Nobody, not even the provincial government, should be jumping on any Band Wagons these days.
Although Ontario’s Bruce Power says it is looking at building a nuclear power generating plant in northwest Saskatchewan, creating as many as 1,000 permanent jobs, every Saskatchewan resident needs to seek answers to some very basic questions over and above the usual are you in favour of, or opposed to, the generating of nuclear power.
For example; Does Saskatchewan actually need all the new electricity that Bruce Power is proposing to build? SaskPower needs to answer this question and nobody has seen the results of any SaskPower study that reviews the ability of the corporation to meet Saskatchewan’s growing needs by expanding existing or alternative means of power generation - for example clean coal, wind, hydro, or buying excess hydro capacity from Manitoba which currently has a large surplus of power generated from hydro sources.
Second, what is the cost of this new power and who will pay the costs or take the risks? This is a fundamental question since it appears there is quite an appetite to talk about generating electricity, but no appetite to talk about who will pay for it.
Bruce Power did a study; they call it a “feasibility study” and yet the publically released information doesn’t mention costs, or at what price the electricity needs to be sold for to make Bruce a profit. Certainly you can’t determine if something is “feasible” if you don’t know what the costs are going to be and what the price tag will be on the product when it is sold.
Today, we don’t know if the price Bruce Power will put on its electricity generation is “feasible”, or if SasKPower would find that price affordable or acceptable.
At the same time, since we know from other construction projects, that cost overruns are common place in the nuclear industry, we need assurance that SaskPower (which we assume would purchase the electricity generated by the Bruce Power plant) would not be on the hook for any construction cost overruns. Bruce Power had a project in Ontario that they said would cost $4 billion; it came in at $14 billion. The overrun increased the cost of power to Ontario residents.
The power plant produces waste. Another question that must be answered is who is responsible for disposing of the waste and at what cost. In Ontario Bruce Power’s deal has the Ontario government responsible for the waste. Is that a deal we can live with in Saskatchewan?
And, finally - at least as far as the plant is concerned - it could have an operating life of 60 years (with at least two rebuilds in each of year 20 and year 40). The plant will be radioactive in 60 years (if not before). Are the costs of decommissioning included in the costs of operating and therefore included in the price of electricity sold to Saskatchewan people, or is this something that future taxpayers are going to have to deal with?
Simple questions about cost that the provincial government, on behalf of Saskatchewan people, should be answering. Although they’ve had several weeks to either answer the questions (already asked by the NDP in the Legislature) or indicate how they intend to answer the questions, the SaskParty government has failed to do anything of the kind, choosing instead to be cheerleaders for the project.
There are other questions, of course that need to be answered, for example, has the government reviewed the most recent studies on the North Saskatchewan River which show that the watershed is significantly “stressed” at this point in time, without any new developments being considered.
And, of course, if Bruce Power is going to generate electricity purely for export to Alberta, why does this have to be at the cost and risk of SaskPower, its customers, and the taxpayers of Saskatchewan.
Saskatchewan needs its provincial government to undertake an independent review of the Bruce Power proposal before it gets on this nuclear bandwagon.
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