Dalton McGuinty is no different from any politician. He only wants the same thing as Gordon Brown, John McCain, Nicolas Sarkozy, Silvio Berlusconi and Albanian Prime Minister Sali Berisha.
They all want power, yes. But not just any kind. Nuclear is their preferred choice.
George Bush is keen, too, even if he can't pronounce it. China, where “new” is done at Western levels times 10, is a convert. Saskatchewan and Alberta might be next. Even Angela Merkel is musing about reversing a deal worked out by her predecessor to close all of Germany's existing reactors by 2020.
When mainstream leaders are no longer scared by the issue that made the German Greens the first of their ilk to wield real political power 30 years ago, you know you've entered a new nuclear age.
It will make the last one look like an appetizer. “We talked about the need to start planning and building more than 1,000 nuclear plants in the world,” Mr. Berlusconi revealed at this week's G8 summit in Japan.
Why do we have this funny feeling that nuclear power is the best idea since crop-based biofuels?
While all politicians have domestic reasons (or constraints) leading them to push for more nuclear power – Mr. Sarkozy has a “national champion” riding on the issue – they all tell us more reactors are part of the solution to climate change.
Okay, so nuclear plants don't produce greenhouse gas emissions. And their other advantages are what, exactly?
Well before any of the planned nuclear plants get built – but possibly long enough after it will be too late to stop them from going up – the economics and logistics of wind energy, solar power and carbon capture will have evolved favourably enough to have changed the game.
“Within three to seven years, unsubsidized solar power could cost no more to end customers in many markets, such as California and Italy, than electricity generated by fossil fuels or by renewable alternatives to solar,” according to an article in the June issue of The McKinsey Quarterly.
So why bet on a horse – nuclear power – that eats budgets the way Homer Simpson downs doughnuts, and leaves behind the most deadly waste known to man – waste for which there is still no permanent disposal solution?
It's easy to understand why Mr. Sarkozy would. France has staked its energy present – it derives 77 per cent of its electricity from nuclear power – and its future on splitting the atom. It has also built an entire industrial policy on the idea. State-owned Areva is the world leader in nuclear energy – and the manufacturing of the components needed to produce it. Mr. Sarkozy will stop at nothing to promote nuclear power globally, sometimes in the most questionable of places, such as Libya and Algeria.
He's even got Ontario in his sights. The McGuinty government announced last month that it will soon award a contract to build two new reactors at Ontario Power Generation's Darlington site. Areva is up against Atomic Energy of Canada, which sometimes looks as if it has Homer himself at the control panels, and Japanese-owned Westinghouse.
So far, Ontario has not provided an updated estimate of the $26-billion it predicted in 2006 it would cost to build the new reactors and refurbish existing ones. All that's certain now is that the $20-billion in so-called stranded debt that Ontario had left over in 1999 from the last nuclear age (1966-1993) will look like pocket change if Mr. McGuinty's current plan is realized.
It's not Mr. McGuinty's fault. That great sucking sound you hear is proposed or in-the-works nuclear plants blowing their budgets everywhere. Areva's first EPR project, in Finland, is two years behind schedule and at least $1.5-billion over budget. Its second, in France's Normandy region, is headed in the same direction, after construction stalled for several weeks recently.
It's not just the skyrocketing price of basic materials, such as concrete and steel, that's driving costs upward. So-called third generation reactors – such Areva's EPR and Atomic Energy's ACR-1000 – are still works in progress. And the two decades during which nuclear power faced desert-like prospects has left the industry grappling with a severe shortage of skilled workers.
In the United States, the escalating cost of nuclear power has led Warren Buffet to reconsider the idea. In January, Berkshire Hathaway-owned MidAmerican Energy Holdings suspended plans to build a nuclear plant in Idaho saying it “does not make economic sense.” Still, Congress is offering loan guarantees and tax credits worth billions to electricity providers that take the nuclear plunge. If that doesn't work, Areva's running a television ad using the 1980 disco hit Funky Town to get North Americans to buy into a new nuclear age.
The ad may make some nostalgic, but it only reminds us that nuclear power, like our disco phase, may be a memory best kept repressed.