If there’s one thing Ontario Power Generation (OPG) knows how to do, it is to lose money on nuclear projects. The enormous cost overruns the utility racked up on building the Darlington Nuclear Station, and then rebuilding aging reactors, led to Ontario energy ratepayers and taxpayers paying down a massive stranded nuclear debt for decades.
So what could possibly go wrong with OPG buying into another aging CANDU reactor that has performed poorly and left another province with enormous debts?
There have been a number of media reports lately of OPG’s interest in buying a stake in the old and underperforming Point Lepreau nuclear station in New Brunswick. Rebuilding this reactor went massively over budget and it continues to perform poorly. Essentially, New Brunswick Power (NB Power) dumped hundreds of millions of dollars into trying to fix an old lemon and it still stalls out on the way to the grocery store every week.
Now NB Power thinks the answer to its problems lies in bringing in OPG as a “partner” in owning this lemon, which does make sense from New Brunswick’s point of view. Why not share the pain with a deep pocketed utility that never sees a downside in even the costliest nuclear projects?
For the people of Ontario, however, this looks like more of a nightmare than a “dream team” scenario. The odds that OPG can somehow magically fix the fundamental flaws in this old plant are, to say the least, low.
But an even bigger question is: why is OPG pondering throwing hundreds of millions of dollars at an outdated nuclear station in the Maritimes instead of cleaning up its own house? OPG has hundreds of thousands of highly radioactive fuel bundles sitting in temporary storage at its nuclear stations. An alarming percentage of these bundles aren’t even in dry storage – they are in open water pools. Half of the bundles at the Pickering Nuclear Station have been sitting in these pools for more than 10 years! Even when these bundles do get moved to dry storage, they are kept in commercial-grade warehouses on the water’s edge.
OPG’s refusal to put safety first when it comes to the storage of its deadly nuclear wastes is all about money. It is still resisting the International Joint Commission’s Great Lakes Water Quality Board’s call for it to build above-ground, attack resistant, reinforced concrete vaults to store its wastes – as is done in Germany – because it would rather keep its money in the bank.
Instead of thinking how it can best protect Ontario residents, OPG is talking about using our money to buy NB Power’s aging reactor that has every sign of being a hopeless money pit. This is the kind of decision making that can only make you shake your head – and give you shivers when you think that OPG also wants Ontario’s electricity consumers to to be the financial guinea pigs for GE-Hitachi’s unproven, experimental 300-megawatt new boiling water reactor that has never been built anywhere in the world.
It’s time for the provincial government, which is the 100% owner of OPG, to step in and tell the company to invest our money on safer storage solutions for its nuclear wastes and not waste our money subsidizing NB Power’s and GE-Hitachi’s risky and high-cost nuclear projects.
Please send a message to Premier Ford and Energy Minister Todd Smith telling them to drop the Point Lepreau nuclear lemon – focus on safety and saving money in Ontario.