Times & Transcript | Readers' Forum
As published on page D7 on May 17, 2005

Lepreau costs can be kept down

To The Editor:

Recently a well known anti-nuclear personality published a guest column in your paper (N.B. must watch its wallet). The very first line made the claim, "When nuclear proponents toss dollar figures around, watch your wallet. They are experts at costing you more than you ever dreamed of paying."

To counter his arguments let's take a look at the newest CANDU reactors that have been built. Cernavoda, Wolsong (2-4), and Quishan (4-5) were brought into service between 1996 and 2003. All of these six nuclear reactors were built on time and on budget. The Quishan units were in fact under budget and constructed in world-record time!

AECL is continuing this record with a second Cernavoda unit which is currently on-time and, yes, on-budget for completion.

Notice none of these reactors are being built in Canada. Here reactor costs have traditionally been high. The difference between here and the overseas success is plain to see. Political manoeuvring and poor business decisions are the major hindrance to on-time and on-cost nuclear projects.

Consider the Darlington nuclear station in Ontario which almost doubled in cost from initial estimates. About 40 per cent of the total (or almost all of the increase) was in interest charges incurred during long, politically motivated delays.

Closer to today, Ontario's Pickering Unit 1 is on schedule to be returned to service by September with the only cost increase well within the expected range for any large capital project (nuclear or not).

Give Lepreau the same political backing as the overseas projects, take the same diligent engineering approach being used on Pickering Unit 1 and the workers of Point Lepreau will continue to produce their 630 MW of energy cheaply and safely.

Andrew Daley,
Toronto, Ont.