Ontario's power glut means possible nuclear plant shutdowns

[FBaggins]

40. That's a bunch of smelly bovine byproducts... and you well know it.

We're not talking about closing an operating reactor, we're talking about shutting it off for short periods when more power is generated than demand can accept. There's no way to review that and come away with "it isn't an economic choice".

The reactor is already built. Whatever the ongoing capital costs are will not change if you turn it off for a short period. Fuel costs are essentially unchanged. Payroll costs are unchanged. In short, delivering the electricity costs them no more than not delivering the electricity (in fact, it probably costs them more). So there's simply no way to spin this as an economic decision.

Reality is much simpler. It's the wind generation that, on it's own, was not an economic choice... so nobody was going to build much of it. In order to encourage building it anyway, the government guaranteed them that whatever they produced would be purchased at price that today is well above market price. If there's no demand for what they produce it doesn't matter... because they get paid whether the power is needed or not. In fact, in this case they get paid even when the power they produce is not just worthless... but worth less than nothing.

That's not "economic"... that's precisely the opposite of economic. The proposed solution is actually to pay them to not produce when there is a glut.

The attempt at spin is all yours... and "bizarre" undersells reality.