As far back as 1916, experts issued warnings about the potential for huge cost overruns and management troubles at the crown corporation that generates most of Ontario's electricity.
Repairs to four units at Pickering will cost about $4 billion instead of the $780 million originally forecast, and the job may not be completed until 2008 � six years behind schedule, says the report, by former federal energy minister Jake Epp.
Carr says the major problem is that OPG is simply too big and complex to manage. OPG has finally come to grief because of the decision, in the 1960s, to rely heavily on nuclear generating stations. Morale at Pickering plummeted; many employees simply let the new managers self-destruct.
This worked, albeit expensively, as long as Hydro could depend on relatively simple power sources like falling water or burning coal, he says. To keep the system reliable, it built more generating capacity than was usually required. Electricity rates were kept artificially low, and debt piled up.
Quebec, British Columbia and Manitoba have power corporations similar to Ontario's but they get by thanks to abundant water resources. Once Ontario switched to Candu reactors, however, the game couldn't continue here. Ultimately, managers couldn't paper over problems with cash.
But the major problem is that running the corporation, with its mix of hydro, coal- and gas-fired and nuclear stations, is simply too big and complex to have in one heap.
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Nuclear power plants are currently too much for OPG to handle and the problem could be solved by eliminating the power plants altogether. We could switch to wind and solar power. Or perhaps hydro power, if a suitable source can be found. A group of brilliant scientist in the United States recently developed a technology that allowed solar energy to be produced at a hundredth of the cost of conventional solar power generators by focussing the heat generated by the sun using a set of mirrors positioned to reflect the light onto a Sterling engine. One of these devices costs only about $300 dollars and can power a large home. If the $780 M the government was initially going to spend on the Pickering power plants was put into these devices they could buy 2.6 M devices (once they become commercially available) and produce almost 150% of the power needed for the city of Toronto. Notwithstanding the amount of devices they could buy with the $6 Billion they have to spend now just to keep the Pickering Power Plant going.
Once fusion power plants can be produced, estimated to be between 5 and 25 years from now, there will be a radiation-free alternative to nuclear fission that is much more efficient.
TO BE CONTINUED: 3 more sections involving Discover� Magazine articles concerning: Cheaper Solar Power, Dangers of Nuclear Fission plants, Development of Nuclear Fusion Plants.
And including information from: the website of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission - (http://www.nuclearsafety.gc.ca/eng/)
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