The investor crowd and now both Prime Minister Mark Carney and Ontario Premier Doug Ford, are pressing very hard to bring in more nuclear power, claiming it is affordable and the answer to fighting the climate crisis. Ford has repeatedly called nuclear power “clean and affordable.” That’s like calling lasagna and cheesecake weight loss foods.
Last August, Ford announced the biggest expansion of private power in Ontario’s history. In Ford’s announcement he uses the word affordable nine times.
According to Ontario’s Financial Accountability Office, Ford is spending up to $7 billion a year hiding and protecting former Premier Mike Harris’ hydro deregulation scheme.
Currently Ford guarantees the profits and taxpayers get the bill. Ford’s hydro scheme also involves public-private partnership (P3) financing. The record of P3s around the world is dismal. P3s are the most insidious form of privatization.
Is Ford going to use the public treasury to subsidize the inevitable rate increases from private nuclear plants too?
Showing exactly how expensive nuclear power is, the $34 billion debt at Ontario Hydro was almost entirely nuclear debt.
Harris claimed Hydro was so badly in debt as to be bankrupt. This claim was proven false by the final Ontario Hydro financial report in March of 1999 which showed that $1 billion of Hydro’s debt had been paid down and was on track to be paid off in 20 years. At the time critics said: “wouldn’t we all like to have a 20-year mortgage on our home because then you have an asset that serves you well!”
Harris then spent millions on an ad campaign promising “lower rates” from his hydro deregulation legislation, as well as promising that “nothing will go wrong.” Under Harris’s corporate hydro for profit scheme, By 2007 rates doubled. By 2010 rates had tripled, and by 2018 rates had quadrupled.
During the Hydro One court case Justice Arthur Gans asked the Harris lawyer: “How did you expect to pay off the debt by separating the revenue stream from the asset? Why did you separate the debt from the asset?” Without batting an eye, the Harris lawyer said: “To make it easier to sell.”
Hard to believe but the privatization of the Bruce nuclear plant in a long-term lease was a far worse deal than the Hwy 407 privatization. The Harris government privatized the profits but kept public the debt, the risks and the pollution. It was a fabulous deal for private companies but a complete rip off for the people of Ontario.
The mining and production of nuclear fuel is a very dirty business and very carbon intensive. Private investors never talk about the waste problem. Nuclear power is also very inefficient; a large chunk of inefficient nuclear power is lost to heat and line loss. Where is the conservation? You will never see private investors call for conservation. using less power from real conservation measures, means less demand and less profit.
If every driver in Ontario plugged in their electric vehicle after work at the same time when demand is already high, the system would fail quite dramatically. The needed infrastructure build will require massive investment in generation, transmission, and particularly distribution, including charging stations and home charging units.
A number of countries have recognized the fact that the transition over to conservation and renewables will never happen under a for- profit system and have brought in public green power companies. Australia has and as has nine of the top ten European countries who are leading the energy transition to renewables. These countries all have one thing in common: A publicly owned renewable energy company driving the process.
Conservation is ten times less expensive than building new generation plants and the cost of wind and solar has dropped dramatically, with many other countries taking the publicly owned conservation and renewables path, so should we.
Ford’s record expansion of private for-profit nuclear power will drive rates up and be very expensive for both the public and business.
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