On budget busters

Sadly, the Sask Party's obsession with nuclear power hasn't yet led to much substantive debate as to why on earth Saskatchewan would want to bind itself either to privately-funded power generally or a nuclear reactor in particular. But Konrad Yakabuski offers a perspective from a province which should already know better on the latter point:

Okay, so nuclear plants don't produce greenhouse gas emissions. And their other advantages are what, exactly?

Well before any of the planned nuclear plants get built - but possibly long enough after it will be too late to stop them from going up - the economics and logistics of wind energy, solar power and carbon capture will have evolved favourably enough to have changed the game.

"Within three to seven years, unsubsidized solar power could cost no more to end customers in many markets, such as California and Italy, than electricity generated by fossil fuels or by renewable alternatives to solar," according to an article in the June issue of The McKinsey Quarterly.

So why bet on a horse - nuclear power - that eats budgets the way Homer Simpson downs doughnuts, and leaves behind the most deadly waste known to man - waste for which there is still no permanent disposal solution?...

That great sucking sound you hear is proposed or in-the-works nuclear plants blowing their budgets everywhere. Areva's first EPR project, in Finland, is two years behind schedule and at least $1.5-billion over budget. Its second, in France's Normandy region, is headed in the same direction, after construction stalled for several weeks recently.

It's not just the skyrocketing price of basic materials, such as concrete and steel, that's driving costs upward. So-called third generation reactors - such Areva's EPR and Atomic Energy's ACR-1000 - are still works in progress. And the two decades during which nuclear power faced desert-like prospects has left the industry grappling with a severe shortage of skilled workers.

In the United States, the escalating cost of nuclear power has led Warren Buffet to reconsider the idea. In January, Berkshire Hathaway-owned MidAmerican Energy Holdings suspended plans to build a nuclear plant in Idaho saying it "does not make economic sense." Still, Congress is offering loan guarantees and tax credits worth billions to electricity providers that take the nuclear plunge. If that doesn't work, Areva's running a television ad using the 1980 disco hit Funky Town to get North Americans to buy into a new nuclear age.

The ad may make some nostalgic, but it only reminds us that nuclear power, like our disco phase, may be a memory best kept repressed.

Unfortunately, it doesn't look like many Canadian provinces have learned any lessons - either based on their own past experience, or based on a continud global pattern of nuclear power costing far more than originally claimed. And for Saskatchewan, the Wall government's determination to push a nuclear megaproject with no regard for the consequences can only bring back memories of a time slightly further on in the '80s from which the province has just recently recovered.