Nuclear Refurbishment
The Financial Accountability Office (FAO) of Ontario has released a report on the financial risks of the plan to refurbish 10 aging nuclear reactors in Ontario. The Ontario Clean Air Alliance points out four main flaws in the analysis which has led the FAO to a false conclusion.
The conclusion of the report by the Financial Accountability Office: click here to read report
"Overall, despite near term Nuclear Price increases, the Base Case Plan is projected to provide ratepayers with a long-term supply of relatively low-cost, low emissions electricity."
The flaws found by the Ontario Clean Air Alliance: click here for more details
1. The FAO assumes the price of nuclear power will peak at 9.5 cents per kWh despite the fact that OPG is seeking to raise its price of nuclear power to 16.5 cents per kWh to pay for re-building the Darlington Nuclear Station.
2. The FAO assumes that the cost of importing water power from Quebec would be 12 to 16 cents per kWh despite the fact that last year Ontario and Quebec signed a seven-year electricity supply contract for 2 billion kWh per year at a price of 5 cents per kWh. The FAO also ignored the fact that this summer Hydro Quebec offered to sell us 8 billion kWh per year for 20 years at a price of only 5 cents per kWh and that the average price paid for power exported by Quebec in its most recent fiscal quarter was 4.2 cents per kWh.
3. The FAO assumes that the nuclear re-build cost overruns will not exceed 50% despite the fact that every nuclear project in Ontario’s history has gone massively over budget – on average by 2.5 times. It also ignores that fact that initial stages of the Darlington rebuild project are already over budget.
4. The FAO assumes that the cost of increasing transmission capacity between our two provinces by 3,300 megawatts (MW) would be $2 billion despite the fact that a May 2017 IESO report said that we could upgrade our capacity by 4,050 MW for only $1.6 billion – a fraction of the cost of rebuilding reactors.
Environment North remains opposed to nuclear energy because of the generation of nuclear waste and the cost and safety issues.