Updated: Mon Jun. 16 2008 7:08:29 PM

CTV.ca News Staff

Ontario will build its first new nuclear reactor in 15 years at the existing, provincially-owned Darlington site east of Toronto on Lake Ontario.

Darlington, operated by Ontario Power Generation, won out over the privately-owned Bruce nuclear plant on Lake Huron near Kincardine. The Bruce site lands are leased from the province on a long-term basis.

The new Darlington plant will house two separate units.

Energy Minister Gerry Phillips had previously said that the limited transmission capacity from the Bruce area gave Darlington an edge.

Darlington is in Durham region, which is reeling from the loss of thousands of high-paying manufacturing jobs at General Motors auto plants in Oshawa.

"Hallelujah," Oshawa Mayor John Gray told CTV Toronto on Monday. "We need good news."

Gray said he expects the plant to bring hundreds of spin-off jobs and new residents to the community. The project is also good news for Durham College, which has a nuclear engineer training program, Gray said.

Both communities had been aggressively lobbying to host the projects.

However, Infrastructure Ontario said in a news release issued Monday that "the Ontario government also reaffirmed the importance of the Bruce Power nuclear site to Ontario's overall electricity plan."

CTV Toronto reported that up to four other nuclear units will be either built or refurbished at the Bruce plant. The exact mix has not yet been determined.

Infrastructure Ontario said the Darlington project will lead to the creation of 3,500 direct construction and engineering jobs between 2012 and 2018.

Three companies have emerged as "invited respondents":

• AREVA NP
• Atomic Energy of Canada Limited
• Westinghouse Electric Company

The government said there would be three key areas of evaluation for the company's bids:

• Lifetime cost of power
• Ability to meet Ontario's timetable to bring new supply on line in 2018
• Level of investment in Ontario

"If they don't deliver on their part of the contract, there will be penalties built into it," Phillips said Monday.

A supplier is to be chosen in November.

Ontario's plan is to get 14,000 megawatts (MW) of electricity from the nuclear sector, with Bruce continuing to supply 6,300 MW.

Ontario can currently meet a peak load of just under 25,000 MW. The province wants to cut peak demand by 2,700 MW by 2010.

The estimated cost of this new nuclear capacity is $26 billion.

When Darlington was built, it became a cost-overrun nightmare. Ontario NDP energy critic Peter Tabuns warned the same might happen again, and consumers will bear the cost.

"I have no idea what the two reactors will cost. I have no idea. The only thing that's clear to me is they estimated $26 billion for the cost of nuclear, and I think it's entirely reasonable to say that the cost will come in double (that)," he told reporters Monday.

John Yakabuski, energy critic for the provincial Progressive Conservatives, said the announcement came four years too late. As a result, Ontario is heading towards power supply troubles, he claimed.

Murray Elston of the Canadian Nuclear Association, an industry lobby group, said changes in construction techniques since the completion of Darlington 15 years ago should help keep costs under control.

All three competitors have recently completed reactors that were on time and on budget, he told CTV Newsnet.

"I think Mr. Tabuns and others will be very disappointed if they expect the cost overruns that they have speculated about," Elston said.

With files from CTV Toronto's Paul Bliss, Dana Levenson and The Canadian Press

Please Add Comments(56)

Uranium the the new "gold rush"
Uranium is the way to go to generate power for Ontario and around the globe. It's clean, safe and friendly. The shortage of uranium which has been keeping prices high is expected to remain high as literally hundreds of plants come on stream in Asian countries to meet the huge demand for energy. Canadian Junior uranium exploration companies are finding new material but will not be mined for a few years yet. Peru has some large scale uranium supplies which are expected to help meet the global demand in the years ahead.

Karen J Cao
despite being the number 1 producer of uranium in the world - Canada does not and will not have enough supply to supply its own growing energy demands - much less for the rest of the country - for this so-called "green fuel" - vast amounts of GHGs are produced, land destroyed etc. from unranium mining, plus the risk aspect as many of these plants are close to huge populations like Toronto... and in the end, the high over cost (in billions usually) of building nuclear plants might most likely deter its development - what's missing is AGRESSIVE conservation, and AGRESSIVE INVESTMENT in truly pollution-free renewables like wind, solar and even geothermal (in the U.S., the next big thing is "clean coal"), one recent study showed that if all of the $40 billion or so investment that Ont is putting towards nukes were invested in wind, then it could meet almost all of Ont's energy needs for now

nobody wants to talk about the inconvenience of energy reduction, demand control etc. the OPA is politically bias towards nuclear (look at their board & exec members), and can only manage to produce dismal targets for energy conservation and demand control

ontarians need political leadership for real change in environmental behaviour

Mark M
Can't wait to see the final bill for this new mess. We need power of course but I'm just waiting for them to start charging me a "new nuclear fee" on top of my current bill along with the current "debt retirement fee". Southern Ontario with all its malls with the open doors and all the lights on 24/7 are sucking up all this power, let them pay for it!!

Wayne
The biggest problem with solar and wind power is that they are unpredictable - the wind can stop suddenly or you could get several cloudy days in a row.

When the power produced by these methods is suddenly reduced, some other source of power has be to able to be brought on quickly to replace it. Otherwise, brown-outs can occur and electrical customers get upset.

So something like nuclear energy or other "dirty" sources need to be available to step in when the wind and solar sources aren't contributing much.

So there has to be a balance between the green and other energy supplies.

Steve
Glad to see the irrational fear of nuclear power is finally giving way to some common sense. Somehow many European countries have been using nuclear for years without any troubles. Funny how the left-wingers who previous were maniacally anti-nuclear are suddenly silent, now that other methods of energy production are either too carbon-intensive (coal), or too inefficient (solar), or too destructive to wildlife (wind).

Hans
.
Nuclear is a great idea with an outrageous price tag. Ontario governments are not the wisest in this regard.

Electricity is the future, but must we suffer Ontario governments to get us there?

Suggestion: the govt. outline a plan of fiscal oversight monitored by an independent task force.
.

Col
Warren Buffet, the richest man in the world now, recently said the financial numbers just don`t cut it for nuclear plants and so he didn`t invest in one in Colorado.

Maybe he read The Economist. That publication gave a book called `Small is Profitable` "Book of the Year" title a few years back (www.smallisprofitable.com). The book talks about how the world of electricity generation is going from a few large, monolithic plants to a large number of small plants spread out geographically. That is, electricity generation is to become `distributed` in the same way computing did. And this will happen because of technology and profit. Too bad for us Ontario tax-payers who have governments which talk about minimal interference with the market, but don`t walk that talk. If they had the guts to trust the market, we`d save a lot more money, reduce emissions and have a more secure electricy supply. Instead we`re going to have unreliable, expensive and dangerous nuclear plants that we`ll have to spend even more billions on to take down as they quickly become obselete.

C
...and to get Uranium, they are in the process of expulsing people from their homes here in NB, because they found uranium in their backyards.
How about using the technology that Nikola Tesla invented almost a 100 years ago and that has been mostly repressed!Oh That's right! They can't enslave us and make money off of us if Tesla's "free energy" system is developed.
So it's business as usual, destroy the earth, enslave the people by forcing them to pay for every ressources they need to survive.

Nick J Boragina
One thing I'd like to point out is that each individual nuke reactor produces in the range of 750 MW of electricity. 6 of these (6X750=4500) will only just replace the infamous Nanticoke coal power plant (generates 4000 MW) and that does not deal with the other coal/gas plants we have that generate another 4000 MW. Add to that the fact that by the time we do build these things demand will be higher.

The only answer is a combo. We need not only more nuclear, not only cleaner coal, not only more power plants period, not only to invest in wind and solar, not only to conserve, but to do ALL of these and to do ALL of these WELL. We could build nuclear reactors as fast as we can, and even if we finished one a year (unrealistically fast) it will take us until 2020 just to break even (assuming we shut down the coal plants) and if you factor in increased demand, it will take us to 2035 to be where we should be today.

Anyone who tries to suggest that any one thing is the answer is just plain wrong. All of these are answers

Doug BC
Well, at least someone is building something somewhere in Canada. Energy in general will be the new "gold rush".
But I won't hold my breath waiting for the power. The enviro-nuts are surely going to hold this up for a couple of decades.We all know about the BANANA movement. Build Absolutely Nothing Again Near Anyone.
No drilling,no cutting,no damming,no mowing,no building,no mining.Hah.No living either.
And NOT ONE other solution from the enviro extremists that will actually work,and be built without using the entire GDP of the whole country,and generate electricity we can afford to pay for.
I still think we should be looking at a national strategy and east-west power lines.Of course that would mean our premiers would have to talk to each other.Not a likely scenario,I think.

L-P
Regardless of one's opinion on nuclear energy, we all need to consider it as an option.

Ontario has grown exponentially over the last few decades and yet very little, if anything, has been done to meet growing demand.
asking for conservation is a neat and green idea but is not an answer.

Growth has been allowed to continue for too many years even though OPG was not able to fulfill demand. So now we are being asked to conserve. I think not! Plus, as noted above, solar and wind energy does not come close to supplying the equivalent to hydro dddams and nuclear. It's time we either build more huge stations and dams or we tell people to stop coming here. Take your pick people.

ARJAY
@Steve:
Of course environmentalists are silent about nuclear, because it's preferable to burning coal or gas and oil. But if people had listened to environmentalists 30 yeas ago after the first oil crisis, developed alternative fuel and reduced demand, we wouldn't be forced to adopt nuclear to get us out of the current mess. It's just the best of several bad choices that we've been forced in to by right wing intransigence and denial. Now the right wingers are somehow vindicated about this? Give me a break!

ARJAY
@Wayne

Actually Wayne the idea of both solar and wind energy is to dump power into the grid and share it across the continent, storing what is not used immediately. That way when the wind dies down or the sky is cloudy, we can still draw from places where conditions are better. :)

Ann
In response to some comments above, aggressive conservation is another way for the environmentalists to say we all sit in the dark, travel by horse and buggy, eat only what we can grow in our backyards and go back to the stone ages. The fact is the population is growing, hydro is already expensive when you add the admin charges on which doubles the price, and most people cannot afford waste power now. Conserve all you like, there is not going to be enough hydro to meet demands until we provide new sources of power to meet the growing population demand. As for getting off fossil fuel: I hate to say it but this is Canada, we have extemes of climate. No political statement or environmentalist can change that!

RGP
Distributed Generation....roughly translated means distributed destruction of habitat, distributed pollution sources and lack of enforcement of enviro-regs due to the dispersed nature of distributed generation.

Think of all of the small rivers and streams that are to be diverted to smaller hydro generation plants, all of the new wind turbines that are already sprouting up along Lake Huron. Think of all of the NEW Transmission lines that have to be built. That power has to hit the grid somehow. Think of all of the GHG's created by the smaller natural gas plants (using up the already decreasing supplies).

What is needed is a cohesive plan that incorporates the removal of older technologies (old coal plants for new clean coal, nuclear plants and clean incineration technologies to reduce our need for new landfill sites), supplemented by localized green technologies (wind/solar/hydro) which will MINIMIZE natural effects rather than allow every Joe Six-pack to start diverting every stream that runs down a hill across his farm.

PBW
Arjay " But if people had listened to environmentalists 30 yeas ago ". People DID listen to the environmentalists 30 years ago, but not re coal - re NUCLEAR - and the result was a moratorium on building nuclear plants - what the enviromentalists called a success! Too bad they were too short-sighted.

I guess the other shoe has fallen. But I still don't hear the sound of environmentalists telling us nuclear is clean. . .

House
Why are there so many people throwing their un-educated opinions out on this issue??
1. Nuclear IS repliable. Understand 'reliability' before commenting on such a matter.
2. Huge cost over-runs at Darlington during its development, was largely attributed to GOVERNMENT interference. How do we not know this yet??
3. Warren Buffet did not invest in the proposed plant in CO, ONLY. He did NOT refuse to invest in Nuclear altogether.
4. Since when is Wind and Solar a reliable form of energy production? And thank you to the people who were wise enough to understand that wind and solar farms built large enough to meet demand of this magnitude, would have a whole lot of impact on the environment. Look at the land mass required (for wind or solar) to meet the capacity of one of Darlington's nuclear units. Please explain to me how that is better for the environment? Nevermind the life cycle of solar panels and the detrimental gases that would produce, nor the number of birds that die every year from the FEW wind turbines we DO have in Ontario. It's not that cut and dry, Greenpeace.
5. Nuclear is economically risky, yes; but it IS affordable, reliable, proven and the way many other countries are going. They cant all be so wrong, as some of you claim Ontario is.
6. There's a lot of houses outside S. Ont that require new doors and windows. Its not just S. Ontario wasting energy. We all are, so accept some responsibility and stop passing the buck.

G-man
Has anyone seen the investment Ontario has made in wind mills in northern Ontario? Drive up hwy 10 or down 20 near Tiverton. There are many many more being consrtucted. But they are unpredictable source of energy. But it is good to see them. If you are concerned add a vertical wind mill or solar panels to your house and cut down on your own use. Simple.

David fm NS
Nuclear Power is the way to go for sure. It is the only proven energy source that can produce enough power to run our public utilities, and it produces no GHGs. Yes, the mining of Uranium produces GHGs, but so does the mining of coal and oil drilling. It is definitely a step forward. We in the Northern Hemisphere need our public utilities to work all of the time or we will freeze in the winter. People should lay off the air conditioning if they want to save power. Solar and wind can only supplement the power grid, they cannot produce enough energy to power the grid.

Jon Davidson, Barrie, Ontario .
In my view, present day nuclear technology is short-sighted. What do we do with the ever growing tons of the resulting waste products that remain dangerously radioactive for thousands of years?

Rob
The real problem with these "green" energy sources is that everyone thinks that they are "free"...energy from nothing. But anyone with even a rudimentary science education knows that energy is finite...if geothermal, solar, wind, tidal...you are stealing energy from the earth. You want to see climate change...keep building wind turbines and geothermal plants, I guarantee climate change when you change planetary wind patterns.

IAN
In reply to Arjay, 30 years ago enviro nuts and scientists were warning us of global cooling and another ice age. Good job we didn't listen. As for the government building another nuclear plant, the last one ended up costing us about 4 times what we were told. I worry.

C
Wayne..re:wind power- the problem is the windmills they push. A child that plays with the wind can see that those stupid, tall, noisy ugly tower with helicopter like blades are the most inefficient and costly way to harvest wind...but is it supported by the Gov because that way, by it being inefficient, they can continue to push their greedy agenda of unrenewable ressources on ignorant people.

Nuclear's the way to go.
Hey ARJAY, the reason wing 'costs' so much is people that want to 'store' it and use it later, battery's cost HUGE amounts of money and are horrible, worse than nuclear, for the environment. It costs about a million bucks per mega watt to produce. 14 000 mw = 14 billion. 3 megawatts (typical wind turbine) = about 3 million to install. So...who wants to put 500 wind turbines in their back yard? As well, the amount of energy that is lost by having production being down in northern Ontario (which contrary to belief is the only windiest enough area) will result in even more turbines needing to be installed. The only reason wind works in Europe is because they put the turbines offshore, that are much bigger 4-5MW and run the cables 4-5 km to shore and feed into the grid.

John Palermo
Arjay:
Sending power across the continent is wasteful. Electricity is lost in the transmission. The further the distance the more that is lost. Especially for low yielding alternative energy supplies, they are best kept closest to the point of use.

Uranium is the best interim choice.
Uranium is plentiful all around the globe although we need many new mines to start up. It's only a matter of mining it and going through the motions. China has many new plants coming and uranium will be the fuel of choice to power them. Companies like Solex, Crosshairs and Strateco will factor in the supply of uranium in due course.

Eric
As some of the comments point out, it would be nice to have "greener" alternatives, but we can't. There are studies which suggested, that the only real place to put wind power is in James Bay area, which is too far for transmission lines to go. And we can't go the route of hydroelectricity, as we don't have the landscape necessary for this. The only other option, is Nuclear. As much as I don't like the idea, it seems to be the only alternative to reducing Coal plants, and increasing electricity

Nick Ottawa
What other choice is there? Ok, fine, some people say solar and wind... those aren't as reliable. Someone mentioned that we could then get the electricity from others when our solar or wind power goes down.... driving up costs and stress on transmission lines (let's also not forget the infamous Blackout of 2003). Clean coal? I'm sorry, but anything that burns carbon-based materials causes GHGs. It may not contribute to smog as much, but there's still other factors to think of. It's probably pretty expensive too. There aren't very many options available to use.

Nuclear is clean, safe and reliable. Unless someone else has other options that equivalent to nuclear energy, I don't understand what the big deal is. The environmentalists say you can do this and that, but even then, sometimes more power is needed on the whole. I do what I can to conserve, but there are still 11 million+ other people in this province, and it's still getting bigger. I say go for it, we need to look at our needs now and for the future...

And yes, I do have my own electricity bill to pay.

Mark
Solar, wind, geothermal, tidal, hydroelectric... there is more energy that occurs naturally in, on and around our planet than humans would ever think about using. It would be nice to see more competition in the small residential energy production unit sector. Also, as far as large scale power plants, I'm thinking there should be huge potential in geothermal. The average continental geothermal gradient of 25 degrees Celsius per kilometre would indicate that water would boil about 4km down.

ARJAY
@PBW

Sorry, but the moratorium on nuclear didn't happen because of environmentalists' concerns over the sustainability of nuclear power. It happened because of Three Mile and Cherynobl, where the immediate impact of meltdown became evident even to the right wing. If we had listened to the environmentalists, we would have been actively developing cleaner, more sustainable alternative source of energy and conservation, and could have avoided the oil crisis, global warming, and building nuclear plants. But because we listened to Ronald Reagan, George Bush and the right wing, we find ourselves in this mess. Typically, the right wing wants to blame shift all of this onto the left, as if the left were the ones making energy policy over the last 30 years!

Look folks, no matter how you spin this, the fact is that our present way of living on the planet isn't sustainable because coal, oil, gas and nuclear are all ultimately non- renewable. Nor can we solve the energy and environmental problems by playing off one crisis against another. Arguing that we can't afford to protect the environment is an incredibly short-sighted response, because the costs of not fixing this are many times higher than the "savings". In the end, the only viable alternative to our present mess is to change the way we think and live. It's now a race against right- wing short sightedness, and sustainability for humanity. Pay me now or pay me later.

Mike
Too bad Bruce Power lost out, I'm not confident that the Province can get this done on budget and on schedule, look at what happened with the refurbishments on the existing reactors...

Nick J Boragina
@ G-Man

you mention wind generation in ontario. As I said earlier, the "average" nuclear reactor (each "plant" has an "average" of 4) generates 750 MW of energy. From Ontario Power Generation's own website, the total wind and solar energy produced in Ontario is 7.009 MW. We have many coal plants, Nanticoke at 4GW (4000 MW) and Lambton and Lennox at 2GW. Both Pickerings (nuclear) total 3.5 GW while Darlington is 3.5 GW as well. Bruce, which is operated by a private company and not listed here, also generates between 3GW and 4GW.

Our only other source of power is hydro, and it's a big one. Niagara generates 2.3GW while Ottawa gives us 2.5 GW. We get an additional 2GW from various hydro sources in the north. The problem with these are that we've already tapped our hydro resouces, we cant easily just build more dams because we've already taken all the best locations. Where Hydro does come into play is when working in conjunction with Solar and Wind. You can use the power from a windy night, or a sunny quiet sunday afternoon that does not get used in the cities to pump water into an artifical lake; then when it's cloudy and the wind stops, open the gates and let that lake power hydro generators. In this way you can build a natural battery.

The more you know the more informed decisions you make and the more reasonable opinions you have. All this stuff is online if you look for it!

W. Merkley
Meantime on the Big Island of Hawaii they are looking at plasma arc generation....the all in one fuel producer/garbage eliminator. zero emmissions, just chuck ANYTHING in there from household waste to old cars...voila, energy. Safe, efficient, serves another useful purpose.

Geothermal is another alternative (Greenland, Iceland, Hawaii).....somehow the Big Boys of Uranium have sold themselves to Ontario and too many other parts of the world.

Then people have the audacity to whine about any country with nuclear bombs?

Sometimes the best sense goes over people's heads.

Nick J Boragina
to add, a very (very) rough gide is that for every 500,000 people, you need 1GW of electricity.

John A
Steve: When you said that Europe has been using nuclear energy without incident, I guess you forgot Cherobyl [yes it's Russian]. For that matter, don't forget 3 Mile Island.

Anyone: Downside of a nuclear plant is the possibility of a bigger terrorist target. And of course it take forever to build one of these buggers.

Catherine Forks
You know what folks? No matter which way energy is produced discourse is the name of the game today.

I have lived through years of only wood heat, coal came along, then oil, natural gas, and electricity.

Ontario remains one of the those provinces that must use nuclear energy to provide energy. Wind and solar cannot do it. It's that simple. We have already lost too much time.

SE
Wow, House was right there are a lot of uneducated opinion on BOTH sides here.

Apparently nobody is aware at the moment that Germany is out to prove that you can run a country on solar power. Is anyabody aware of some big Oil Baron in Texas looking at Wind Power, (Albeit to turn a buck)

I lived near the Pickering Ont Plant when I was a kid, late seventies, was anybody informed there was a leak? No, the information came out years later. My problem is was do they do with the waste cause don't tell me there isn't any. I've worked in enough industrial plants to know there is always waste.

And as for using wind, or solar, there is a way of capturing the wind with out damaging wildlife, its called screens. And as for solar start researching what is out there. You would be surprized and man's ingenuity and disgusted by the industrialist reaction.

We need the energy. And unfortunately the powers at be, will always look to industrialist way.

Dale Wilson
Jon Davidson - what do you do with the waste?

When you've exhausted the energy potential of the fuel, you put it right back in the ground where you found it originally, its been there for hundreds of millions of years and it can stay there for hundreds of millions more.

fitzz
I once was opposed to the extension / expansion of nuclear generating capabilities. I have changed my mind. Now I'm all for it!

The creation of highly radioactive by-product, which will remain dangerous for many years will give future generations something to worry about. And why not? We're entitled to our "live better electrically" lifestyle, surely. We owe the future NOTHING!

Reg Moore
NO NO NO!!!
We need to Stop making power plants and start using Magnetic motor technology. It's now or never. Look on youtube. Anyone can make them. I will make a company that will produce them for the public. They will power your home and vechicle with no emissions and no cost for the power. No toxic waste. What do you think? I also have plans for removing the toxic waste and already existing pollution. The time is now people. Take your power back. Theres no time to wait.

Nick Ottawa
And on another note:

I forget which American airport (I think Denver) just put in solar panels to power the airport. It's an area the size of 3 football fields... How much land do you need to power a city then? Or an entire province.... Think of it.

Simple Numbers
Let's do some grade school math. Peak load = 25GW. Ontario plans to generate 14GW via nuclear. That makes nuclear energy 14GW/25GW = 56%, a majority, of our required energy production. The next time some "extreme-environmentalist" complains about any trivial little thing about nuclear technology, remember this simple calculation. By the way, if you think we're going to cut peak demand by 2.7GW in 2 years (that's > 10% of peak load), you're dreaming.

After all is said & (not) done, there is only one reason why we have all of our problems and once again it has to do with simple numbers: OVERPOPULATION. Until we control population growth, change the foundation of our (now worldwide) economic structure, and change technology itself, we're ALL dreaming on the way to self-destruction.

Nick Ottawa
Here:

The nation’s fifth-busiest airport has announced plans for a 2 megawatt solar energy system to generate 3.5 million kilowatt hours of clean energy each year – about half the power needed to run the airport’s terminal-connecting underground train system.

9800 solar panels covering 7.5 acres... And can only provide half the power to run the underground trains... This system is now in use. Good idea, but not enough to meet the needs of all of society...

Ki-Som
With the last mess up that the Harper government did, with nuclear power, do we really want to see another one?

Dale Wilson
John A.

Chernobyl was a horrible situation that resulted from a bad reactor design that was operated by unqualified individuals that were operating outside of strict rules of operation. Maybe you don't but I trust the folks at AEC and the various regulatory agencies to make the right decisions to avoid the situation here. This is Canada in 2008, not the USSR in the mid 80's.

As for Three Mile Island, while I admire Meryl Streep as an actress, lets keep in mind that exactly ZERO people were harmed in what was an example of rules and protocols working exactly as they were supposed to.

Edward T.
@ SE
Currently the waste (spent uranium fuel) is kept in large holding pools that look like large indoor swimming pools. I know for Pickering nuclear, they are at about 1/2 storage capacity and that is all the fuel used from present to way back in the 60's. So my guess is when they fill up, which will still be in 20 years out, they just find a larger place to put the spent uranium. Physically, the size of spent uranium is no big deal. It is the transporting that is of concern.

Linda in Vancouver
We need all of the sources of energy and conservation.With the population of planet earth over 6 billion and expected to reach 9 billion in this century we have to do them all.
We will have to make compromises unless overcrowded countries stop making babies.
Solar and wind power are expensive,and not reliable enough.They do allow BC to store water in hyro dams when the sun is shining,or the wind blowing.But not reliable enough to provide "hard" power.
One thing we should be doing,is setting a national goal for Canada to be energy independent,because one thing is certain,no matter how much oil we find,coal we mine,or electricity we generate,it will ALL be sucked out of here by bigger countries with massive populations and no pollution standards at all.
We have the resources we need,and energy independence would be a huge competetive advantage and an incentive for companies looking for places to manufacture products.
But we will need hydro and nuclear,with solar and wind as supplements.For the fear mongers,there are MANY nuclear plants all over the world which have been working very well,for a very long time.

Denise
Anything the OPG touches ends up FANTASTICALLY over budget...As for the concept of timeliness, better give them an extra decade or so to actually complete this project. This is so patently a political decision that I actually burst out laughing (as did others in my office), when we read this decision. Hilarious!

Kevin Storr
Check out Carl Sagan's views. He was an incredibly deep man. Learn from the brilliance of others.

DARREN CECCHETTO
Nick J Boragina... that's a great idea... Build a natural lake and drain it when we need power and use solar and wind to fill it?!? What crackpot website did you find that on?? You think we have spare energy to waste on pumping a lake full of water?? Ontario only generates 70% of the electricity is uses, the rest it buys off the US. I can't believe you have the gull to call someone else's decisions misinformed!! And REG MOORE.. once you solve all the worlds energy problems with some idea you found on you tube I guess you'll be rich enough to move out of your mom's basement, not to mention the money you'll make from your mystery invention that cleans up existing pollution. WOW!! You must be a genius!!

Matty
There is an other source of energy which was a project i had to do in High school and it was called Tornado Wind Building, maybe it's something to look at.

Raul S. Lopez, P. Eng.
The Bruce nuclear complex is not "privately owned". The Crown owns the existing nuclear generating stations (two of them, each with four reactors), and other facilities such as a low-and-intermediate level radioactive waste management area, and a future underground low-and-intermediate waste management facility.

The Crown-owned nuclear generating stations are operated by a private sector consortium (Bruce Power) under a lease-operate arrangement with the province of Ontario.

Tim
This is a critically important competition for AECL. Should they be beat out by one of the other two, it's a safe bet that that decision will be the beginning of the end for the CANDU reactor. I mean, lets face it, if Canadians won't by this technology who on Earth will?

north bc
Just keep it in Ontario. Nuclear power is green? That slays me. I believe Chernoble is fairly green now.

Ted in Toronto
Murray Elston's bang on. Tremendous strides have been made in the past 15 years. It's too bad that the Bruce is being over looked.

Having spend over 15 years living within 20 kms from the current Bruce site, I know that those folks are very dedicated to the quality efficiency of their work. Also the communities surrounding the site thoroughly support it and Bruce Power Corp.

The GM employees would love living there as well. Many of those now at the Bruce came from the GTA. Now thousands are retiring there!

gilles
C'mon, nuclear generation for electricity is a no-brainer. Go for it, dang it, BUT, OPG must assure the taxpayers that not one (1) cent will be over budget...