Alliance asks province to abandon plans

The Observer
April 23, 2009
Dan McCaffery 
 

Alliance asks province to abandon plans

The head of the Ontario Clean Air Alliance is calling on the provincial government to abandon plans to build two new nuclear reactors.

Speaking in Sarnia at an Earth Day event Wednesday, Jack Gibbons said Environment Minister George Smitherman plans to sign a deal on June 20 that will add two new reactors to the Darlington nuclear station. The move, he added, will lock the province into another 60 years of nuclear energy use.

Calling nuclear power a "1950s solution," he said the province should strive instead for a 100 per cent "green electricity grid by 2027."

That goal can be achieved, he said, by relying more on wind, solar, water and biomass power, as well as through better use of natural gas.

He also called for the more efficient use of energy, saying Ontario's electricity consumption per person is 50 per cent higher than that of New York state.

Gibbons said the province is leaning toward the creation of more nuclear power because the nuclear industry has provided it with unrealistic price estimates for the new reactors.

That price has been estimated at $26 billion, but Gibbons said "every nuclear project in the history of Ontario has been late and way over budget."

He's calling for an amendment to the Green Energy Act that would make it illegal for nuclear power companies to pass their overruns off on consumers. If that happens, "It would mean no more nuclear plants would ever be built in Ontario."

And he urged Sarnia-Lambton MPP Bob Bailey, a Progressive Conservative, to lead the way. Bailey, he said, is one of only a handful of MPPs serving on the general committee on government, which has the power to propose such an amendment.

However, the amendment needs to be passed quickly, or the proposed new reactors will go ahead, he said.