Quebec nuclear reactor shutdown will cost $1.8 billion

Quebec's only nuclear power plant will shut down on Dec. 28, Hydro-Québec announced Wednesday, but the process of dismantling it will take 50 years and cost $1.8 billion.

The official statement confirms what the new Parti Québécois government has been saying for weeks: that the province won't pay to refurbish the Gentilly-2 reactor and instead will have it decommissioned.

Hydro-Québec's most recent economic analysis, made public on Wednesday, recommends against spending the billions of dollars that would be required to rebuild the reactor to allow it to continue operating.
The Crown corporation says it now estimates the refurbishment would cost $4.3 billion, up from the $2 billion that the previous Liberal government had budgeted.

"This report shows that refurbishing the Gentilly-2 reactor isn't an economically viable option for Quebecers. We have to learn from the example of the cost overruns during the refurbishment of the reactor at Point Lepreau, New Brunswick," Natural Resources Minister Martine Ouellet said in a release.

NB Power's Point Lepreau generating station was the first Candu-6 reactor to be refurbished. The process was supposed to take 18 months but suffered three years of delays and more than $1 billion in cost overruns, and the power plant still isn't back online.

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Quebec to shut down its only nuclear reactor

Quebec's new government has confirmed it won't proceed with the multibillion-dollar refurbishment of the province's lone nuclear reactor and will instead shut it down.

A spokesman for incoming premier Pauline Marois gave the confirmation Tuesday, one day after the first public screening of a new film on the reactor that raises questions about its safety for people living nearby.

The government of outgoing Premier Jean Charest decided in 2008 to rebuild the Gentilly-2 nuclear plant at a cost of about $2 billion, but stopped work after the Fukushima disaster in Japan in 2011.

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