Ontario Considers Building a Nuclear Plant

TORONTO - - With Ontario on the brink of an energy supply squeeze, and some of its aging nuclear plants facing an uncertain future, moves are under way in the province, Canada's most populous, to build the first nuclear reactor in North America in more than two decades.

Memories of last August's power blackout, which was felt in a wide swath of southern Ontario as well as in the Northeast and Midwest of the United States, have only increased pressure for the province to become more self-sufficient.

Ontario's energy minister, Dwight Duncan, said in a recent interview that in any overhaul of the power sector, the province would have to consider nuclear energy. "The use of nuclear power is controversial," he said. "We have some significant decisions to make."

Introducing a bill to streamline regulation of the power sector and to attract private sector investment, Mr. Duncan said recently, "It is absolutely critical that we move forward quickly to boost new supply, increase conservation and maintain price stability for consumers."

A new nuclear plant would most likely be built on the shore of one of the Great Lakes, where Ontario's three existing nuclear plants are.

It would be the first in North America since confidence in atomic energy was shattered by an accident at the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania in 1979.

Energy policy in Canada is largely in the hands of the provinces, and a committee set up by the Ontario government to examine power supplies concluded in March that "the right nuclear strategy will play a key role in ensuring that Ontario has reliable, competitively priced power over the long term." The panel, whose chairman was John Manley, a former deputy prime minister of Canada, said that the province "must begin planning now to supplement and ultimately replace its aging nuclear assets with new and better generations of nuclear technology."

Mr. Duncan, Ontario's energy minister, said recently that his government would probably decide this fall on the future role of nuclear power in the province.

According to Roger W. Gale, chief executive of GF Energy, an industry consulting firm based in Washington with clients on both sides of the border, while "the United States is at the study stage, Canada could potentially be at the doing stage."

Canadian authorities are more likely to support the nuclear industry than their American counterparts, he and other experts said. Ontario is facing tight energy supplies, and a government-owned Canadian company ready and eager for new business has supplied every existing nuclear reactor in the country. The approval and other regulatory processes for new nuclear plants is also simpler in Canada. And public opposition will probably be more muted north of the border.

The last fulfilled order for a nuclear power plant in the United States was in 1973; Canada's last was in 1978. Since then, almost all sizable generating stations built in either place have been fueled either by coal or, more recently, natural gas, though several other countries, like China, Japan, India and Russia, have continued to build nuclear plants.

Ontario's existing nuclear power plants have been dogged by problems. Several units of the Pickering plant, east of Toronto on the shores of Lake Ontario, and the Bruce plant, on the shores of Lake Huron, have not been restarted since they were taken out of service seven years ago for safety reasons.

Nuclear power accounts for 45 percent of electricity generating capacity in Ontario, but 14 percent in Canada.

That compares with 20 percent in the United States, where several proposals for new nuclear plants are inching forward. Various consortiums - among them, one that includes the Exelon Corporation of Chicago and the Entergy Corporation of New Orleans, two of the country's largest nuclear plant owners - are in the early stages of applying for licenses to build and operate new plants.

In May, the Department of Energy agreed to finance half the $4.25 million cost of a detailed study by a different group, led by the Tennessee Valley Authority, to build two nuclear generating units at a site near Hollywood, Ala.

Construction of any American projects is not expected to start before 2010 at the earliest, however, said J. Scott Peterson, a vice president at the Nuclear Energy Institute, a trade group in Washington.

The sense of urgency is considerably greater in Canada, where, experts say, construction could begin a couple of years earlier.