This article was originally published in Canadian Dimension on June 2, 2025 and complements ‘The Ontario NDP Must Invest in Public Nuclear Power,’ by James Adair published on September 12, 2025.
The last time the nuclear industry got its way in Ontario, the province’s erstwhile publicly-owned electrical utility, Ontario Hydro, spent over two decades building 20 nuclear reactors. It was a mashup of missed deadlines, cost overruns and a troubling pattern of declining nuclear performance.
Even more troubling, the last generation of nuclear reactors forced Ontario Hydro to the edge of bankruptcy. It saddled the province with a mountain of nuclear debt that we are still paying off.
The Ford government is now repeating those costly mistakes in what amounts to the largest expansion of the nuclear industry in Canada’s history—risking a blunder of historic proportions.
Past debt due
In 1999 Ontario Hydro collapsed under the staggering weight of its nuclear debt. When the account books were opened, the reality hit home. At the time, Hydro’s assets were valued at $17.2 billion but its debt amounted to $38.1 billion. The government was faced with a stranded debt of $20.9 billion.
In response, the provincial government split Ontario Hydro into five separate organizations. Ontario Power Generation (OPG) took over the generating facilities (hydro, coal, gas, nuclear) and Hydro One, later privatized, inherited the transmission grid. The government was aware that any future hopes of privatizing the successors of Ontario Hydro would be scuttled if investors had to absorb the debt, so it was transferred to Ontario families through special charges on electricity bills (until 2018) and through the tax system. It was the world’s largest nuclear bailout. One we are still paying for.
The Ontario Electrical Financial Corporation (OEFC) is one of the five Ontario Hydro successor entities. It was set up to manage and service the long-term debt of the former Ontario Hydro. According to its 2024 Annual Report the total debt, 25 years later, is still $12.1 billion. In 2024 OEFC paid $626 million in interest charges alone, an amount that is recouped from taxpayers and ratepayers. In its financial statements the organization notes that its longest-term debt issue matures on December 2, 2050. In 2050 Ontario will still be paying the debt of the nuclear program of the 1970s and 80s.
Repeating past mistakes
Ontario Power Generation, which is responsible for about half of the province’s electricity generation, is owned by the government of Ontario.
OPG is leading Ontario’s nuclear resurrection. It is aided and abetted by the Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO), another surviving offshoot of the collapse of Ontario Hydro. And it is directed by a series of government policy announcements and legislative initiatives—directives that put nuclear onto the fast-track while shouldering clean, cost-effective and safe renewables to the side of the road.
It is an astonishing coup. Without putting up their own money, and without bearing the financial risks, the nuclear industry has captured Ontario’s energy policy and turned Crown agencies into nuclear cheerleaders.
Even a few years ago this would have seemed impossible. Catastrophic nuclear accidents at Three Mile Island in the United States, Chornobyl in Ukraine and Fukushima in Japan had severely tarnished the nuclear safety image. All around the world the cost overruns and lengthy build times of nuclear plants had chilled utility and government interest in new projects. In Europe only one nuclear plant has been built and come online since the late 1990s, in Finland.
Safety and operational issues also plagued the industry. The four units at Pickering had been shut down because of safety concerns—and then shut down again. By 1993, the performance of the Bruce Nuclear Generating Station, located on the shores of Lake Huron, had drastically declined. In 1997, Ontario Hydro announced that it would temporarily shut down its oldest seven reactors. By that time, the escalating costs of the newest reactors at the Darlington site were already a cautionary tale. Originally billed in 1978 at $3.9 billion the final cost in 1993 had more than tripled to $14.4 billion (1993 dollars).
The first generation of nuclear plants had clearly demonstrated the failure of the nuclear industry to deliver electricity on time and on budget. It also demonstrated that nuclear reactors couldn’t provide affordable electricity. In fact, Ontario Hydro’s last public cost comparison (1999) revealed the cost of nuclear energy to be more than six times the cost of hydroelectricity (7.72 c/kWh versus 1.09).
It seems that all those ‘hard lessons’ learned have been willfully forgotten. The Ford government has now launched a multipoint nuclear power offensive. It has passed legislation to ensure that nuclear is Ontario’s energy priority. It has made commitments to build untested and costly small modular reactors (SMRs). It has decided to refurbish antiquated nuclear plants when there is no business case to do so. It has announced as the centrepiece of its energy policy the irrational goal of becoming a nuclear energy superpower. And it has opened the public purse to the appetite of the nuclear industry.
It is a power play with some revealing features.
A propaganda push
In 2023 OPG enlisted the global advertising firm Forsman & Bodenfors to launch a public education campaign to “tackle the many misperceptions of nuclear power.” The ads, which appeared in bus shelters, on public transit, and across print and television, were designed to overcome skepticism and convince Ontarians that the new generation of nuclear is safe, reliable and clean. In the words of Kathy Nosich, OPG’s vice-president of stakeholder relations, “For years, popular culture has distorted perceptions about nuclear power with false narratives that served to stoke fear… The campaign is intended to recast nuclear power as a ‘true hero’ of the province’s clean energy mix.”
Some of the ads, clearly directed at younger people, played on TikTok, and featured the cartoon character “Pelly the Uranium Pellet.” Others simply made outrageous claims. For example, an ad for small modular reactors declared that “SMR’s are clean and reliable.” This is quite the claim, since none have been built in Canada.
The campaign effectively echoed the industry’s talking points, slogans that have become the mantra of the Ford government. Nuclear energy is now described by Ontario’s energy minister as “clean,” “non-emitting,” “reliable” and “fundamental to our future.”
A revolving door between the government and industry
In June 2024, former Energy Minister Todd Smith left the government. After spending billions on the nuclear industry and promising billions more, Smith landed a job as a vice president of CANDU Energy Inc. The company was created when SNC-Lavalin purchased the commercial reactor division of Atomic Energy of Canada Limited from the federal government in 2011. In an effort to distance itself from its scandal-ridden past, SNC-Lavalin has since changed its name to AtkinsRéalis. The company is heavily involved in the refurbishment of Ontario nuclear plants and the plans for new builds.
CANDU (CANada Deuterium Uranium) reactors have been the workhorse of the Canadian nuclear industry. They were first developed in the 1950s and 60s in a partnership between government and industry. Unlike other nuclear reactor designs CANDU uses natural uranium rather than enriched uranium. Natural uranium is less expensive and avoids some of the nuclear proliferation issues associated with enriched uranium. Canada’s nuclear establishment hoped these advantages would create major export opportunities. The federal government is trying again to boost CANDU’s prospects. In March 2025, Ottawa announced a loan of up to $304 million to AtkinsRéalis to support the development of CANDU nuclear reactors.
The technological hype of SMRs
SMRs are not small and they are not that modular. And they are also not that new. The designs, of which there are about 54, have been kicking around for a long time. It’s just that no one wanted to build them and investors were loathe to put up their own money. The fate of SMRs changed when the nuclear industry convinced governments in Canada to develop an SMR Roadmap. This ‘Roadmap’ was all hype and little substance but it was enough to convince the Ford government to join the parade.
The SMR Roadmap, an industry wish list of supports it needed, was followed by the federal government’s SMR Action Plan. The Action Plan supports the “development, demonstration and deployment of SMRs for multiple applications at home and abroad.” The plan includes a wide range of supports from relaxing regulatory requirements through public relations efforts to absorbing the financial risks of an untried technology.
SMRs are reactors with a capacity of 300 megawatts or less. While a 300 megawatt reactor is quite large it is inconsiderably less than existing reactors. They are also designed to include ‘modules’ that can be built in factories. These features and the shift to ‘passive’ safety systems are an attempt to reduce the costs of nuclear energy.
Small reactors have been around since the late 1950s, but most of those projects were abandoned. In recent years there has been a flurry of new designs. Some are modified water-cooled designs while others use different coolants such as liquid sodium, helium gas or molten salts. In order to achieve the required cost reductions there needs to be a series of the same type built and to produce the module in a factory setting. This remains an elusive goal.
The World Nuclear Industry Status Review is an annual independent assessment of the global nuclear industry. In its 2022 review it concluded:
SMRs continue to hog the headlines in many countries, even though all the evidence so far shows that they will likely face major economic challenges and not be competitive on the electricity market. Despite this evidence, nuclear advocates argue that these untested reactor designs are the solution to the nuclear industry’s woes.
In the 2024 edition of the review the analysts note: “The gap between hype about [SMRs] and reality continues to grow. The nuclear industry and multiple governments are doubling down on their investments into SMRs, both in monetary and political terms.”
Over-the-top visioning and ideological strawmen
Stephen Lecce became the minister of energy in June 2024. Shortly afterwards he travelled to the US where he made a pitch to Western leaders and industry movers and shakers. He told them that Ontario is building a blueprint for a nuclear energy future.
A CP wire story put it this way: “Ontario is selling itself as the nuclear North Star to guide the direction of American power.”
Speaking to a largely American audience Lecce said it’s time to “rid our economies of any dependence on these foreign states that… do not share our democratic embrace.” (Oops!)
The minister’s early charm offensive turned more aggressive back home when he criticized those who support renewable energy as “ideologues” who want to “romanticize certain resources.” As he told the National Post, “We are seeing forces on the left, the illiberal left, who cannot come to terms with the fact that in order to decarbonize we’re going to need nuclear.”
The commitment to nuclear was further baked into Ontario’s future when the Ford government unveiled its energy vision in October 2024. The document ironically entitled “Ontario’s Affordable Energy Future” sets the stage for a massive build out of nuclear power.
It also makes clear that Ontario has set its sights on becoming a nuclear energy superpower in the hopes of selling expensive nuclear electricity to the US and costly nuclear technology to the world.
Reflecting the grandiose aspirations of a would-be energy superpower the minister declared that “this was Ontario’s moment.”
The commitment to underwrite the costs of nuclear
The government is bankrolling the nuclear expansion with public money because investors don’t want their own cash at risk. The costs of nuclear power have driven private investors away. Even with massive subsidies from governments, investors are reluctant to ante up.
A spokesperson for the government-owned OPG made the point very clear when commenting on SMRs.
Kim Lauritsen, a senior OPG vice-president, told an audience at a Global Business Forum conference in Banff that the Crown corporation was willing to take the “first-mover risk.”
As she put it: “Because they [SMRs] take too long and the industry needs to see that these things can be built successfully, to give investors the confidence and really get the ball rolling for other jurisdictions.”
Investors are nervous, and because the province wants to show the way for other jurisdictions, the Ford government is prepared to saddle Ontario families and future generations with the exorbitant costs of nuclear power.
The nuclear three prong plug: Refurbishments, SMRs and new large-scale reactors
Refurbishments
The Ontario government is spending billions to refurbish old nuclear plants. Fourteen reactors are scheduled to be rejuvenated—six at Bruce, four at Darlington and four at Pickering. The repair schedule for existing nuclear plants stretches out for decades. While these reactors are offline the government plans to make up the electricity shortfall with more climate wrecking, fossil gas generating plants.
The cost of the refurbishments will be in excess of $40 billion. That cost, and the millions more in interest charges, will find its way onto our electricity bills.
As bills go up, so does political pressure, and when that pressure reaches a tipping point the government steps in with subsidies to help reduce electricity bills. It is a repeated pattern in Ontario.
A recent report from the Government’s Financial Accountability Office (FAO) projected the cost of current electricity subsidies to be $118 billion over the next 20 years. These are not all nuclear electricity subsidies. However, as spending on nuclear energy increases and it drives up electricity costs, governments—facing pressure to keep electricity affordable—are likely to offer even more subsidies, shifting the burden from our utility bills to our taxes.
Small modular reactors (SMRs)
In addition to the massive refurbishment program the Ford government has announced a series of new nuclear builds.
There will be four new SMRs built at the Darlington nuclear location. Site preparation work is already underway on the first one. OPG has convinced the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission to forego an environmental impact assessment, relying instead on an assessment that had been done years ago on the site for a different project.
The government has chosen the GE-Hitachi BWRX-300, a design based on a concept that has been around for nearly 20 years and has undergone roughly ten redesigns. It still has never been built. The engineering designs for Darlington have again been changed making the SMR less small and even less modular.
OPG has not released a cost estimate for the reactors. But there are some indications of the probable magnitude. In the US the only SMR project that had been approved by the federal government was NuScale in the Midwest. The project was cancelled because of escalating costs. Originally estimated at $3 billion it was terminated in 2024 when the projected costs reached $9.3 billion.
The Tennessee Valley Authority, a large power utility in the US, has partnered with OPG to promote the GE-Hitachi SMR. The TVA recently provided some estimates of the costs of building the SMR in the US. It indicated that the cost of the first reactor could be about $5.4 billion. It hoped the costs could be reduced to about $3.7 billion if more were built. These costs do not include any interest charges, cost overruns or missed deadlines.
If we assume the lower cost and convert to Canadian dollars the price tag for the four SMRs at Darlington would be about $20 billion before things go wrong. In 2019 the company indicated the costs would be lower than $1 billion.
New large-scale nuclear reactors
In July 2023 the Ontario government announced its support to expand the capacity of the Bruce Nuclear Generating Station near Kincardine. The plant is owned by OPG but operated by Bruce Power, a private consortium. Bruce Power is planning a major expansion of the site’s generating capacity. At present, six of the eight reactors are being refurbished. This new development, if it goes ahead, will add an additional 4,800 megawatts which would require building four or five new reactors. Admittedly, it is early days and no costs have been provided.
Then, at the start of 2025, the Ontario government announced that it was in the preliminary stages of a massive new nuclear plant that could be built at the OPG site in Wesleyville, near Port Hope. Officials have suggested the plant could have a capacity of 8,000 to 10,000 megawatts and be in operation by the 2040s. Achieving that generating capacity would require building eight or more nuclear reactors.
Calculating the costs
The government avoids any discussion of the costs associated with its nuclear expansion. When asked, it sidesteps the issue. So here again, we have to rely on some reasonable estimates.
A useful starting point for estimating the price tag in Ontario are the actual costs incurred in the construction of recently built nuclear reactors elsewhere.
Plant Vogtle, United States
Plant Vogtle Units 3 (2023) and 4 (2024) in Georgia, are the first new nuclear units built in the US in the last three decades. They are years late and the costs have escalated dramatically. Construction began in 2009 and was slated to be finished in 2017. Instead, it took 15 years to build and was seven years behind schedule. The final costs are now calculated at about $38 billion.
Flamanville, France
In December 2024, the 600 megawatt Flamanville nuclear power plant began delivering electricity to the French and European grid. It is the first new unit in France since 1996.
Construction began in 2007. It was projected to come into service in 2012 at a cost of €3.4 billion. The French court of auditors has estimated that the cost of the nuclear power plant will increase to over €20 billion once financing costs and delays are taken into account.
Hinkley C, England
The UK flagship nuclear project, the Hinkley C plant in the south of England, has spiralled out of control. The plant has two reactors and a capacity of 3200 megawatts.
It was originally estimated at a cost of about £9 billion with a completion date of 2017. It is now estimated to cost £46 billion and will take until 2030 to come online.
The old story repeated. Massive cost overruns, lengthy delays and the world’s most expensive electricity. If these costs are any indication of the costs of Ontario’s nuclear program, then we are in a huge amount of trouble.
There is another way to estimate the costs of Ontario’s nuclear expansion and that is to use benchmark figures for the capital costs of new nuclear construction.
Lazard is a financial advisory and asset management company that is considered an authoritative source on energy cost comparisons. Amongst those are the capital cost comparisons of various energy generating technologies. Lazard expresses the costs as a range from low to high for each generating technology. In 2024 it reported the capital cost of nuclear plants as a range from $8,475 to $13,925 (USD) per kilowatt. The mid point of the range expressed in Canadian dollars is $15,680 per kilowatt. Using this figure gives us a way to estimate the cost of Ford’s new nuclear plants. A mid-point cost estimate for Bruce C with 4800 megawatts is $75 billion. For Port Hope, at 10,000 megawatts, it’s $156 Billion.
Regardless of how astronomical those costs are, the estimates are likely on the low side. If the costs in Ontario track the actual costs at Vogtle in the US, at Hinkley C in England and in Flamanville in France then the costs for Bruce C and Port Hope would be even higher.
A price tag that mortgages our future
The Ford government is committed to spending a colossal amount of money on its nuclear gamble, including: $40 billion for refurbishments at 14 nuclear reactors, $20 billion for four SMRs at Darlington, $75 billion for Bruce C, and $156 billion for Port Hope.
That is a $290 billion nuclear gamble. If we add the $26 billion which is the official preliminary estimate for the deep geological repository of nuclear waste then we are well beyond $300 billion.
Three hundred billion is an almost unthinkable amount of money. For most of us it’s hard to get a sense of what those funds could achieve. For example:
- Provide every dwelling in Ontario with a free $20,000 heat pump for about $110 billion. The government could also provide homeowners with a free $20,000 rooftop solar system for another $110 billion. These initiatives combined are less than the cost of nuclear expansion.
- Replace half of the passenger vehicles in Ontario with a free electric vehicle for about $225 billion. Less than the price of nuclear.
- Replace transit fares in Toronto for the next 300 years.
- Provide every farm in Ontario with a free 10 kilowatt wind turbine for about $5 billion.
- Replace all the school buses in Ontario with new electric ones at a cost of about $10 billion.
Expensive nuclear plants produce expensive electricity and those costs are paid for through our taxes and electricity bills. It is already the case that nuclear is one of the most expensive energy options available. The Ontario Clean Air Alliance, using data from the IESO and Lazard, has reported that the mid-point cost of new nuclear will be 24.4 cents per kilowatt-hour compared to solar with storage at 10 cents per kilowatt-hour.
The Ontario government plans to spend an inordinate amount of money to support a nuclear industry whose reactors will, in all likelihood, be stranded assets well before the end of their useful life. Now and in the years ahead we will be paying electricity bills that are unnecessarily high. And then our children and their children will be forced to pay off the next generation of stranded nuclear debt.
There is a global energy transition underway. In its recent World Energy Outlook 2024, the International Energy Agency (IEA) reviews some of its dimensions, the momentum behind it, and the characteristics of clean energy technologies. It notes that clean energy is growing at an unprecedented rate, including more than 560 gigawatts of new renewables capacity added in 2023. Investment flows to clean energy projects are now approaching $2 trillion each year, almost double the combined amount spent on new oil, gas and coal supply. What’s more, renewable power generation capacity is expected to rise from 4,250 gigawatts today to nearly 10,000 gigawatts in 2030—short of the tripling target set at COP28 but more than enough, in aggregate, to cover the growth in global electricity demand.
The Ford government is clearly on the wrong energy pathway.
