Ontario to address electricity supply

- Duncan and Jake Epp, interim chair of Ontario Power Generation Inc., have scheduled a news conference at Queen's Park to make "an important announcement on electricity supply."

OPG's board of directors voted recently to recommend restarting Unit One at Pickering A. Unit Four went back into service last September for the first time since 1997, when the plant was mothballed.

The company is still assessing the prospects of restarting the two other units at the station.

The project has been plagued with delays and cost over-runs. It was supposed to cost $1.1 billion to get all four units back in operation, with the first unit in service by the end of 2000.

In fact, it cost $1.25 billion and took until September, 2003, to get the first unit back in service. Returning all four units to service could cost $3 billion to $4 billion in total, according to a report submitted in December by a special panel headed by Epp.

As of March 31, 2004, OPG had spent a total of $330 million on Unit One. Sources at the plant say 850 contractors' employees have been working on Unit One recently.

The Liberals are scrambling to find new sources of electricity supply in the province, in part because of their plans to shut down all coal-fired generators by 2007.

But even without the decision to shut the coal plants, the demand for power is outstripping supply. Restarting a second unit at Pickering A would add more than 500 megawatts of generating capacity to the grid. Ontario uses about 20,000 megawatts of power on a day of moderate demand, and 25,000 megawatts or more on a very hot or very cold day when demand is high.

Since last summer, Bruce Power has restarted two units of the Bruce A nuclear station near Kincardine, which was mothballed shortly after Pickering A.

But all of Ontario's nuclear plants are aging, and will reach the end of their normal operating lives by 2020. Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. has proposed building up to eight new nuclear reactors in the province, but no decision on that has been made.