Ontario Hydro and Nuclear Power

A. Appearance of Niagara Power
1. 1887 Queen Victoria Niagara Falls Park incorporated.
2. To make money they sell power rights to American speculator.
3. Canadian Niagara Power inc. in 1892 but does not build the projected generators as agreed.
B. The Coal Famine and the "Electric Ring"
1. Coal strike in Pennsylvania in 1902.
2. Buffalo capitalists set up Ontario Power Co. that gets partial rights to Niagara (Can. Niagara P. Co. having renogotiated its lease and renounced monopoly)
3. Electric Development Co. set up in 1903
a) Wm. Mackenzie, Frederick Nicholls, and Henry Mill Pellatt
b) Perceived to be gougers and corrupt by public and municipalities
C. Sir Adam Beck and Birth of Ontario Hydro
1. Public Power movement begins in Waterloo Board of Trade in 1902
2. Middle and small businessmen of Southwestern Ontario driving forces behind this.
3. Reformist Tory adminstration under Whitney elected in 1905
4. The Mystique of Electricity
a) Perceived to be progressive, scientific, civilizing, and modern
b) Necessary for economic growth and uplift of the population
c) Clean, invisible, and multifunctional
D. The Growth of Ontario Hydro
1. Founded 1906 and Beck first chairman
2. First "switchin on" ceremony in Berlin (Kitchener) 1910.
3. 1914: 50,000 kw to 95 municipalities. Begins its own construction program.
4. 1917 has capacity of 250,000 kw
5. 1921 buys out McKenzie companies
6. By 1923 already has half the provincial debt
7. 1926 begins work on Queenston generating station, then largest in world.
E. The Dynamic of Growth
1. 7%/annum growth from 1922 onwards
2. Convenient hydraulic power almost exhausted by 1950s and thermal plants begin to be built
3. First utility to begin conversion to nuclear power in Canada
4. Beck planned to expand into a system of electric railways. Scheme approved in 1912 but WW1 and the postwar government kill the scheme because of the expense.
5. "Live Better Electrically" Campaign begins in 1955. A civil war with the gas companies moving into Toronto?
a) 1955 to 1960 to 1967: CPI 87 to 100 to 120; OH rates 105 to 100 to 100. Only 15% of annual expenditures covered by revenues in mid 70s
b) 1982 Ontario's long-term debt in capital markets is $15B, $14B due to OH. In 1975 80% of provincial borrowing is for OH.
F. The decision to go nuclear
1. Putative postwar shortage could have been resolved in five ways:
a) Expand hydro development or buy hydro from other Canadian provinces like Manitoba or Quebec
b) Substitute natural gas just coming on stream from Alberta in the 1950s
c) Import coal or oil from abroad and burn it in conventional power plants
d) Develop nuclear power
e) Conservation
2. The "bounded rationality" of OH leads it in 1958 to opt for nuclear power. As a stopgap measure while the nuclear plants were being built Hydro also built fossil fuel plant.
3. But were the engineers wrong?
G. Recent Problems
1. The Collapse of Demand
2. The Nuclear Quagmire
3. The Growth of Debt
4. The Collapse of Consensus
5. A Problem common to all electric utilities