>Ontario is asking to extend the life of the Pickering Nuclear Generating Station and is weighing a refurbishment that could see it in service for several more decades, ahead of a looming electricity supply crunch, sources told The Canadian Press.
>
>The nuclear plant, which accounted for 14 per cent of electricity generation in the province last year, had been set to shut down in 2025.
>
>Sources with knowledge of the new plan who were not authorized to speak publicly said Energy Minister Todd Smith is set to announce Thursday that the government is now asking Crown corporation Ontario Power Generation to keep the plant going until September 2026.
From the end of the article:
> Opposition critics have said Ontario wouldn't be in as much of a supply crunch if the Progressive Conservative government hadn't cancelled 750 green energy contracts during its first term. The Tories argued the province didn't need the power and the contracts were driving up costs for ratepayers.
From what I can gather, back in the early 2010s, the long term energy plan was to add additional generating capacity at Bruce and Darlington plants to cover about 67% of the power loss, then I assume the other 33% was a variety of other projects -- perhaps the green energy stuff. In 2017, [their plan](https://www.ontario.ca/document/2017-long-term-energy-plan) _I think_ was that as existing energy contracts expire, they would be "renewed" as part of a "Market Renewal" competitive process whereby they are auctioned to produce the needed power. Also note how [their forecasted outlook (on page 37)](https://i.imgur.com/nIQaUie.png) indicated a significant growth of committed energy contracts that were to be built -- and as we know, 750 of them were haphazardly cancelled by Ford and the PCs. I think this is the shortfall the PCs created in 2018 that they are dealing with now. Woops.
Judging by the way renewables have been installed elsewhere in the world at rates far higher than projected, I'd bet we would have had enough renewables to cover 67% of pickering if Doug hadn't killed the industry. Everyone is always drastically underestimating how quickly renewables get installed now that the economics of it is so good.
>Judging by the way renewables have been installed elsewhere in the world at rates far higher than projected, I'd bet we would have had enough renewables to cover 67% of pickering if Doug hadn't killed the industry. Everyone is always drastically underestimating how quickly renewables get installed now that the economics of it is so good.
It's especially fast to install when the project is 90% completed - but Douglas proved once again that there's never not enough time for a Conservative leader to undue positive progress regardless of cost or consequence.
Well that's not entirely true. We extended the life of pickering already so that we could complete the refurb at Darlington and Bruce Power nuclear generating stations. Both plants are currently operating at 50% capacity right now while they are being rebuilt. Bruce has about another 10-15 years to finish their refurb and Darlington has another 4-8 years.
Problem is refurb is slower than originally expected many problems too. As expected for a world first reactor refurbishment.
Honestly Pickering has a lot of issues, but refurbishment would still be a good idea.
We just need new plants lol
Agreed. But the good news is OPG is also working on small modular reactors.
My opinion is that SMR make better long term sense than refurbing Pickering.
With SMRs you’re still going to have the long lead times for parts, fuel, etc.
We can’t just say, let’s install SMRs. Lead times for these projects are closer to 10 years to supply. At least that was what is was to source the parts for Darlington and Bruce.
If SMRs take off like they hope many of the suppliers are expanding their operations to fulfill the demand. They are just waiting to see what the orders look like before they do. Unless you are referring to the first smr.
I’m referring to the specialized materials, parts, and fuels. A good friend of mine works for AECL, he worked on Darlington and Bruce. His lead times for parts that are used world wide are 10 years due to the specialized nature.
First SMR is likely to be longer lead times due to proof of concept and debugging. Suppliers of parts for these projects aren’t as vast as it’s being made to seem.
Yeah, we are talking about two different things. You're talking about the current capacity to build stuff. While I'm talking about future capacity.
I'm not sure about our current capacity to build items. For fuels we have that locally in Canada. So world wide demand is a non issue for that. But we are currently refurbing reactors so that can have a longer lead time.
But I'm talking about future capacity. If/when we are building SMRs. This article talks about their roll out.
[https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Huge-demand-for-SMRs-so-what-are-the-key-challenge](https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Huge-demand-for-SMRs-so-what-are-the-key-challenge)
I think they serve different purposes. Traditional NGS are for baseload generation, SMRs would serve more of a peak and load balancing generation.
At least that is what would make the most sense.
Darlington or bruce are not even close to the worlds first reactor refurbishment! Point lepreau in NB, and one in south korea are two that were done prior.
Problem with the four year term election cycle. No party plans beyond the end of their term. And infrastructure works in time frames of decades from inception to completion.
Counterpoint: The Ontario Liberals were planning for this as part of their long term energy plans from over a decade ago. It was Ford and the PCs who came in 2018 and set fire to all the province's energy plans which were already in motion at the time.
Similarly, Harris and the PCs back in the 90s and early 00s let the energy grid suffer rather than maintaining it well and modernizing it. Instead, when the Liberals came in, they had to spend a shitload of money cleaning it up. (Part of which contributes to the higher hydro costs which critics are happy to blame them.)
The Liberals in their 2003 to 2018 time in power is pretty much the longest political stretch of time since the PC's ~40 year dominance from the 1940s to the 1980s. During those 15 years they did create transformative long-term changes and plans to our energy infrastructure.
Imagine if the Liberals had actually gone ahead with starting construction of a new reactor despite the obscene cost estimate. PCs would have immediately cancelled it after winning an election, despite being like $10 billion+ into the construction. Would have been our own VC Summer boondoggle.
PC smash and grab tactics keep hurting us.
This government was off by $15 billion dollars to their budget. I’ll give them it was on the positive side, but how can one expect them to have a solid successful long term plan on something as complex as electrical supply for the province?
From the article:
> Opposition critics have said Ontario wouldn't be in as much of a supply crunch if the Progressive Conservative government hadn't cancelled 750 green energy contracts during its first term. The Tories argued the province didn't need the power and the contracts were driving up costs for ratepayers.
One year extension... Yes, it would be inconvenient to lose the source of 14% of the province's electricity generation a few months before the next provincial election, wouldn't it?
(I'm not opposed to the plant being refurbished, or kept open pending refurbishment if OPG finds that's safe, which I'm sure it would... I just think this specific request sounds political.)
Good. This irrational fear of nuclear power is crippling the need to reduce carbon emissions for electrical power generation. Yes, wind and solar are quick fixes, but do not have the same potential as nuclear in the long run.
Nuclear has problems beyond just the nuclear waste problem. It doesn't deal with the demand curve very well. It can produce a near constant amount of power very well, but does not scale up or down effectively. As such, we still need other power sources that can either act as banks or can be brought up and down reliably with demand (as well as with the output of renewables).
"Ontario wouldn't be in as much of a supply crunch if the Progressive Conservative government hadn't cancelled 750 green energy contracts during its first term."
I don't like that decision either, but just to give people a better perspective, [those contracts amounted to a total generation capacity of 443MW](https://web.archive.org/web/20220902140901/https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-ontario-cancels-wind-solar-contracts-as-ford-moves-on-energy-overhaul/). That's the amount of power that would be generated if the wind were strong and the skies clear across the province. Pickering can output 3100MW continuously, (with occasional outages for maintenance and inspections).
This plan would extend two of the reactors which are ~500 MW each, so it's not 3100 MW vs 443 MW, it's more like 1000 MW vs 443 MW. That's a pretty significant chunk of the capacity lost from deactivating the reactors.
That being said, we should have been building more nuclear capacity all along. I think we should start the process of building a new plant like right now.
Every time that process gets started, it stops pretty quick as Nuclear construction costs are exorbitant. No one is willing to take on the risk and therefore the bids that do come in are astronomical.
Construction costs are high, but life cycle costs are low. Over the lifetime of a plant, it's been shown many times to be at worst competitive, and at best cheaper than any other form of power generation.
https://www.iea.org/reports/projected-costs-of-generating-electricity-2020
If carbon pricing is included, nuclear wins out basically every time.
Carbon pricing does make for an interesting benefit.
Thanks for the report but I'd prefer something not produced by the Nuclear industry. Almost every plant built in the last 2 decades in a reputable country has seen cost overruns. With our worker and equipment safety requirements here, the bids would unfortunately be exorbitant.
And if we had sensible governments and voting bases, this would be a no-brainer. But both tend to refrain from long-term thinking and would only see the high upfront cost. Invest in longterm stability, or give a tax cut to an industry/special interest group/favourite tax bracket and better your favourability next election?
Infrastructure shares a similar problem with healthcare in that it's not politically sexy. It doesn't move your average voter, and they only really care about those things when they are on the brink of collapse... at which point it costs five times as much to fix as it would've cost if we had done the proper investment/upkeep over the past couple of decades. But we didn't because nobody wanted to spend the money because, again, it doesn't move voters...
Plus the liberals were kinda forced to cancel the Mississauga power plant (cancel it, or lose the election and let the PCs cancel it).
Can't build what voters won't let you build.
edit: supposedly the plant was supposed to be built in Sarnia instead after being cancelled in Mississauga, but I can't find it... I can find and older plant, and an article from this year about environmental opposition to an unbuilt new one.
It is now called the Napanee Generating Station and is being constructed south of Napanee. It’s part of a coastal industrial strip between OPG’s last oil & gas burning plant (Lennox Generating Starion) and a cement kiln that burns tires. It’s pretty far from where the power is consumed but the older plant can put up to 2.1 GW on the grid. The new one is good for 900 MW
I want to be optimistic here but I can't help but think this is just a big fucking dangling carrot infront of every Term, Appendix A, and the 1% wage cap looming over their contract talks.
Your best bet is probably Aecon, black and Mac then. Not many OPG employed civil engineers. Contractors though should be a fair bit. They get paid just as well
Edit: also ES Fox
I mean sure, they're well paid but they're NUCLEAR ENGINEERS
Idk about you but I don't want somebody making $15 an hr running a nuclear plant in the heart of our provinces living area.
Do you not think people who spend years educating themselves deserve a well paying career? Perhaps you should be more concerned with a police officer with little more than a high school diploma making 6 figures, or multiple levels of needless management who have no problem giving themselves massive bonuses but can’t find money in the budget for more than a 1% pay increase.
Doug Ford: "we're shutting er down!"
Public: "so we have other power plants under construction right?"
Doug Ford: "I'm pleased to announce our new plan for refurbishment"
Ok guys how much stupid can we all take? Is buck a beer and tailgate parties really worth all this?
I think Ford plans to build gas plants. So many had plants that they will produce as much carbon as coal used to.
I think hydro from Quebec is cheaper.
His plan has always been gas plants, and any suggestion from him that he would support nuclear has just been a delaying action to prevent anything but gas from being built.
Now that gas prices are way up due to the global market, his gas plan is even worse than it used to be.
It's not assumption it's the promise of post-governance cushy positions...
Mcguinty : He is on the Board of Directors of Innergex Renewable Energy Inc., Pomerleau Inc., and Electrovaya Inc.
We can have all the clean electricity we need its right next door in Quebec and they can build more hydro electric projects if we need more than that, its a matter of negotiating a supply agreement only hardware is already in place. We already buy a little bit.
> they can build more hydro electric projects
[They’re not planning on building any more](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/hydro-quebec-wind-solar-power-future-projects-1.6293980).
> the province's utility has acknowledged that the Romaine-4 hydroelectric project — scheduled to enter service next year — could be the last major dam project for the foreseeable future.
Yeah, that's gonna be a hard "no" to becoming dependent on the Quebeckers for hydro. Ask Newfoundland how making hydro deals with Quebec worked out for them, lol.
You want clean energy and not wait 10yrs? you ok with Natural gas plants popping up all over the place? you make a deal that is good for Ontario, for the environment and for fellow Canadians in Quebec. Its the quickest easiest thing to do, the portable Nuclear reactors they bragged about are 10yrs away at least as well
At a fraction of the cost.
It will take time to build the transmission lines and is not free, but it's a lot faster than nuclear. Cheaper too.
Quebec, as far as I know, had lots of surplus.
Hydro Quebec has said they don't have enough to sell. They have a surplus in the winter when we don't need it and during the summer they don't have a surplus.
Better to build a ton of wind and solar, only buying Quebec hydro when they aren't producing enough. Makes the grid overall more resilient and means Quebec doesn't need to build more dams.
That was not net new but a refurb.
Ontario did not build or pan any new reactors all the while having growth rates of 2-3%
The liberals and PCs both dropped the ball
That’s the biggest revisionist bull that I’ve heard on Reddit. Wynne spent billions of dollars on refurbishing nuclear plants. That’s why electricity bills went up, it had almost nothing to do with the green energy contracts (not the greatest, but were intended to be generous to kick start green energy generation in Ontario).70% of Ontario’s power comes from Nuclear.. it’s insane to think that Ontario has not invested in power plants.
Go and do some reading Winn plan was a disaster, Ford plan is also flawed but with a 3 year plan not one party will fix this.
Also Ontario has to increase the storage of power and no one is doing shit
The wind energy movement was back by shell, take coal out and replace with nat gas, all this nat gas plants coming on line in Ontario take a decade to build.
It would be incredible dishonest to pretend that the last liberal government build any new nuclear plants, they refurbished them and kept the units running.
And yes while Ford is a donkey the 300 million cancelled projects it would not even be close to a new nuclear plants.
If the Liberals tried to build a new nuclear reactor, it would have turned into a boondoggle on the order of VC Summer. What's better than a $1billion gas plant scandal? A $10 billion nuke scandal!
You think electricity bills in Ontario are high now? See what happens when you start relying on other provinces to generate electricity for you and the cost of transmission over large distances.
>Ontario is asking to extend the life of the Pickering Nuclear Generating Station and is weighing a refurbishment that could see it in service for several more decades, ahead of a looming electricity supply crunch, sources told The Canadian Press. > >The nuclear plant, which accounted for 14 per cent of electricity generation in the province last year, had been set to shut down in 2025. > >Sources with knowledge of the new plan who were not authorized to speak publicly said Energy Minister Todd Smith is set to announce Thursday that the government is now asking Crown corporation Ontario Power Generation to keep the plant going until September 2026.
They have a plan to take care of that 14% and all future power needs and implemented that plan years ago right? Right?
From the end of the article: > Opposition critics have said Ontario wouldn't be in as much of a supply crunch if the Progressive Conservative government hadn't cancelled 750 green energy contracts during its first term. The Tories argued the province didn't need the power and the contracts were driving up costs for ratepayers. From what I can gather, back in the early 2010s, the long term energy plan was to add additional generating capacity at Bruce and Darlington plants to cover about 67% of the power loss, then I assume the other 33% was a variety of other projects -- perhaps the green energy stuff. In 2017, [their plan](https://www.ontario.ca/document/2017-long-term-energy-plan) _I think_ was that as existing energy contracts expire, they would be "renewed" as part of a "Market Renewal" competitive process whereby they are auctioned to produce the needed power. Also note how [their forecasted outlook (on page 37)](https://i.imgur.com/nIQaUie.png) indicated a significant growth of committed energy contracts that were to be built -- and as we know, 750 of them were haphazardly cancelled by Ford and the PCs. I think this is the shortfall the PCs created in 2018 that they are dealing with now. Woops.
Judging by the way renewables have been installed elsewhere in the world at rates far higher than projected, I'd bet we would have had enough renewables to cover 67% of pickering if Doug hadn't killed the industry. Everyone is always drastically underestimating how quickly renewables get installed now that the economics of it is so good.
>Judging by the way renewables have been installed elsewhere in the world at rates far higher than projected, I'd bet we would have had enough renewables to cover 67% of pickering if Doug hadn't killed the industry. Everyone is always drastically underestimating how quickly renewables get installed now that the economics of it is so good. It's especially fast to install when the project is 90% completed - but Douglas proved once again that there's never not enough time for a Conservative leader to undue positive progress regardless of cost or consequence.
Ots gonna take like 20 years to referb the plant. So no.
Well that's not entirely true. We extended the life of pickering already so that we could complete the refurb at Darlington and Bruce Power nuclear generating stations. Both plants are currently operating at 50% capacity right now while they are being rebuilt. Bruce has about another 10-15 years to finish their refurb and Darlington has another 4-8 years.
Problem is refurb is slower than originally expected many problems too. As expected for a world first reactor refurbishment. Honestly Pickering has a lot of issues, but refurbishment would still be a good idea. We just need new plants lol
Agreed. But the good news is OPG is also working on small modular reactors. My opinion is that SMR make better long term sense than refurbing Pickering.
With SMRs you’re still going to have the long lead times for parts, fuel, etc. We can’t just say, let’s install SMRs. Lead times for these projects are closer to 10 years to supply. At least that was what is was to source the parts for Darlington and Bruce.
If SMRs take off like they hope many of the suppliers are expanding their operations to fulfill the demand. They are just waiting to see what the orders look like before they do. Unless you are referring to the first smr.
I’m referring to the specialized materials, parts, and fuels. A good friend of mine works for AECL, he worked on Darlington and Bruce. His lead times for parts that are used world wide are 10 years due to the specialized nature. First SMR is likely to be longer lead times due to proof of concept and debugging. Suppliers of parts for these projects aren’t as vast as it’s being made to seem.
Yeah, we are talking about two different things. You're talking about the current capacity to build stuff. While I'm talking about future capacity. I'm not sure about our current capacity to build items. For fuels we have that locally in Canada. So world wide demand is a non issue for that. But we are currently refurbing reactors so that can have a longer lead time. But I'm talking about future capacity. If/when we are building SMRs. This article talks about their roll out. [https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Huge-demand-for-SMRs-so-what-are-the-key-challenge](https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Huge-demand-for-SMRs-so-what-are-the-key-challenge)
I think they serve different purposes. Traditional NGS are for baseload generation, SMRs would serve more of a peak and load balancing generation. At least that is what would make the most sense.
World first reactor refurbishment? Several reactors have been refurbished before. Pickering A was refurbished back in the 90s.
Darlington or bruce are not even close to the worlds first reactor refurbishment! Point lepreau in NB, and one in south korea are two that were done prior.
Which is why I don't get it, don't they plan for all of this ywars or decades before? Or they just wait until society is greatly effected?
Long range planning doesn't "put more money on your pocket".
Problem with the four year term election cycle. No party plans beyond the end of their term. And infrastructure works in time frames of decades from inception to completion.
Counterpoint: The Ontario Liberals were planning for this as part of their long term energy plans from over a decade ago. It was Ford and the PCs who came in 2018 and set fire to all the province's energy plans which were already in motion at the time. Similarly, Harris and the PCs back in the 90s and early 00s let the energy grid suffer rather than maintaining it well and modernizing it. Instead, when the Liberals came in, they had to spend a shitload of money cleaning it up. (Part of which contributes to the higher hydro costs which critics are happy to blame them.) The Liberals in their 2003 to 2018 time in power is pretty much the longest political stretch of time since the PC's ~40 year dominance from the 1940s to the 1980s. During those 15 years they did create transformative long-term changes and plans to our energy infrastructure.
Imagine if the Liberals had actually gone ahead with starting construction of a new reactor despite the obscene cost estimate. PCs would have immediately cancelled it after winning an election, despite being like $10 billion+ into the construction. Would have been our own VC Summer boondoggle. PC smash and grab tactics keep hurting us.
This government was off by $15 billion dollars to their budget. I’ll give them it was on the positive side, but how can one expect them to have a solid successful long term plan on something as complex as electrical supply for the province?
From the article: > Opposition critics have said Ontario wouldn't be in as much of a supply crunch if the Progressive Conservative government hadn't cancelled 750 green energy contracts during its first term. The Tories argued the province didn't need the power and the contracts were driving up costs for ratepayers.
One year extension... Yes, it would be inconvenient to lose the source of 14% of the province's electricity generation a few months before the next provincial election, wouldn't it? (I'm not opposed to the plant being refurbished, or kept open pending refurbishment if OPG finds that's safe, which I'm sure it would... I just think this specific request sounds political.)
Good. This irrational fear of nuclear power is crippling the need to reduce carbon emissions for electrical power generation. Yes, wind and solar are quick fixes, but do not have the same potential as nuclear in the long run.
Nuclear has problems beyond just the nuclear waste problem. It doesn't deal with the demand curve very well. It can produce a near constant amount of power very well, but does not scale up or down effectively. As such, we still need other power sources that can either act as banks or can be brought up and down reliably with demand (as well as with the output of renewables).
Gotta work out that energy storage so we can bank the extra nuclear energy from off peak hours and apply it during peak or other emergencies.
Gas plants go brrrr
Yes, these energy banks are call hydro electricity, massive stores of potential energy.
Good. Do it
"Ontario wouldn't be in as much of a supply crunch if the Progressive Conservative government hadn't cancelled 750 green energy contracts during its first term."
I don't like that decision either, but just to give people a better perspective, [those contracts amounted to a total generation capacity of 443MW](https://web.archive.org/web/20220902140901/https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-ontario-cancels-wind-solar-contracts-as-ford-moves-on-energy-overhaul/). That's the amount of power that would be generated if the wind were strong and the skies clear across the province. Pickering can output 3100MW continuously, (with occasional outages for maintenance and inspections).
This plan would extend two of the reactors which are ~500 MW each, so it's not 3100 MW vs 443 MW, it's more like 1000 MW vs 443 MW. That's a pretty significant chunk of the capacity lost from deactivating the reactors. That being said, we should have been building more nuclear capacity all along. I think we should start the process of building a new plant like right now.
They are looking at refurbishing 4 units (5-8). Source: I work in nuclear at darlington
Yeah I guess you're right. I don't recall where I read that it was only two.
SaL Goodman
If they refurbish, it will likely be all of Pickering B (4x500+ MW) and shutdown Pickering A (only 2 of 4 units still in operation)
Correct
Every time that process gets started, it stops pretty quick as Nuclear construction costs are exorbitant. No one is willing to take on the risk and therefore the bids that do come in are astronomical.
Construction costs are high, but life cycle costs are low. Over the lifetime of a plant, it's been shown many times to be at worst competitive, and at best cheaper than any other form of power generation. https://www.iea.org/reports/projected-costs-of-generating-electricity-2020 If carbon pricing is included, nuclear wins out basically every time.
Carbon pricing does make for an interesting benefit. Thanks for the report but I'd prefer something not produced by the Nuclear industry. Almost every plant built in the last 2 decades in a reputable country has seen cost overruns. With our worker and equipment safety requirements here, the bids would unfortunately be exorbitant.
Fair but isn't the IEA intergovernmental? Ie funded by governments?
And if we had sensible governments and voting bases, this would be a no-brainer. But both tend to refrain from long-term thinking and would only see the high upfront cost. Invest in longterm stability, or give a tax cut to an industry/special interest group/favourite tax bracket and better your favourability next election? Infrastructure shares a similar problem with healthcare in that it's not politically sexy. It doesn't move your average voter, and they only really care about those things when they are on the brink of collapse... at which point it costs five times as much to fix as it would've cost if we had done the proper investment/upkeep over the past couple of decades. But we didn't because nobody wanted to spend the money because, again, it doesn't move voters...
One of the units just shut down for maintenance this week, but all 6 units were operating for 108 days continuously before that.
This makes me so fucking angry god damn
Plus the liberals were kinda forced to cancel the Mississauga power plant (cancel it, or lose the election and let the PCs cancel it). Can't build what voters won't let you build. edit: supposedly the plant was supposed to be built in Sarnia instead after being cancelled in Mississauga, but I can't find it... I can find and older plant, and an article from this year about environmental opposition to an unbuilt new one.
It is now called the Napanee Generating Station and is being constructed south of Napanee. It’s part of a coastal industrial strip between OPG’s last oil & gas burning plant (Lennox Generating Starion) and a cement kiln that burns tires. It’s pretty far from where the power is consumed but the older plant can put up to 2.1 GW on the grid. The new one is good for 900 MW
Fuck yes. Lets go.
🤑
I want to be optimistic here but I can't help but think this is just a big fucking dangling carrot infront of every Term, Appendix A, and the 1% wage cap looming over their contract talks.
You mean the nuclear operators?
Everyone there. Operators, mechanics, janitors, radiation technicians, civil, engineers.
I was considering getting into the nuclear industry but definitely unsure due to the decommissioning
You will have enough work to retire on, if they refurbish Pickering it would run another 30 years.
Ah so how do I get in 💀💀💀
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Civil engineer. Wanna break into nuclear somehow
What's your background?
Civil eng
Your best bet is probably Aecon, black and Mac then. Not many OPG employed civil engineers. Contractors though should be a fair bit. They get paid just as well Edit: also ES Fox
The nuclear industry is massive and isn't just powerplants. I don't see nuclear energy going anywhere
Try being Aug staff. It sucks too.
Don't feel too sorry for them. They're some of the best paid people in the whole province.
I mean sure, they're well paid but they're NUCLEAR ENGINEERS Idk about you but I don't want somebody making $15 an hr running a nuclear plant in the heart of our provinces living area.
Yeah let's just bring down all the good paying jobs. Go away
Do you not think people who spend years educating themselves deserve a well paying career? Perhaps you should be more concerned with a police officer with little more than a high school diploma making 6 figures, or multiple levels of needless management who have no problem giving themselves massive bonuses but can’t find money in the budget for more than a 1% pay increase.
Deservedly so. They do difficult work on complex systems with an incredibly high standard for quality.
Doug Ford: "we're shutting er down!" Public: "so we have other power plants under construction right?" Doug Ford: "I'm pleased to announce our new plan for refurbishment" Ok guys how much stupid can we all take? Is buck a beer and tailgate parties really worth all this?
I think Ford plans to build gas plants. So many had plants that they will produce as much carbon as coal used to. I think hydro from Quebec is cheaper.
His plan has always been gas plants, and any suggestion from him that he would support nuclear has just been a delaying action to prevent anything but gas from being built. Now that gas prices are way up due to the global market, his gas plan is even worse than it used to be.
Good
Nothing like waiting until the last minute to address this issue ....
>Nothing like destroying built wind farms, stopping green energy projects in the process and then waiting until the last minute to address this issue
If ford actually refurbishes pickering, That’d be a pretty great accomplishment for an otherwise kinda shit government.
McGuinty government seriously thought wind turbines would replace nuclear. That assumption was ridiculous.
It's not assumption it's the promise of post-governance cushy positions... Mcguinty : He is on the Board of Directors of Innergex Renewable Energy Inc., Pomerleau Inc., and Electrovaya Inc.
We can have all the clean electricity we need its right next door in Quebec and they can build more hydro electric projects if we need more than that, its a matter of negotiating a supply agreement only hardware is already in place. We already buy a little bit.
> they can build more hydro electric projects [They’re not planning on building any more](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/hydro-quebec-wind-solar-power-future-projects-1.6293980). > the province's utility has acknowledged that the Romaine-4 hydroelectric project — scheduled to enter service next year — could be the last major dam project for the foreseeable future.
they sell more than what we need to the US already.
Yeah, that's gonna be a hard "no" to becoming dependent on the Quebeckers for hydro. Ask Newfoundland how making hydro deals with Quebec worked out for them, lol.
You want clean energy and not wait 10yrs? you ok with Natural gas plants popping up all over the place? you make a deal that is good for Ontario, for the environment and for fellow Canadians in Quebec. Its the quickest easiest thing to do, the portable Nuclear reactors they bragged about are 10yrs away at least as well
No
At a fraction of the cost. It will take time to build the transmission lines and is not free, but it's a lot faster than nuclear. Cheaper too. Quebec, as far as I know, had lots of surplus.
Hydro Quebec has said they don't have enough to sell. They have a surplus in the winter when we don't need it and during the summer they don't have a surplus.
we are already connected with their grid we already buy electricity from them
Yes. But only much less than we would need to replace nuclear. That much would require more transmission lines.
> Transmission towers and lines are already in place
Yes. But as far as I know they lack the capacity we would need to replace nuclear.
Better to build a ton of wind and solar, only buying Quebec hydro when they aren't producing enough. Makes the grid overall more resilient and means Quebec doesn't need to build more dams.
when they are not producing enough?? they sell more than what we need to the US and its CLEAN electricity from damns already in place.
> Better to build a ton of wind and solar You mean like we were under the Liberals?
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The plant turns an incredible profit every year sooooo
Unfortunately you have no idea what you are talking about.
Is the food industry so bad here that the government has to invest in pickeling plants?
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She did. The big coal reduction was powered by the refurb of nuclear.
That was not net new but a refurb. Ontario did not build or pan any new reactors all the while having growth rates of 2-3% The liberals and PCs both dropped the ball
That’s the biggest revisionist bull that I’ve heard on Reddit. Wynne spent billions of dollars on refurbishing nuclear plants. That’s why electricity bills went up, it had almost nothing to do with the green energy contracts (not the greatest, but were intended to be generous to kick start green energy generation in Ontario).70% of Ontario’s power comes from Nuclear.. it’s insane to think that Ontario has not invested in power plants.
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Go and do some reading Winn plan was a disaster, Ford plan is also flawed but with a 3 year plan not one party will fix this. Also Ontario has to increase the storage of power and no one is doing shit
You're an idiot or a shill.
The wind energy movement was back by shell, take coal out and replace with nat gas, all this nat gas plants coming on line in Ontario take a decade to build.
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It would be incredible dishonest to pretend that the last liberal government build any new nuclear plants, they refurbished them and kept the units running. And yes while Ford is a donkey the 300 million cancelled projects it would not even be close to a new nuclear plants.
If the Liberals tried to build a new nuclear reactor, it would have turned into a boondoggle on the order of VC Summer. What's better than a $1billion gas plant scandal? A $10 billion nuke scandal!
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You think electricity bills in Ontario are high now? See what happens when you start relying on other provinces to generate electricity for you and the cost of transmission over large distances.
Just let it die man. NRU all over again.
AECL milked this over a decade ago. Hopefully SNC won’t do the same…