By David Reevely, Ottawa Citizen, June 21, 2018
Ontario will keep the elderly nuclear plant in Pickering running until 2024, Premier-designate Doug Ford repeated Thursday, for weird and un-conservative reasons.
“I believe in made-in-Ontario electricity and made-in-Ontario jobs,” Ford said at the plant.
There is nothing special about made-in-Ontario electricity. The Pickering plant’s energy doesn’t make your lights shine plaid or give off a faint mapley-piney aroma. There’s no difference between a joule from Ontario versus a joule from Quebec or a joule from New York.
(...)Those three nuclear facilities generate about 60 per cent of Ontario’s electricity. Keeping Pickering online while reactors at the other two sites are down will save us $600 million in costs to replace it with gas-fired generators, Ontario Power Generation estimates, and millions of tonnes of carbon-dioxide emissions.
http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/reevely-ford-reaffirms-pledge-to-keep-pickering-nuclear-station-open-for-the-wrong-reasons