The $12.8 billion refurbishment of the Darlington nuclear plant is wrapping up slightly under budget and four months early, with the power station slated to resume sending electricity to the grid this spring.
First announced in 2016 and begun under a previous Liberal government, the refit of the four Ontario Power Generation reactors was intended to keep them running until 2050.
“This is exactly why we’re investing in nuclear,” Progressive Conservative Energy Minister Stephen Lecce said Monday at the plant on Lake Ontario east of Oshawa, boasting that coming in $150 million or 1.2 per cent under budget bodes well for the country’s nuclear industry and future projects.
When the refurbishment plan was developed a decade ago, workers trained on a mock-up before beginning the refit on the first reactor to work out any bugs and then completed the other three in sequence.
The plant is coming back online as the province embarks on a $26.8 billion refurbishment of the four aging 1980s reactors at Ontario Power Generation’s Pickering B nuclear station — which Lecce promised late last year will be “on time and on budget” when it is completed in the mid-2030s.
But he did not set a firm completion date for the work, which is expected to extend the lifespan of the plant to the 2070s amid criticisms from some quarters that Premier Doug Ford’s government is not putting more focus on renewable sources of power such as solar and wind.
Lecce is focusing on the Port Hope area for Ontario’s next new nuclear power plant which, if it proceeds, would not open until the 2040s. Nuclear now supplies about half of Ontario’s baseload electricity.
Also Monday, the province issued a call for applications for commercial-scale carbon storage projects deep underground to help cut greenhouse gas emissions.
