4 ~ Sunday, March 21, 1993 ~ North Shore News

in Ontario no

POOR OLD Ontario is go-
ing through a major trauma
that is entirely of its own
making, and whieh should
serve as 2 cautionary tale
for other provinces.

Bob
Hunter

STRICTLY | PERSONAL

Fifteen years ago, the pro-
vince’s gigantic Crown-owned
energy utility, Ontario Hydro,
turned on the first of what has
become its ‘‘fleet’’ of nuclear
reactors, the flagship Bruce ‘‘A"’
Unit i having been erected, an
enormous sijoed concrete com-
pound, on the <dge of Lake
Huron, onthe Bruce Peninsula.

» -This was w'Candu reactor, sup-
posedly the showpiece of Cana-
dian technology — superior, its
builders hinted, to the risky fast
breeders in the United States, or
certainly to anything in Europe or
the then-Soviet Union, even if the
French and British might, with

. some justification, disagree.

— "Unit bat Bruce “A” was a
genuinely made-in-Canada
supermachine, guaranteed to pro-
vide cheap, reliable power for at
least 40 or 50 years.

‘Mention the Bruce ‘‘A’' nuclear
generating station, and the little
hearts of Ontarians pulsated with
patriotic sensations.

' Outside of the sprawling central
Canadian province itself, the ex-

tent to which Ontario has been
nuclearized is little appreciated, !
think,

‘Just three years ago, the high-
flying engineers who ran what had
become the largest single energy
-utility in North America (and, just
incidentally, the biggest construc-
tion company in Canada) were
announcing plans to spend $62
billion on a dozen more Candus.

For a long time, by then, a job
at Hydro had been one of the best
Ontario hopes for a lifetime ticket
to middle-classhood. Todiy’s
workforce is suid to be making an
average salary of $70,000, with
one supervisor for every 1.7 union
members.

In the meantime, Ontario has
become the third most nuclearized
jurisdiction in the world.

The percentage of electricity
generated province-wide by nukes
was supposed to reach 60% this
year, after the staggeringly expen-
sive new Darlington power jlant
came on Stream.

Staggeringly expensive? Whew!
The original estimates called for
the plant to cost $3.9 billion.

Last week the price tag passed
$14.6 billion and is still rising!
Worse, nobody can get the damn-
ed thing to work properly.

Not only have there been
hairline cracks in reactor parts,
meaning cach entire part had to
be replaced, delaying everything,
but unexpected junk turned up in
the reactor cores themselves after
they had been switched on, fore-
ing frantic technicians to abort
going fully operational.

There were serious problems
with the software for the com-
puters that basically run the sta-
tion. 1’m not kidding.

And still the determined nuclear
boys pressed ahead.

The latest embarrassment for’.
Ontario Hydro is the belated y
discovery by engineers that certain
pressure tube ‘fretting’ problems
occurring at Bruce ‘‘A,’’ aftey a
mere 15 years, may in fact bea
system-wide problem, meaning all
reactors in Ontario, including
Darlington, could be affected
eventually.

Darlington is the Edsel of the
nuclear industry. Yet-what an
Edsel! ; A

It is so cavernous you could fy
a helicopter around inside easily.
The building is at least an cighth
of a mile long and 10 stories high,
and as wide across as the length
of a football field. ;

The ‘‘economic downturn,” as
it is described in polite society,
has gored Outario Hydro’s cus-
tomers, from the mighty steel
companies to the welfare cases liv-
ing in public housing equipped
with electric heaters, who have
had to sleep out in the heated °
hallways because they can't afford
to buy food and still pay their
spiralling utility bills,

It was only a change of provin-
cial government and the existence

of an impossibly complicated reg-
ulatory system with so many
overlapping jurisdictions nobody
knows what they really all add up
to that stopped the Hydro “Old
Guard" from launching their mad
scientist's scheme before they were
deposed.

The one truly outstandingly
solid action taken by Bob Rae’s
NDP government since it came to
power has been to kick the
engineers out of the boardroom ait
Ontario Hydro.

After a bitter behind-the-scenes
Struggle, the NDP replaced
Hydro’s top dog with one of their
own, Mare Ellision, who quit ina
snit over money and other
unseemly things after a few short
months and fled to B.C., to take
over BC Hydro.

One can hardly blame him,
Sensible feitow.

in his wake, Premier Bob, as he
likes to be known, brought in -
Maurice Strong, the Canadian
eco-superstar and millionaire
businessman, organizer of the

nukes is goo

Earth Summit, paying him nearly
half a million bucks a year 10 take
the helm of the disastrously of f-
course public utility.

Strong’s challenge was to rein
the Crown beast in. Could he?
Could anyone?

Last week, he made his move,
axing 6,000 jobs, leaving the 15-
year-old Bruce '‘A”’ reactors to
wither on the vine by refusing to
sanction essential repairs, while
nourishing a multi-billion-dollar
conservation program.

But within minutes, he was
under fire from skeptics who
grumbled that all he had done was
defer, defer, defer, leaving a situ-
ation where wonky nukes are be-
ing run into the ground, putting
thousands, maybe millions of
people at risk.

Come on, admit it. You love
bad news from Ontario. You'll |
squeal with delight at the rest of
this story. To be, as we say, con-

Measles

TNO GIMMICKS — JUST

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BARBARA DAHL

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