Nuclear power is experiencing a resurgence worldwide and Ontario is no exception. The province has a long history with this awesome and terrifying energy technology, and it is once again turning to nuclear power in response to concerns over national sovereignty, economic growth, electrification and decarbonization.
Looking back over Ontario’s troubled history with nuclear energy, it is concerning to see the Ford government stumbling back to the bar for another round of nuclear cool-aid. Yet Ontario’s plan shows little evidence of having done its homework. Contrary to the government’s claims, it is fiscally irresponsible, incapable of delivering the energy the province needs in the time required, and compromises Ontario’s energy security.
When it should be investing in much cheaper and more easily deployed renewables, the province is recklessly doubling down on nuclear despite the evidence against it.
A legacy mired in debt
To understand Ontario’s nuclear trajectory, it is helpful to reflect on its origins. When civilian nuclear power was commercialized after the Second World War, its advocates promised it would be “too cheap to meter.” Buoyed by encouragement and financing from both provincial and federal governments, Ontario Hydro duly invested in a fleet of 20 CANDU reactors at three nuclear power stations over the course of 30 years.
By the turn of the millennium, Ontario Hydro’s nuclear obsession had saddled it with $38.1 billion in debt — $20.9 billion of it stranded (unsupported by assets). This burden was so immense that it toppled the once proud flagship Crown corporation. Ontarians continue to pay for this nuclear hangover today. As of March 2023, ratepayers were still on the hook for $13.8 billion.
Even as late as 1989, with Ontario Hydro already buckling under its crushing debt, the utility was forecasting the need for 10 to 15 new reactors by 2014. Reality proved otherwise, with peak electricity demand in 2014 lower than it had been 25 years earlier.
After a generation of staggering cost overruns and catastrophic international incidents at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima, nuclear power fell out of favour in much of the developed world. Cheaper, more flexible and faster-to-deploy alternatives took its place, first gas and then renewables.
Today, China is the only country in the world that can bring three to four new reactors online every year while steadily improving cost efficiency and construction timelines. China is also installing nearly 100 times more renewable capacity annually, accounting for more than half the world’s newly added generation.
Lessons from the U.K. and Ukraine
However, Ontario should learn from the United Kingdom, not authoritarian China. The experience of Hinkley Point C, the first new nuclear power plant to be built in the U.K. in more than 20 years, should be a cautionary tale.
At least five years behind schedule and two times over budget, Hinkley Point C will likely be the most expensive nuclear power plant yet. The electricity generated by this colossal waste of rate-payer dollars will cost between two to four times more than renewable energy, which can be brought online in half the time. This is what the provincial government has in store for Ontario.
The scale of Ontario’s plan is immense. In addition to the CANDU refurbishments at Darlington and Bruce, Ontario has announced the refurbishment of Pickering B, one of the oldest and most urban nuclear power stations in the world.
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Sovereignty concerns
Ontario has also contracted with GE Vernova Hitachi to build up to four small modular reactors (SMRs) at the Darlington site. It is unclear why the government has committed to building four SMRs before even the first is constructed. The greater concern with this arrangement is GE Vernova Hitachi is a U.S.-controlled company and the fuel supply chain is in the U.S. and France, not Canada.
To understand how fragile such a dependency can become, consider the situation facing Ukraine and its Soviet-built RMBK reactors. After Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea and Donbas in 2014, Ukraine found itself dependent on its aggressor to fuel the reactors. At the time, nuclear power generated approximately half of Ukraine’s pre-war electricity, similar to the proportion of Ontario’s reliance on nuclear energy. Ukrainians are now facing severe energy insecurity, with freezing temperatures and blackouts.
As if this were not concerning enough, Ontarians are subsidizing the first commercial demonstration of an unproven foreign nuclear technology while the government continues to naively claim Ontario will remain the industrial base from which the U.S.-controlled company will scale. Given the trade policies of the current U.S. government, not least of all its efforts to gut Ontario’s auto sector, it is hard not to see this belief as a fool’s hope.
No price tag and no certainty it will pay
Despite these red flags, Ontario’s nuclear ambitions do not stop there. The government is also considering building two new large nuclear power stations at the Bruce site and at a new location near Port Hope. This despite the fact that, like the U.K., the domestic nuclear supply chain has all but vanished. This is precisely the kind of multi-billion-dollar, multi-decade infrastructure lock-in that bankrupted Ontario Hydro.
The government has been silent on how much this plan will cost. No one can predict whether demand will materialize to justify this massive supply expansion, or what electricity prices will be when these reactors finally come online. Committing to decades of investment in such an uncertain environment is sheer folly.
To top it all off, nuclear power is not even operationally flexible. Generation cannot be adjusted rapidly enough to follow demand, and the reactors can only be quickly turned off, but not back on again (it took Ontario more than a day to restore power after the 2003 Great Northeastern Blackout due to neutron poisoning in the reactors).
Renewable options
It does not have to be this way. Much has changed since the last wave of nuclear infatuation. Renewables are now the cheapest source of energy on a levelized basis. While renewables may be intermittent, they are reasonably predictable, and for the first time since the inception of the electricity industry, generation no longer needs to coincide perfectly with consumption. Rapidly falling battery costs have made energy storage a commercially viable reality.
It is true that China currently dominates the supply chains for solar, wind and batteries, but once the equipment is installed it is virtually impervious to foreign interference. Unlike the supply of nuclear fuel, the sun shines everywhere.
Ontario and Canada should be collaborating with other democratic allies to reduce dependence on Chinese suppliers. In the meantime, the fact remains that unsubsidized renewables and batteries outperform nuclear and gas on cost and deployment time. Sadly, instead of embracing this more affordable and distributed future, the provincial government remains stuck in an inflexible and fiscally reckless past.
Nuclear power can provide energy security, but only if it is supported and fuelled by a domestic supply chain, like the original CANDUs. Its unmatched energy density makes sense where land is scarce, but that is hardly the case in Ontario. It may even be a defensible form of industrial policy if you believe in that kind of state interventionism. But above all else, nuclear power is neither nimble nor affordable (outside China) and it’s about time the Ontario government stopped posturing otherwise.
More Policy Options articles on nuclear power:
- Ontario’s nuclear option is the wrong path to meet green energy targets
- Canada’s newest nuclear industry dream is a potential nightmare
