STRATEGY,PLANNING AND COSTING FOR DECOMMISSIONING IN CANADA

Abstract

Ontario Hydro, the public-owned electric utility in Ontario, Canada, is one of the three largest nuclear utilities in the world. Decommissioning of its CANDU nuclear stations will begin about 2012 when the first station at Pickering is scheduled to be shut down after an operating period of 40 years. Other stations at Bruce and Darlington will be shut down and decommissioned subsequently. The cost of these operations is being charged to customers and is calculated using the annuity method. In this chapter, Nihal Jayawardene and Peter Stevens-Guille describe Ontario Hydro’s decommissioning policy, financial planning and method of funding future decommissioning costs. One policy requirement is that future generations should not have to pay for decommissioning costs; deferring costs far into the future is not financially prudent. The current status of public opinion in Canada on decommissioning and radioactive waste management, including the tourism value of a decommissioned reactor, also is discussed.

Keywords

Nuclear decommissioning Canada Ontario Hydro CANDU Policy

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Canada Atomic Energy Control Board (AECB) (1988). R-90 “Policy on the Decommissioning of Nuclear Facilities,” August.

Canada Department of Energy Mines and Resources (1988). “Opting for Cooperation, Report of the Siting Process Task Force on Low-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal.”

Jayawardene

N.D.

Armstrong

P.J.

(1986). Ontario Hydro “One-Piece On-Site Burial of CANDU Reactors for Decommissioning” - SPECTRUM 86: ANS International Topical Meeting. September 14-18, Niagara Falls, USA.

Jayawardene

N.D.

Naqvi

S.J.

(1990). “Ontario Hydro Proposes Canning and Burying Candu Reactors,” Nuclear Engineering International 35(434) (September).