfil Ontario’s future electricity needs despite its obvious risks, Premier Dalton McGuinty said yesterday.

"That’s an issue," McGuinty said of fears associated with nuclear power, including the devastating Chernobyl accident in 1986 that led to thousands of deaths.

"But I think we should look at our particular history in this country," McGuinty said, noting that there have been no major nuclear accidents in Ontario, where reactors have operated for more than two decades.

Next week marks the 20th anniversary of the Chernobyl meltdown. The catastrophe killed thousands of people, mostly in Russia.

McGuinty’s government is about to issue a formal response to recommendations in December that called for $40 billion in nuclear refurbishments and expansion over the next 20 years.

The premier denied he’s waiting until after the Chernobyl anniversary to respond.

Critics say there have been some problems at Ontario’s nuclear stations, including incidents at the Pickering station in 1983 and 1991.

‘Near misses’

Industry observer Tom Adams of Energy Probe called those incidents "near misses" that should deter governments from considering nuclear energy as an option.

And this week a Greenpeace report predicted the fallout from Chernobyl was grossly underestimated.

The report predicts that 270,000 cancers will have been caused by Chernobyl, 93,000 of them fatal. The report also notes that there have been 60,000 additional deaths in Russia in the last 15 years due to the Chernobyl accident, and that the total death toll for Ukraine and Belarus is another 140,000.

McGuinty acknowledged nuclear energy isn’t without its problems. "The downside is, of course, that it does produce nuclear waste. The upside is we can contain it . The downside, again, is we’ve got to contain it for a thousand years," he said.