Author Archives: Other News Sources

The only surprise is that people are so shocked by yesterday’s damning report on the Pickering nuclear station.

As far back as 1916, experts issued warnings about the potential for huge cost overruns and management troubles at the crown corporation that generates most of Ontario’s electricity.

Repairs to four units at Pickering will cost about $4 billion instead of the $780 million originally forecast, and the job may not be completed until 2008 – six years behind schedule, says the report, by former federal energy minister Jake Epp.
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 Toronto: The Liberal government is looking into lucrative bonuses paid to three top executives at Ontario Power Generation who were fired Thursday after a report blamed them for massive cost overruns in rebuilding Canada’s largest and oldest nuclear plant.

"We’re going to do something about it," Energy Minister Dwight Duncan said Friday, the day after the government fired chief executive Ron Osborne, chief operating officer Graham Brown and chairman William Farlinger.
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A pair of government agencies snarled at each other yesterday as a Canada-U.S. task force probing the August blackout held a public forum.

Hydro One, which owns most of Ontario’s long-distance transmission lines, and the Independent Electricity Market Operator (IMO) clashed over who should be responsible for ensuring the reliability of Ontario’s power system.

Only nine speakers took the floor during a session lasting two hours, including a break.
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Hot days ahead and a desire to keep cool could spell trouble for the province’s electricity system.

Ontario Power Generation said yesterday its two Pickering A nuclear units, which have been down for unplanned maintenance for a month, will now be out of service for most of the summer.
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With Ontario on the brink of an energy supply squeeze, and some of its aging nuclear plants facing an uncertain future, moves are under way in the province, Canada’s most populous, to build the first nuclear reactor in North America in more than two decades.

Memories of last August’s power blackout, which was felt in a wide swath of southern Ontario as well as in the Northeast and Midwest of the United States, have only increased pressure for the province to become more self-sufficient.
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Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. and its partners are proposing to build a new-design nuclear plant in Virginia and expect to receive up to $250 million (U.S.) in funding from the U.S. government, AECL chief executive Robert Van Adel says.

The money will help fund the consortium as it moves through a five- to six-year process to license the AECL technology in the United States, Van Adel said in an interview.
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Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. says it will concentrate on developing a larger version of its next-generation nuclear reactor after being knocked out of a crucial race to have its technology licensed in the U.S.

AECL was dealt a heavy blow Friday by Dominion Resources Inc., which decided not to use AECL technology in its pursuit of a licence for a new Virginia nuclear power station.
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Tom Adams is once again completely and utterly wrong in his Jan. 14 rant (New Nuke Sinkholes). I certainly welcome a dialogue with our industry critics, but it is not helpful when those critics simply refuse to acknowledge the facts. The facts are that:

# AECL has shared the risk with the private sector via fixed-price contracts (e.g. 50%) and has used this model in delivering successful projects over the past decade.

# AECL has completed six CANDU power projects in three countries over the past decade – all on time and on budget.
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Toronto: Environmentalists are promising to mount a massive opposition campaign if the Ontario government commissions new nuclear-powered electricity generation stations.

"The construction of a new nuclear plant in Ontario would be the environmental battle of the millennium," David Martin, energy co-ordinator for Greenpeace Canada, said yesterday.
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