JOYAL APPLEWHAITE, PICKERING RESIDENT:  Come on Coffee, let's go. Good boy.

NORMAN HERMANT, REPORTER:  Living in Pickering, Ontario suits Joyal Applewhaite just fine.

JOYAL APPLEWHAITE:  To me it reminds me of home, which is Barbados. I live right on the lake, like near Lake Ontario.

NORMAN HERMANT:  Joyal doesn't just live near a park and the lake. Her home is also just over a kilometre away from the Pickering Nuclear Generating Station.

The reactors here produce power for 2 million homes. 

Did you have any reservations about moving a little more than a kilometre away from a very large nuclear power generating station?

JOYAL APPLEWHAITE:  Honestly it wasn't a thought. It is just something that you walk past, or you go to the beach, or you go to the park, you know, or the woods. It's just, it's just there. Like no one really pays it any mind.

NORMAN HERMANT:  Like most nearby residents, Joyal has potassium iodine tablets at home - issued by the government to reduce radiation poisoning in case of a nuclear accident.

They've never needed to be used.

JOYAL APPLEWHAITE:  So, it’s just like in case. You know, just in case.

NORMAN HERMANT:  Sixty years ago, Ontario decided on a nuclear path. It's spent hundreds of billions of dollars, and accepted the risks, and the radioactive waste, for carbon free power.

DOUG FORD, PREMIER OF ONTARIO:  Very nice to meet you. 

NORMAN HERMANT:  The province’s conservative premier, Doug Ford, says there are no plans to change course.

How important is nuclear power to this province and to its energy mix?

DOUG FORD: I think it's absolutely critical. 

You know, if you don't have wind, or you don't have a sunny day, you don't have power on the renewables but with nuclear, it's running 24/7 365, and it's consistent, and it's green, clean energy. 

NORMAN HERMANT:  Toronto is Canada's biggest city, the capital of its most populous province, Ontario. Most of Canada's nuclear power is generated here in three big plants. More than half of the energy keeping the lights on in this province comes from nuclear power.

In all, those three nuclear plants have 20 reactors, but some have been shut down, others are being refurbished at a cost of tens of billions of dollars.   

PROF. GLENN HARVEL, ONTARIO TECH. UNIVERSITY:  So the very, very first startup is critical. 

NORMAN HERMANT:  Professor Glenn Harvel helps train the next generation of Ontario’s nuclear engineers. As the debate in Australia over nuclear power develops. He believes the huge costs need to be considered. 

GLENN HARVEL:  My advice to you is you don't put your foot in the water on this one. You have to make a commitment, and you have to dive in and accept that you are going to do this technology. You have to make a strong commitment to nuclear.

NORMAN HERMANT:  The first nuclear plant Ontario’s government utility built in Pickering had an expected lifespan of 30 years. 

Now, startup to final decommissioning can last nearly a century.

GLENN HARVEL:  A brand new one you're looking at a 60-year operational life. If you decide to do deferred commissioning, you're now looking at 30 years of safe storage, and then finally, two or three years of decommissioning. So when you add that all up, you're getting close to 100 years. 

NORMAN HERMANT:  As Ontario doubles down on nuclear, there are plenty of critics focused on safety, costs and especially, waste.

KEITH BROOKS, ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENCE CANADA:  We would prefer that the province gets serious about building wind and solar power now, as fast as possible. It is cheaper, can be built much, much faster. It finds better acceptance in communities. That's the route that we'd like to see.

NORMAN HERMANT:  Ontario has about three million radioactive fuel bundles in storage. After a decade in pools of water, they’re put in containers and kept on site at power plants. 

Nuclear waste is managed by its own agency with its own demonstration centre. Used fuel rods made up of uranium pellets need to be stored for centuries, if not longer. 

JEFF BINNS, NUCLEAR WASTE MANAGEMENT ORGANISATION:  Really, the drop off of the radioactivity is actually quite significant in the first few decades, and then over the next sort of few hundreds of years, it drops off very significantly.

NORMAN HERMANT:  Canada has plans for a deep geological repository - a permanent solution to store nuclear waste 700 metres underground.   

But this mock-up won’t become real unless potential host communities vote in favour. That’s not guaranteed.

A lot of Australians, one of their real reservations about nuclear power is what do we do with the waste? Are you confident this solution can work?

JEFF BINNS: Yeah, I'm 100 per cent confident that this is the appropriate solution and it's not just me. There's actually international scientific consensus that a deep geological repository is the appropriate way for the long-term management of used nuclear fuels. 

NORMAN HERMANT:  Even the best-case scenario won’t see any waste in deep storage for at least two decades.

Keith Brooks from Environmental Defence wants to see Ontario’s nuclear plans dramatically scaled back. 

KEITH BROOKS:  I don't think it makes sense, no, to be expanding generation, to be building or committing to build new power plants, when we still don't have a solution to deal with all of the waste that we've already generated and whether we find a solution is up in the air.

NORMAN HERMANT:  Solving that issue is crucial to Ontario’s nuclear future including what’s happening here. Preparations for one of the world’s first small module reactors (SMR). 

Four are planned.

SMRs are smaller than traditional reactors and at an estimated cost of $2 billion each, they are promoted as being cheaper. 

Ontario is currently spending $14 billion to refurbish four older reactors. 

SUBO SINNATHAMBY, ONTARIO POWER GENERATION:  With eight units operating we were one of the largest.

NORMAN HERMANT:  Subo Sinnathamby is the chief projects officer for the provincial government’s Ontario Power Generation utility. 

SUBO SINNATHAMBY:  Not every jurisdiction needs a large new nuclear fleet, like we do in Ontario. There are other jurisdictions that will need smaller designs, and this is definitely a game changer, even for us. 

NORMAN HERMANT:  It’s projected Ontario will need to double electricity production by 2050. Sinnathamby says nuclear will be key to meeting that goal. 

SUBO SINNATHAMBY:  It's going to have a bigger role whether it's with small modular reactors, refurbished reactors, or building large nuclear.

NORMAN HERMANT:  Nuclear’s role in that energy mix is key to Ontario cutting its greenhouse gas emissions.

Premier Doug Ford says if Australia does explore nuclear power, Ontario is happy to help. 

DOUG FORD: We're a world leader when it comes to nuclear energy, and we're going to continue being a world leader and working with countries around the world. We want to collaborate with people from Australia and show them the great opportunities they'll have if they build a nuclear facility.

NORMAN HERMANT:  And he has a message for those who are on the fence about nuclear power. 

DOUG FORD: I want to tell the folks there, it's safe and it's clean and it's green, and you have two choices, you either go that route or you have coal-fired plants like we see in the US, we see in China. And I'll take the nuclear over coal-fired plants any day.

JOYAL APPLEWHAITE:  Hi Coffee...

NORMAN HERMANT:  For Joyal Applewhaite and the people of this province, reactors are a fact of life. Ontario has invested so much and become so reliant on nuclear power, there is no turning back.