There are currently three companies vying to build two new reactors at the Darlington nuclear station
– Edited by April Murelio –
According to a story by THE CANADIAN PRESS, the ability to generate jobs may play a bigger-than-expected role when Ontario selects a company to build its new nuclear reactors, says Premier Dalton McGuinty.
"What we're saying when it comes to our nuclear bidders is that more than just the price is important to us here," McGuinty contends. “What are you going to do for us in terms of employing our people?"
There are currently three companies vying to build two new reactors at the Darlington nuclear station – U.S. giant Westinghouse Electric Co., France's Areva Group, and Canada's Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. Energy Minister George Smitherman says all three bidders were still in the running and the province is still analyzing more than a hundred boxes of information submitted along with the plans.
The government has declined to comment on the selection process until it announces the winner in June, but McGuinty says that any outside bidder should be able to match AECL's domestic employment levels.
"If you're bidding from outside Canada, you better have a strong proposal in place that's going to guarantee employment for our people," he says. "It's not purely a function of who's got the lower price."
Some critics argue that picking AECL could mean higher costs, saying the pricetag for building reactors has more than doubled in the last three years and taxpayers risk being stuck with the bill.
For Michael Ivanco of the Society of Professional Engineers and Associates, a union representing AECL workers, the key worry centers around what picking a foreign company would mean for the 120 companies building parts for AECL. Those companies, he says, employ about 30,000 people – mostly in Ontario – in a $5-billion industry.
"Regardless of who builds, there will be jobs, but the question is, then what?," says Ivanco. "If AECL doesn't sell this new design in Ontario nobody else is going to buy it, that will mean essentially the end of the Candu design."
The manufacturers that currently supply AECL's parts, Ivanco adds, would "be reduced to providing parts for an aging reactor fleet of an abandoned technology. There's no future in that; it's like being a VCR repairman."