Darlington Nuclear Generating Station in 2022. Photo by Robert T. Bell/Flickr.

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.

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.

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.

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........

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