Ontario to Embark on New Nuclear Build

From today's Toronto Star:

The provincial government will announce tomorrow that Ontario is embracing more nuclear power plants, sources told the Toronto Star.

Premier Dalton McGuinty has privately spoken of his government's plans to confidants for days, insiders say.
In an off-the-record speech on Saturday night in Ottawa to the secretive Bilderberg group, McGuinty discussed the pros and cons of more nuclear plants.

While he did not divulge the government's plans to that audience of 160 business and political leaders, the premier privately admitted the public will officially learn of the plans tomorrow when his government announces its long-awaited response to the Ontario Power Authority's report on the province's energy supply mix.

That report, issued last December, said the province would need 12,400 megawatts of new or refurbished nuclear capacity. Later in the article...

His address came one day after Energy Minister Dwight Duncan confirmed that the Liberal government was being forced to break its 2003 election promise to close all of Ontario's coal-fired generating plants by 2007. That promise was later amended to 2009.

On Friday, Duncan said that even the 2009 date could not be achieved.

Better get started building those new reactors right away. Back in March, my colleague Janice Cane posted about the formation of Team CANDU, an industry consortium formed with tomorrow's announcement in mind.

UPDATE: More local color from The Jawa Report.

Technorati tags: Nuclear Energy, Nuclear Power, Environment, Energy, Politics, Technology, Economics, Ontario, Canada

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