As an Ontarian, the thought of spending $500B on a couple of reactors makes me furious. Ontario is not going to become competitive again with the most expensive electricity in the world.
At least when it comes to refurbishment, the independent (reports to provincial parliament) FAO found:
> Overall, despite near-term Nuclear Price increases, the Plan is projected to provide ratepayers with a long-term supply of relatively low-cost, low emissions electricity.
New-nuclear is worthy of discussion, but given we have stood up supply chains via the refurbishment process, there's a lot of knowledge out there. My current largest complaint with the new-nuclear plans is the SMRs.
Can you provide a citation for the $500B? Because Carney has mentioned federal money in that amount for projects Canada-wide that include "energy" generally, but not nuclear specifically.
I did find this (potential?) $100B number on Ontario nuclear energy:
but if you take that number and 'ammortize' it over the average 40-year life span of reactors, it comes to $2.5B/year (in capex), which is about ~1% of the provincial budget. I'm not sure how much raw GW capacity that would add, or how many GWh would be generated annually, to do the math on the per-kWh (capex?) cost.
The article goes over the pros and cons of various points in the energy mix debate.
As someone who lives in Ontario, Canada, where 50% of all electricity currently comes from nuclear power:
* https://www.ieso.ca/power-data?type=supply
I have no problem with getting more CANDU reactors (which is the current plan).