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I think OPG already bought all the materials to
refurbish all three reactors.
The remaining work is to install and
commission.
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Wednesday, July 07, 2004 2:52
PM
Subject: [cdn-nucl-l] A 'go' for
Pickering A Unit 1
Will this likely be better managed? Or 2 and 3 may be
lost.
Regards, Jim
==============
Ontario to repair, reopen
nuclear plant
By RICHARD MACKIE
Globe and Mail Update
POSTED
AT 9:58 AM EDT Wednesday, Jul 7, 2004
Ontario's Liberal
government announced the controversial decision Wednesday
to continue the
province's reliance on nuclear power by rebuilding one
nuclear-generating
plant at Pickering and possibly rebuilding two others.
Energy Minister
Dwight Duncan made the expected announcement after receiving
a report from
Ontario Power Generation predicting the plant could be
delivering power by
September next year.
Current projections indicate that Ontario has
ample supplies of electricity
this year, but there will be a growing gap
between available generating
capacity and demand for power in future
years.
Several environmental groups have opposed the project,
contending that it is
time for Ontario to put more reliance on conservation
and on renewable
sources of power, such as solar and wind.
They
point to cost overruns in building the four units at Darlington and
in
rebuilding Unit 4 at the Pickering A installation as reasons against
relying
on nuclear plants.
OPG won the government's approval to
refurbish the plant with the argument
that the energy would be cheaper than
that generated by the most likely
alternative, natural gas, and would help
hold down overall energy costs to
consumers.
Last year, OPG used
nuclear plants at Pickering B and Darlington to provide
27 per cent of its
power. Including plants operated by Bruce Power, nuclear
generation
supplies 40 per cent of the provinces electricity.
The refurbishment of
the plant, Unit 1 at Pickering A, will cost an
estimated $900-million.
About $410-million has been spent already as part of
an earlier project to
refurbish all four units at Pickering A. Keeping it in
the partly completed
state has been costing about $25-million a month.
Costs of shutting the
plant and decontaminating the nuclear installation
probably would far
exceed the $490-million projected to be needed to bring
Unit 1 back into
service.
A decision on whether to refurbish Units 2 and 3 will be made
after OPG and
the government assess the experience in rebuilding Unit
1.
The four units at Pickering A were shut down 7˝years ago. A plan to
rebuild
the four units at the same time fell apart when there were extreme
cost
overruns and delays because of a lack of planning and advance
engineering,
according to a report prepared by OPG chairman Jake
Epp.
"I am convinced that OPG has learned from its past mistakes. We
are
approaching the Unit 1 project much differently," Mr. Epp, a former
federal
Progressive Conservative energy minister, told reporters on
Wednesday.
Mr. Epp also was a member of a committee led by former
deputy prime minister
John Manley that recommended refurbishment of Unit 1
as long as essential
preparation work and planning was completed by
OPG.
Critics have pointed to the problems in building the Darlington
plant. When
it was completed in 1992, it cost $14.4-billion, compared to
the projected
cost of $4-billion.
At Pickering A's Unit 4, the cost
of refurbishment rose to $1.25-billion
from an original estimate of
$457-million. The startup was more than two
years behind
schedule.
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