Electrical energy supply is the monster in the Ontario government closet. There is hardly a policy area with more wide-ranging implications. Given this, one would think that the first energy supply review in fifteen years should really have received more press attention. But with the country in the midst of federal election follies, the Ontario Power Authority (OPA) Supply Mix Advice Report has gone largely unnoticed by the general public.
The report, released on December 9, 2005, contained controversial recommendations which lean heavily on nuclear power to supply the province's energy needs. NDP leader Howard Hampton suggested that the report was "a victory for Liberal lobbyists and nuclear insiders," noting that several former Liberal staff members are now lobbyists for the nuclear industry and others are on the board and executive of OPA.
Energy watchdog groups are hoping the report will bounce back into the limelight. Keith Stewart, co-author of Hydro: The Decline and Fall of Ontario's Electric Empire and spokesperson on energy for the Toronto Environmental Alliance says that simply releasing the report and giving the public 60 days to comment is not an adequate consultation process. Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty, under questioning in the Legislature, apparently agreed. However, to date, no further action has been taken by the government.
Much of the incentive for a new supply mix comes from the Liberal government's commitment to close down its coal burning power stations which release tonnes of carcinogens and greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. At the same time Ontario's nuclear plants are reaching the end of their design life. The OPA report suggests that these nuclear plants be overhauled and/or replaced over the next 20 years at a projected cost of $40 billion. Critics say this would be a huge mistake.
"Nuclear power is the highest cost and least reliable option to keep the lights on" according to Jack Gibbons, executive director of the Ontario Clean Air Alliance. "[These recommendations] are based on the idea that, rather than encouraging efficiency and productivity, Ontario will continue to encourage wasteful consumption by offering large taxpayer-financed subsidies to nuclear power."
Most of North America lost its taste for nuclear energy after the Three Mile Island accident. On March 28, 1979, a sequence of events including equipment malfunctions, design related problems and worker errors, led to a partial meltdown of the TMI-2 reactor core in Pennsylvania. Off-site releases of radioactivity were very small and there were no direct deaths or injuries to workers or members of the near-by community. But public fear and distrust resulting from this incident ran so deep that not one commercial nuclear power station has been built in the U.S. since then.
Recently, the nuclear industry has been engaged in a major public relations campaign. Primetime television ads feature the word "clear" and the message that nuclear energy is the clean, reliable and safe fuel of the future. Given its controversial history, what is clear is that it only takes one incident like Chernobyl or Three Mile Island to change the public's view of the nuclear industry for a very long time. This is raising concerns about the long-term viability of further investment in nuclear energy.
Critics also say that further reliance on nuclear energy also will mean higher energy bills for Ontario consumers. Nuclear is the most expensive of current energy options. Nuclear plants take a long time (as much as 12 years) to build and cost billions. The original estimate for Ontario's newest nuclear power station, Darlington, which began construction in 1984, was $4 billion. The cost, when the reactors were finally operational in 1993, was closer to $14.4 billion. One reactor at Pickering was recently refurbished at three times the projected cost.
Yet another unresolved issue in the nuclear equation is the question of nuclear waste disposal. According to the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO), Canada has stockpiled 2,000,000 fuel bundles (about 45,000 metric tonnes). Canada's current nuclear reactors (mostly in Ontario) will produce a total of 3.6 million bundles during the course of their average operation life of 40 years. This waste could fill up ten hockey rinks from the ice surface to the top of the boards.
A recent report by the NWMO, an independent agency whose shareholders are the producers of nuclear fuel in Canada (the largest being Ontario Power Generation), estimated the cost of disposing the waste at $24 billion. After various "phases," the waste is to be stored in a deep underground facility in a way that it would be monitored and remain retrievable over time.
"The first priority should be the phase-out of nuclear power not the phase-in of a radioactive waste dump" said Dr. Gordon Edwards of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility. "There's no way to contain poisons that last a million years."
On the waste issue, the OPA report references the NWMO report concluding that "significant progress has been achieved on the issue of spent nuclear fuel management"
The public has until February 9, 2006 to comment on the OPA Supply Mix report. This can be done through the government's Environmental Bill of Rights website. Although no public hearings are planned, Minister of Energy Donna Cansfield has offered to "meet with whomever would like to meet with me on [the contents of the report]." The Ontario NDP has set up a "meetwithdonna" website to facilitate such meetings or to comment on the report by other means.
Marita Moll is an Ottawa-based researcher and freelance writer.
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