Ontario’s Electricity Future – Nuclear or Renewable?
Did you know Ontario is the 2nd most nuclearized jurisdiction on the planet? And that Ontario has 20 nuclear reactors (18 working)? And that they’re all on our Great Lakes from which 40 million people draw their drinking water?
And that they’re all old and set to shut down within the next decade? And that 2.2 million people live within 30 km of Pickering, more than twice as many as any other nuclear station in North America? And that we subsidize that plant $900 million a year just to keep it open? And that it’s already 45 years old, though designed to last only 30 years?
Ontario is at a cross roads – we can go the route that our provincial gov’t is proposing: to extend the life of the Pickering reactors till 2024, while rebuilding the 4 Darlington and 6 Bruce nuclear reactors, locking us into nuclear till 2050 and beyond. Meanwhile the deadly waste gathers with no solution in sight.
Or we can shutter our nuclear reactors at the end of their design life and replace them with 100% renewable electricity. With a combination of water power imports from Quebec, conservation and made-in-ON green energy, we could green our grid at lower cost and lower risk than rebuilding our nuclear fleet.
We have a choice – nuclear or renewable.
The Ontario Clean Air Alliance, a grassroots initiative, was behind ON’s coal phase out. Now we’ve taken on big nuclear. Come find out more about our strategy to move ON to a 100% renewable grid.
Sign our petition to close Pickering when its licence expires in 2018.
Angela Bischoff is our Thursday Night Lecture host on Thursday April 21st. 2016.
