Nuclear reactor

Nuclear reactor

In his letter of Feb. 9, 1996, entitled Nuclear power, Keith
Bradley of Atomic Energy of Canada Limited makes several
statements nobody would dare make publicly in Canada. I shudder
to imagine what he tells Indonesians in private.

For example, he says "Reviews of the safety of Canada's CANDU
nuclear power program...by several independent public
commissions, including Greenpeace and other NGOs, ...have found
that the nuclear power plants are safe and economic." Of course,
Greenpeace and other environmental NGOs, including Energy Probe,
have found no such thing. Indeed, the only recent independent
public commission was canceled before it could issue any report
at all. That commission was set up to review Ontario Hydro's plan
to build ten more CANDU reactors. It was canceled when Ontario
Hydro decided to build none, and formally withdrew its proposal.
By that time, the commission had received evidence from
Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, Energy Probe and others,
showing that the plants are neither acceptably safe nor economic.

It is true, as Bradley says, that the laws of the province of
Ontario required Ontario Hydro to pay the full costs of that
hearing, including lawyers and expert witnesses representing both
my organization and Bradley's, and that these costs totaled tens
of millions dollars. But those tens of millions saved Ontario
from wasting tens of billions on more CANDU reactors. Indonesia
would do well to imitate Ontario's recent success at canceling
nuclear expansion, rather than imitating our earlier mistakes.

Not surprisingly, Bradley doesn't mention that Ontario Hydro
has recently admitted that its twelve CANDU reactors are only
worth about half of what they paid for them (even after
depreciation), or that Hydro has begun shutting down reactors
prematurely in order to safe on repair costs, or that Hydro has
been forced to pay some of its largest corporate customers'
millions of dollars a year to prevent those customers from
generating their own cheaper power with gas turbines, instead of
buying Ontario Hydro's nuclear-inflated power. And he doesn't
mention that Ontario Hydro's recent rate increases, made
necessary by the debt on their CANDU reactors, prompted the
government of Ontario to set up an Advisory Committee to try to
figure out how to introduce competition into the monopoly
electricity system. Here in Ontario, we increasingly refer to
CANDU reactors as "stranded assets" - stations that could not pay
their own interest charges if customers had the right to shop
around for power.

Bradley points out, correctly, that Canada's largest city,
Toronto, is within 50 kilometers of over half of Canada's nuclear
power plants. But he doesn't mention that Canada has a special
federal law that prevents the victims of any CANDU nuclear
accident from suing for damages.

NORMAN RUBIN

Director, Nuclear Research

and Senior Policy Analyst

Toronto