Self-described as a “tightly bound group of companies”, the nuclear industry in Ontario includes more than 200 private sector companies who provide high-priced services to Canadian reactors and Canadian designed reactors that have been sold (or subsidized) abroad. That’s a lot of lobby power!
Excited by the prospect of more lucrative contracts, the nuclear industry is revved up about the idea of more refurbishments (in non-nuke speak “refurbishing” would be called “rebuilding”) of Ontario’s aging reactor fleet. And they continue to live the dream of nuclear new build, even as the years pass and no vendor steps forward that can get past the “sticker shock” of the industry’s multi-billion dollar price overshoot when they were responding to Ontario’s 2008 call for proposals for new reactors.
The nuclear industry doesn’t make money just by building reactors. They get paid tens of millions just to come up with a price for reactors that will probably never be built, make hundreds of millions of dollars thinking about how to rebuild them, and then are paid billions more rebuilding them half-way through their projected operating life. And they are positioning themselves to make many more billions of dollars managing the waste that the reactors they built and operated will generate – wastes which will have to be managed into eternity. It’s something the industry refers to as the “nuclear supply chain”.
Who pays? You do. Nice chain you've got there.
Excited by the prospect of more lucrative contracts, the nuclear industry is revved up about the idea of more refurbishments (in non-nuke speak “refurbishing” would be called “rebuilding”) of Ontario’s aging reactor fleet. And they continue to live the dream of nuclear new build, even as the years pass and no vendor steps forward that can get past the “sticker shock” of the industry’s multi-billion dollar price overshoot when they were responding to Ontario’s 2008 call for proposals for new reactors.
The nuclear industry doesn’t make money just by building reactors. They get paid tens of millions just to come up with a price for reactors that will probably never be built, make hundreds of millions of dollars thinking about how to rebuild them, and then are paid billions more rebuilding them half-way through their projected operating life. And they are positioning themselves to make many more billions of dollars managing the waste that the reactors they built and operated will generate – wastes which will have to be managed into eternity. It’s something the industry refers to as the “nuclear supply chain”.
Who pays? You do. Nice chain you've got there.