Monday, June 16, 2008

Surprising Nobody

So Darlington it is. Which is what any thinking person would have gambled on -- the plant was always only half-built, so this will probably be the cheapest option. "Cheapest", only if you constrain the choices to nuclear power. Which is basically what the Liberals did. Oh well.

...adding, this means AECL will get the contract for the reactors themselves. Bank on it. This:
The manufacturer of the new reactors will not be selected until the end of this year. Three companies are competing for the business: Crown-owned Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd., French-based Areva SA and Westinghouse Electric Co.

[...]

While the first shovels will not go in the ground until 2012, already there are questions about cost overruns.

Mr. Phillips declined to say whether the government will have to revise its estimate of $26-billion for its entire nuclear project. But he said he expects all three vendors to “sharpen their pencils” and aggressively pursue the business.
Is pure smokescreen. AECL will get the contract, AECL (in all likelihood) knows they will get the contract, and any cost promises they make now won't be worth the paper they're printed on.

By the time McGuinty needs to run for re-election in 2012, the cost estimates will have at least doubled. Bank on that, too.

1 comment:

Niles said...

Watching CNN last night, I saw an ad that initially confused me as it was simple animation that:

a/ started with a map that pointed out "Canada" (which was weird enough to see on CNN I kept watching) and then

b/ zoomed in on it to show an open pit mine. At first I thought it was re: the oilsands, but in the next 'panel', it showed processing and the rods of nuclear energy and the building of a nuclear plant, which it immediately juxtaposed next to windmills as if that somehow took the stink off as it talked about 'clean' energies.

The thing ended with a zoom out from people enjoying disco dancing from the energy provided and emphasis was on the dancers being in the US.

I'm biased, but the entire thing said "Canada is our resource bank, we're golden". It never explained where the nuclear plant was based, just that the energy somehow got from there to the dancers. All I could think was that here was the push behind intrusive uranium exploration and talk of nuclear energy plants here in Canada. It's apparently not for us, it's for American customers of our grid power. A message I'm *sure* the ad sponsor never intended to reach up here.

Sadly, I can't remember the ad sponsor. It was Aer-...something