What to do about Pickering Nuclear?

The Pickering nuclear plant has been a reliable back bone of Ontario’s energy mix for well over five decades. But in 2026, it must either shut down or undergo serious (e.g. expensive) renovations to continue to produce power. The site sits in the heart of the greater Toronto area (GTA), and could lead to some significant re-development of the industrial area. However, it is responsible for approximately 15% of Ontario’s annual electricity production. Lets look at some options on how to replace that capacity, more specifically, if renewables are up to the task.

Nuclear power has provided relatively clean electricity to Ontario for decades. Of Ontario’s three nuclear plants; Bruce Power, Darlington and Pickering, Pickering is on par with Darlington, at somewhere around 20 TWh a year (source), compared to 45 TWh a year for Bruce (source), and 20 TWh a year for Darlington (source). These are somewhat averaged figures, as energy production fluctuates from year to year for say maintenance and other upgrades influence production. This compares to Ontario’s needs for about 130 TWh a year in electricity (source). So, if Pickering were to close, we would have to find 20 TWh/year from somewhere else.

The most likely short term candidate is more gas. Peering into https://www.ieso.ca/en/Corporate-IESO/Media/Year-End-Data, suggest there is ample spare capacity among the provinces gas plants. They can provide 28% of the provinces needs, but apparently only wound up providing 10% or 15 TWh in 2022. There might be some increase in wind capacity to go along with that, or perhaps the proposed Gull Island could help with about half or 10 TWh/year (source).

As you can see from the map above, Pickering nuclear generating station is quite close to downtown Toronto. An incident such as the one in Chernobyl or Fukoshima, created an exclusion zone about 30 km from the plant. That would encompass half of Toronto, Ajax, Pickering, Oshawa and more (source). Such an incident is extremely unlikely, in large part to the excellent safety culture in Ontario’s nuclear industry (source), however over a 50 year operation, even extremely unlikely events need to be considered.

A second argument is economics, it would cost at least $10 B to refurbish Pickering (source), given that that figure came from https://www.canfornuclearenergy.org/save-pickering, Id estimate the real figure to be closer to $20 B. For that sum, you would get about 13 TWh/year, mostly because it is uneconomical to refurbish the two “A” units at Pickering, leaving only the 4 “B” units to be refurbished, this drops capacity by a third. Over a period of say 50 years, that works out to be about 3 c/kWh. That number may double as to account for operating costs, transmission line maintenance etc, but still winds up being a rather favourable 6 c/kWh.

Solar is not that far behind, according to https://www.solar.com/learn/solar-panel-cost/, one could expect solar to come in at about 6-8 c/kWh. Granted that figure does not include any storage, which might say double that to 12-16 c/kWh. Much depends on how one would price the risk of a major nuclear incident in Pickering, I am not even going to try, but numbers in the hundreds of billions have been discussed (source), while it is an unlikely event, such a toll needs to be factored in somehow, and might put solar in front, particularly as solar is on a downward trend pricing wise, while large mega-projects such as Pickering refurbishment almost always go up.

Even if one were to close Pickering, the toll would still be high. In the wake of the Fukoshima disaster, Germany decided to close their nuclear plants, which shifted electricity generation to less climate friendly options, and might have caused thousands of premature deaths (source), should Pickering be closed, a similar outcome seems likely here.

What to do about Pickering is indeed quite the pickle. Solar with storage, is certainly a viable alternative, although given that solar only produces 1% of Ontario’s electricity (source) it will take many years to produce the required capacity from solar. We will explore some policy options that could speed up solar adoption in Ontario in future posts, but sadly, the only way to replace Pickering in the short-term is gas.