Tom Adams
Energy Probe
April 10, 2001

Nuclear power is back. Mike Harris has played into the hands of the pro-nuclear lobby by stopping the emergence of a competitive market. As Harris told reporters on the day the government announced it was delaying competition indefinitely, he is resurrecting the Pickering nuclear reactors to keep the lights on in the province. Without competition, the nuclear industry is back in the driver’s seat.

The nuclear lobby knows it cannot compete against green technologies like high-efficiency cogeneration. Whenever monopolies are broken up and the best technology allowed to win, green technologies have always come out the overwhelming victor. Not once, anywhere in the world, has a company -public or private -built a nuclear power plant over a green technology in an open marketplace. And for good reason. A nuclear plant costs about 10 times as much to build as a cogeneration plant of equal size, and three times as much as its energy equivalent in windmills. In fact, according to the Wall Street Journal, windmills have become economically viable, able to compete without the need for government subsidies.

Ontario Hydro’s old guard and other nuclear proponents spooked the Harris government into believing that Ontario could face California-style blackouts if Ontario opened the door to competition. Competition is risky, nuclear proponents claim, while nuclear plants are safe. The truth is just the opposite: Because Ontario is not moving to competition quickly, we are vulnerable to blackouts as never before.

When companies offering cleaner power realized the Harris government could not be trusted to let them compete on a level playing field, most began to abandon their plans to build new plants. About 85% of the independent power producers cleaner facilities a total of six Pickering-sized reactors worth of power have been derailed, shelved or cancelled. Only one cogeneration plant is being built and even this was scaled back after Harris gave three of its potential customers -corporate giants Amoco, Sunoco, and Imperial a sweetheart deal to keep them in the monopoly fold. Had the government not blocked an open marketplace, enough new green power plants would have been built to give Ontario a large energy surplus.

Instead, we are flirting with disaster. Our nuclear reactors are unreliable they are often and unpredictably down for repairs. Twice in the last two years, parts of Ontario suffered brownouts a fact the government doesn’t publicize.

The reconstruction of nuclear plants is also unreliable. In 1998, the government predicted that we’d have a Pickering reactor ready for reuse by the summer of 2000. It’s still undergoing repairs. Now the government predicts this reactor will be ready in 2002. The last time Hydro refurbished Pickering reactors in 1983 the job ended up taking more than five years. The last time Hydro built a new nuclear plant the Darlington complex the project came in 10 years late.

As independent investors flee the province, only the government is left to build the plants we need. But the old guard in Ontario still runs the show and is almost all pro-nuclear. That’s why the Ontario government continues to spend billions trying to bring back old nuclear plants when green technology costs less and is faster to build.

Mike Harris thinks he has no alternative but to throw in our lot with the nuclear industry but he’s wrong. If he truly believes in competition, he can break up the power monopoly that still grips this province and let the best technology win.

As the attached editorial from the Globe and Mail.  notes, there is a right way and a wrong way to bring competition to the electricity business. When it’s been done the right way as in Australia, the United Kingdom and parts of the U.S. both consumers and the environment have benefited. And the lights have stayed on.

Thanks in good part to our efforts since the California crisis began, this message is starting to be understood in Ontario. Many in government, industry and the media now realize that going back to a reliance on nuclear power represents the biggest threat to Ontario’s energy future.he next few months will be critical in determining where Ontario goes. Will it be to an insecure future dominated by nuclear power? Or to a future of clean, green technology? With your generous help, now, at this critical time in our province’s history, we will redouble our efforts for a safe energy future.