Nuclear is a recipe for failure

In the 1950s, people believed that nuclear power was a miracle solution that would keep our lights on at little or no cost. They couldn’t have been more wrong. It turned out that highly complex nuclear plants, with all their safety and radioactive waste concerns, were extremely expensive to build and operate. Ontario has been no exception to this rule: Huge cost overruns on nuclear projects essentially bankrupted the old Ontario Hydro. It was taxpayers and electricity ratepayers in Ontario who absorbed the huge debts rung up on these projects through “debt retirement charges” and other measures that pushed up electricity rates.

• We don’t need a new nuclear reactor in the GTA
• The benefits of immediately decommissioning the Pickering Nuclear Station – from safety to jobs
• Give Pickering back its waterfront!
• A Fukushima-scale nuclear accident at Pickering could leave thousands homeless
• Nuclear industry still has no long-term solution for its radioactive waste

All we need to do is look at the electricity rates paid by our neighbours in Quebec and Manitoba to see how Ontario’s big bet on nuclear has left us with unnecessarily high electricity rates. Ontario’s residential electricity rate is 50% higher than Manitoba’s and 90% higher than Quebec’s. And its only going to get worse.

Right now, Ontario Power Generation (OPG) is in the midst of spending billions of dollars on rebuilding aging reactors (our reactors have never met operational promises either) at the Darlington Nuclear Station. OPG has acknowledged that it will need to charge 13.7 cents per kWh for power from these reactors to pay for this expensive rebuild. Compare that to the 5 cents per kWh Quebec wants to charge us for clean waterpower or the continually dropping costs for wind and solar power that are now ranging between 7-8 cents per kWh.

The Pickering Nuclear Station is located even closer to millions of people and it has recently been revealed that North America’s third oldest nuclear plant is operating without accurate information on the safety of its critically important pressure tube system. Pickering must be shut down until Ontario Power Generation can prove it is safe to operate a plant well past its design lifetime.

Having failed to meet its promise and with costs only rising, nuclear technology is in decline worldwide and hype about new smaller reactors is just that – hype. These are nothing more than unproven paper concepts that risk taking us off on another costly diversion when we have plenty of safer and more cost-effective options available right now.

We need two things to deal with rapidly worsening climate change: speed and impact. Nuclear power can deliver neither.

First nuclear plants take a long time to plan and build. Getting a nuclear plant built in a decade is considered an accomplishment. Compare that to the weeks or months it takes to erect a wind turbine or deploy solar panels. The one thing new nuclear projects are known for is costly delays and problems. We have waited far too long to take effective action on climate change. We simply can’t afford to wait for snail-like nuclear projects to address the problem.

The second big problem with nuclear as a climate solution is cost. Nuclear is now the highest cost ways to keep our lights on, which is why nuclear plants are either closing or begging for subsidies worldwide. We get far less “bang for our buck” from nuclear than from renewable energy or energy efficiency when it comes to reducing climate pollution. With less than a decade left to slash emissions and avoid the worst impacts of climate change, betting on slow, expensive and often unreliable nuclear technology is not the answer.

Now OPG is proposing to build 4 new reactors at the Darlington Nuclear Station in the GTA. Power from this reactor will cost an astronomical 24.4 cents per kilowatt hour (kWh). This makes no sense at a time when solar and wind projects are delivering power for 7-8 cents per kWh, and Quebec is offering to sell us waterpower at 5 cents per kWh. As well, OPG is planning to use untested technology that only exists on paper – there are no examples of this technology in commercial operation anywhere. And, of course, because we have no long-term storage solutions in place for the radioactive waste this reactor will continue to produce, its waste will continue to be stored in temporary facilities on the shore of Lake Ontario. This project is a dangerous and costly distraction from what we really need to be doing to address climate change – increasing efficiency, expanding renewable energy and cooperating with Quebec.

Did you know the world’s first nuclear accident happened in Ontario? In 1952, the NRX reactor in Chalk River, Ontario experienced a partial core meltdown. This was followed five years later by a serious fire in the same reactor. Since its rocky debut in the 1950s, nuclear energy has averaged close to one serious accident every decade: Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima being the highest profile cases.

The Pickering Nuclear Station in Ontario has had a particularly troubled safety history, with major cooling system leaks and a complete shutdown of four reactors in 1997 after a scathing outside safety review by an American nuclear expert. After rebuilding of the first two of four reactors ran more than a combined $1.5 billion over budget, OPG scrapped plans to rebuild the other two Unit A reactors. Now Pickering continues to operate despite being well past its engineering design lifetime. The Pickering Station’s operating license expires in Dec. 2024. OPG is now seeking a license extension to continue running the plant until Dec. 2026. The Government of Ontario is considering rebuilding the Pickering B nuclear station after 2026. After the plant is finally shut down, OPG wants to leave the plant sitting on its prime waterfront site for another 30 years before beginning decommissioning. Immediately starting decommissioning of this half-century old plant after shutdown makes much more sense. It will create thousands of jobs and free up a huge parcel of waterfront land for new uses in Pickering.

Despite 50 years of nuclear operations, Ontario still does not have any facility capable of securely storing high-level radioactive waste for the hundreds of thousands of years it will take for this waste to become less than deadly. Currently, thousands of tonnes of waste is simply stored in open pools or in casks in commercial grade warehouses located right next to Lake Ontario. Nuclear is unique in creating such high-risk waste. Plans for how to store this waste are still nowhere close to being implemented. Meanwhile, nuclear plants continue to produce more deadly toxic waste that has nowhere to go.