Refurbishing Pickering nuclear station is right decision for Ontario

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By Chris Keefer

This morning, the Ontario government announced it’s going ahead with refurbishment of the Pickering Nuclear Generating Station, thus enabling another 30 years’ supply of more zero-carbon electric power than Ontario’s entire output at Niagara Falls.

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For three years, the lone voice openly advocating refurbishment was Canadians for Nuclear Energy, a small volunteer group of climate, labour, health and environmental activists that I have the honour of heading. Many people agreed it would be folly to retire a facility that produces 15 per cent of the province’s electricity carbon-free. But most believed our efforts to influence a change of course were hopeless: We were told Ontario Power Generation had made up its mind and its decision was final. Planning the decommissioning was already underway, in fact.

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But four over-riding concerns drove us to attempt the seemingly impossible: climate change, air quality, medical isotopes and high-quality employment. Our main source of inspiration? Ontario’s 2005-2014 coal phase-out. The province once relied on coal for 25 per cent of its electricity needs. This resulted in high CO2 emissions and air pollution that contributed to smog days and, according to the Ontario Medical Association, premature deaths. But nuclear power provided the cure. The restart of six CANDU reactors in the early 2000s that had been mothballed during the 1990s at Bruce and Pickering supplied 90 per cent of the electricity required to permanently remove coal from the provincial grid. This allowed Ontario to join a small group of regions that have achieved a world-class, ultra-low carbon electricity grid.

CANDU reactors are actually designed for a mid-life refurbishment, akin to an engine swap-out, to extend their operating lives a further 30 to 40 years. Ontario has been refurbishing the 12 CANDU reactors at the Bruce and Darlington nuclear generating stations over the past decade but had abandoned a similar plan for Pickering. Not because the reactors were too old — four of Pickering’s reactors are the same age as sister reactors at Bruce currently under refurbishment — but because the experts had judged we just didn’t need more electricity: little growth was expected on the Ontario grid and in any case a fleet of natural gas power plants was underutilized and available.

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Cobalt-60 made at Pickering sterilizes 20% of the world’s single-use medical devices

We rejected that rationale. Natural gas does burn cleaner than coal but is still a significant source of both CO2 and the chemical precursors of smog. And given climate-change commitments, air quality concerns and the 21st-century need to “electrify everything,” it’s clear our grid will need to grow by 200-300 per cent over the next two or three decades. Shutting off Pickering therefore makes no sense.

Nor were the medical professionals in our group happy with the prospect of losing Pickering’s share of global medical isotope production. Cobalt-60 made at Pickering sterilizes 20 per cent of the world’s single-use medical devices.

Our group never gave up. We rallied at Queen’s Park, consulted with energy and climate experts and produced a 32-page policy report detailing the facts as we saw them. Building alliances with other civil society organizations in the climate, labour and health-care sectors, we were able to meet with senior members of the provincial and federal governments to get our report into the hands of key decision-makers.

Ultimately, they seem to agree we are going to need every last bit of clean electricity, not just to meet our climate goals but also to provide power for a growing economy. These changing facts on the ground, combined (we have to believe!) with our advocacy, led to today’s historic announcement.

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Will the Pickering refurbishment be too costly? It will not be cheap and everyone knows how unreliable government cost estimates normally are. But, bucking that trend, CANDU refurbishment megaprojects have been coming in ahead of schedule and under budget. Indeed, OPG and Bruce Power are fast earning the reputation of being among the most competent project managers in the Western world. And despite the refurbishments at Darlington and Bruce, nuclear is still Ontario’s second cheapest source of power after legacy hydroelectric dams.

Pickering’s refurbishment is an investment in Ontario that stands to bring high returns in the form of climate remediation, air quality, medical isotopes, good jobs and reliable, affordable electric power. This decision is vindication that our three long years of advocacy in the public interest were not in vain.

Chris Keefer, a physician, is president of Canadians for Nuclear Energy and director of Doctors for Nuclear Energy.

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