We can’t afford Doug Ford’s nuclear fantasy

[Oscar]

We can’t afford Doug Ford’s nuclear fantasy

[ https://www.thespec.com/opinion/contrib ... 7ebb1.html ]

February 26, 2025 - by Mark Winfield

EXCERPT: "Doug Ford’s proposal to bury Highway 401 lanes from Brampton or Mississauga in the west to Scarborough or Markham in the east, with an estimated price tag of at least $100 billion, has been described as being a “fantasy that would bankrupt” the province.

Although the 401 proposal has drawn the most attention among the Ford government’s increasingly grandiose infrastructure proposals, it actually isn’t the largest.

That status goes to the government’s plans to dramatically expand the province’s now aging fleet of nuclear reactors. A 10,000-megawatt (MW) facility proposed just before the election call for Wesleyville, Ont., between Coburg and Kingston, could break the $200-billion mark in capital costs alone.

That estimate is based on the actual costs of the most recently completed nuclear construction project in North American, the Vogtle plant in Georgia. That facility, completed last summer, came in at $50 billion (Canadian) for 2,200 MW capacity. A simple extrapolation of those costs to the Wesleyville project would give a figure of over $200 billion.

But there is even more to the Ford government’s nuclear plan.

A proposed new 4,800-MW facility at the Bruce nuclear site, would come in around $100 billion on the same basis. New estimates by the U.S. Tennessee Valley Authority on the costs of the type of the four 300-MW reactors proposed for the Darlington site suggests costs in the range of $25 billion. . . . . "

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