Real cost of nuclear unclear
By Murray Mandryk, Saskatchewan News Network April 23, 2009
So what is it going to cost us? What guarantee do we really have that nuclear reactors in Saskatchewan won't come with a $14 billion price tag similar to Canada's last nuclear plant built Darlington, Ont.?
But even if costs are only the $8 billion to $10 billion for two 1,000-megawatt reactors, as Bruce Power suggested in its own studies, what additional costs for electricity does that entail for Saskatchewan's one million people? Would a power purchase agreement stick us with buying the excess electricity that a privately owned nuclear power plant is unable to sell?
Setting aside the pie-in-sky notion of selling the excess power from a nuclear plant to the Alberta oilsands, do we really have a market for such expensive electricity? Wouldn't energy-hungry Americans be far more interested in buying much cheaper hydropower from Manitoba? Who pays to upgrade Saskatchewan's transmission lines to move the electricity?
And with SaskPower rates rising by 13 per cent in a week and with annual increases expected for the foreseeable future, shouldn't the issue of costs be a much bigger concern?
The more you look at it, the more you have to like the Opposition's proposal of a public hearing to look at all potential energy sources -- nuclear, clean coal, wind, solar, bio-mass and conservation. We need to comparison shop. In fact, the most disconcerting aspect of last week's Leader-Post poll on nuclear power wasn't the respondents' admitted lack of knowledge of nuclear issues.
It's that a mere 6.9 per cent of the one-third who opposed a nuclear reactor did so because of the potential cost.
Other issues ranging from safety and waste disposal (48.5 per cent), general opposition to nuclear power (21.2 per cent) and the preference for other sources (16.6 per cent) were cited as better reasons to oppose nuclear power.
So why haven't nuclear costs yet been a bigger issue with usually frugal Saskatchewan consumers? Perhaps some people have bought into the rather nebulous suggestion by the government that "all future energy development is expensive."
It implies nuclear is as cost-efficient as other options, although the experience elsewhere suggests something quite different.
For example, an April 2004 freedom of information request to Ontario Hydro revealed that Darlington cost $14.3 billion -- $5.1 billion for construction and design, $6.2 billion in interest, $1.4 billion for commissioning and $1.5 billion for heavy water. These massive costs translate in $4,085 per kilowatt of electricity produced at the plant, excluding the cost of decommissioning the facility.
Of course, this isn't what the Saskatchewan government is eager to tell you or what the nuclear industry wants you to hear. Instead, you're more likely to hear propaganda about how a new Candu 6 reactor would cost only $2,845 per kilowatt (nuclear power apparently has magically become one-third less expensive in the past 20 years).
But what guarantees do Saskatchewan people have that there is a market for the excess energy produced? If we can't sell it, what happens then? Do we simply move to nuclear and shut down the entire coal-fired power production in southeastern Saskatchewan?
When the Uranium Development Partnership talks about 3,000 construction job and $12 billion in economic activity, has it factored in the potential job losses in Estevan and elsewhere?
What about Premier Brad Wall's desire to become a world leader in clean coal technology? And with all the dirty coal that Americans now burn, wouldn't they be more interested in our work in this area than some far-off plan we have to build a nuclear reactor?
What will be the real costs of a nuclear reactor?
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