I keep running across articles and viewpoints that seemingly take it for granted that nuclear power in Ontario is expensive. The “expensive” adjective is thrown in without thought as to it’s self-evident truth. Just yesterday I read a Toronto Sun Editorial posted on December 29th, titled The importance of nuclear power that, while acknowledging that nuclear allowed Ontario to remove all vestiges of coal use, almost as an aside throws in the “expensive” claim.
“Nuclear plants are expensive and have chronically gone massively over budget in the construction phase.”
Perhaps the folks over at the Sun (and other newspapers and media types) should do their research before making such throw-away comments.
Just a couple of years ago, the Ontario Auditor General audited Ontario’s energy state of affairs and composed a comprehensive report of the findings in Chapter 3 of the 2015 Annul Report (pdf). Figure 5 reveals a cost breakdown of all power production technologies and nuclear power production comes in second behind hydro … both below the average cost of 8 cents per kWh. Thus nuclear, providing a clean. reliable 60% of total power supply, and hydro, providing a clean, reliable 25% of supply, are both produced at less than the average cost of electricity? Is it possible that the remaining 15% of power supplied is above average cost? Well duh! Yes indeed! *Much* above average in fact! The higher-than-average sources even includes the “fill-in” for wind and solar when intermittency kicks in — natural gas — supposedly a low cost supply but not so much when compared with nuclear and hydro power.
Please can we have some balanced perspectives? Can media reporters kindly do their homework? Just lay off this “nuclear is so expensive” crap! Nuclear is *not* the power supply technology that is driving energy costs up. Perhaps write some exposes about those power supply technologies.
Bright Side Energy Viewpoints 