Opponents push back against new nuclear reactors, as communities brace for growth

The announcement of plans to build as many as five new nuclear reactors at the Bruce Nuclear Station near Kincardine, Ont. has been largely met with excitement by the communities surrounding the sprawling nuclear facility.

“Electrical production that doesn’t contaminate the air every time we turn the light switch on. It’s fabulous news for our area and the province,” said Municipality of Kincardine Mayor, Ken Craig.

But, opponents of nuclear energy and the subsequent waste leftovers are panning the province’s plan to invest heavily in nuclear energy to keep the lights on and carbon emissions low.

“Nuclear power plants, they produce toxic radioactive waste which future generations will have to safeguard for a million years. So, it simply doesn’t make sense to produce more nuclear waste, when wind and solar can keep our lights on at a much lower cost,” said Jack Gibbons, with Ontario’s Clean Air Alliance.

Chris Keefer, who heads Canadians for Nuclear Energy, as well as being an ER physician in Toronto, believes nuclear energy and not wind and solar energy is the only path forward to keeping Ontario’s economy humming for decades to come.

“If we’re going to electrify everything, our cars, our heat pumps, our homes, our industry, we need reliable electricity that will not go off unexpectedly,” he said.

Bruce B nuclear station near Kincardine, Ont., as seen on July 5, 2023. (Scott Miller/CTV News London)The communities surrounding Bruce Power are counting on the new reactors to be built, and are bracing for the thousands of jobs and homes that will be created by their construction. In 2021, a record setting $150 million in building permits were awarded in Port Elgin and Southampton alone, as Bruce Power embarked on their 13 year, $13 billion project to refurbish six of their current eight reactors.

“Just take that and scale it up, because we’re talking about new nuclear reactors, several of them. That just means even more economic spinoff, and what we plan for is for that to improve the quality of life for everybody who lives in our communities,” said Saugeen Shores Mayor, Luke Charbonneau.

“We’re not going to be talking about the dog catcher anymore. There are issues that will be placed on the municipal council table in the next year that we haven’t had to deal with in a really long time. We will have to develop strategic plans to manage the growth, which will inevitably occur in our area,” said Craig.

“This is generational wealth that’s being passed down. Jobs, where great-grandkids may well be working at this site, of folks that built the first plant [at] Douglas Point,” said Keefer.

Ontario’s plan to see new reactors at the Bruce Nuclear site still requires federal approval, which Ontario’s Energy Ministry is urging them to expedite to get shovels in the ground as soon as possible.

New reactors could also face pushback from the Saugeen Ojibway Nation (SON), whose traditional lands Bruce Power operates on. They’ve said they won’t support new nuclear construction until “there is a solution to the nuclear waste problem that is acceptable to SON and its people,” said SON leadership following the July 5 announcement.