In 1942, just three years before the War ended, England moved its nuclear-power research team to Montreal to join with National Research Council in a 65-year quest (so far) for technology to bring cheap and reliable nuclear power to the world. The world’s first nuclear reactor (“ZEEP”) outside of the U.S. – putting out about a watt – had been built successfully by NRC at Chalk River Laboratories, on the Ottawa River northwest of Pembroke, with the help of technology transfers from the U.S.
Since then, scientists at Chalk River and at AECL’s “Sheridan” facility in Mississauga have used federal-government funds to design a variety of home-grown nuclear generators including the “CANDU”. Over the years, projects were put on hold in favour of new design ideas, and others were claimed to be viable before reaching their proof-of-concept. Decisions, and status reports, were sometimes based on the frantic need to justify government funding.
Some nuclear specialists believe that AECL’s projects were rarely funded adequately and that they had to make do with less-than-superior materials. But CANDU nuclear plants have achieved efficiencies averaging nearly 80-percent over the past 20 years and are seen as reliable, albeit with shorter anticipated lifespans than originally thought.
The 22 heavy-water CANDU reactors in Canada (20 of them in Ontario) were all designed by AECL and built with a long list of CANDU’s nuclear partners or suppliers. Their capacity is about 14 percent of Canada’s electric power and 50 percent of Ontario’s, or about 14,000 megawatts.
Nuclear energy in Canada employs 30,000 in direct and related jobs involving 150 supplier companies and about $1.2-billion in exports. Canada is the world’s main source of high-grade uranium ores, and the Chalk River research reactor until recently supplied half the world’s medical isotopes as well as 75 percent of its medical cobalt-60.
Although nuclear power has proven itself in terms of reliability, economy, environmental integrity and even sustainability, AECL has countless environmental groups stacking up against it. These groups disagree with all aspects of nuclear power’s benefits, and often exaggerate the “down” sides. For instance, they may compare a hydroelectric project built 30 years ago with the cost of a nuclear plant today, without mentioning that the new cost for hydroelectric projects is five or six times as much. They think an estimate of $2.5-billion in 1973 that becomes an actual cost of $14-billion by 1993 is a “cost overrun” of $11.5-billion. Or they may think natural-gas plants are “clean” without bothering to investigate the 80 or more toxic particulates spewed out by typical gas burners.
They also point out the ‘outrageous’ amount of money AECL ‘squandered’ on Canada’s nuclear power program -- about $23-billion (2008$) -- often without mentioning that this expertise installed about $35-billion (2008$) worth of nuclear power in Ontario, New Brunswick, Quebec, China, India, South Korea and Romania.
Gas plants are definitely cheaper to install than all forms of power plants, but nuclear addicts point out that cheaper is not always better and that governments who call for Requests for Proposals think that way, too. Nuclear generators are seen as having the second-lowest power cost, especially if they can be made to operate reliably over a 40-year lifespan.
AECL’s total workforce of scientists, engineers and staff is roughly 3,600, but may be boosted in the years to come if the agency lands Ontario Power Generation’s just-announced program to boost Darlington by at least two large reactors. Observers feel AECL’s “loss” of this contract, and a win by either Westinghouse of U.S. or Areva of France, would spell the end of AECL and its six-decade struggle for permanence in the nuclear marketplace.
