As soon as he took office in the spring of 2023, the big boss of Hydro-Québec, Michael Sabia, launched a feasibility study on the relaunch of the Gentilly-2 nuclear power plant, inactive for 11 years. But its nuclear ambitions have been dampened by the lack of “social acceptability” mentioned by the Prime Minister, François Legault. In a parliamentary committee on November 30, Mr. Sabia said he was now interested in “small modular reactors”. Is this interest far-fetched? A look back at the love-hate relationship between Quebec and nuclear power.
Wednesday January 26, 1972. Jacques Parizeau speaks to the students of Polytechnique. Quebec could become the victim of a new imperialism if it does not develop its autonomy in nuclear energy, he warns. The professor at the École des Hautes Études Commerciales de Montréal (today called HEC Montréal) took the opportunity to denounce the hydroelectric utopia of “James” Bay, systematically adding the preposition to this terra incognita.
The Polytechnique student newspaper highlights Parizeau’s mastery in this matter. “ [Il] opened the eyes of many skeptics and ignoramuses,” writes The Polyscope. The duty also returns to the presentation. “It is the economic future of all Quebecers that would be in danger” if he turned his back on nuclear power, headlined the daily in January 1972. Parizeau was excited by the development of a nuclear sector. This interest took its roots… in the Liberal Party of Quebec.
The nuclear revolution
On November 14, 1962, Prime Minister Jean Lesage was re-elected at the head of Quebec with his slogan “Masters at home”. This referendum election results in the “nationalization” of Quebec electricity production and distribution companies. However, energy demand continues to increase, and Hydro-Québec wants to diversify its energy sources. The Thunder team is therefore embarking on what it considers to be “the path to progress”: the nuclear sector.
“The Lesage government is receiving signals from Ottawa to say “you should perhaps keep your eyes open because there is a sector, a new nuclear energy sector, and Ontario is going to get involved in it” », recalls today Pierre Duchesne, the biographer of Jacques Parizeau. The latter was then economic and financial advisor to the Liberal Prime Minister.
In Ottawa, Lesage’s victory had the effect of an electric shock, a wake-up call, as Robert Bothwell, professor of Canadian history at the University of Toronto, points out. In power since 1963, federal Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson was made aware of “the rebirth of nationalism as a political force.” “It therefore seems not only natural, but highly desirable to create links with Quebec. And there’s a way to do it that combines science and engineering. Hence Gentilly,” recalls Mr. Bothwell.
In 1965, the Lesage government authorized Hydro-Québec to build, in concert with Atomic Energy of Canada, the first nuclear power plant in Quebec: Gentilly-1. The Pearson government is, of course, “very willing to show that Quebec is participating in a high-tech project, partly financed by the federal government,” underlines Mr. Bothwell.
Jacques Parizeau, for his part, will consider that nuclear power “is promising, that there will be engineers, technicians [québécois] linked to this whole sector,” recalls his biographer. He “is one of the quiet revolutionaries who say: ‘we must not miss the next century, and nuclear power is probably one of the new energies that must be developed’”.
The former Lesage advisor joined the Parti Québécois in 1969. Parizeau praises the “revolutionary technology” of nuclear power in The duty of May 13, 1971. “Pollution problems”? They are “not serious,” he writes. The costs ? “Remarkably weak. » Quebec, in his opinion, “is at a crossroads”. According to him, Gentilly is an “experimental factory”, and not “a program”.
Parizeau insisted the next day, still in The duty : The nuclear route “prevents us from reaffirming our reputation as champion of hydroelectricity at a time when the technique is going to fall into disuse due to the lack of good sites and its requirements in terms of installation costs”. Parizeau opposes hydroelectricity to nuclear power: “it is useless to boast of being world champions in the manufacture of candles, when we are inventing electric light bulbs,” he writes.
The nuclear valley
Parizeau is not alone in campaigning for nuclear power. Columnist at Montreal Journal, its leader, René Lévesque, spoke on May 6, 1971 of the many questions he had about the hydroelectric projects in James Bay. “We have reached the most difficult and costly basin of all [aménager]. Given the extreme weakness of the drop-off points on these lazy subarctic rivers, we are required, in the current state of technology, to a veritable orgy of raising and diversion work and perhaps even to “marriages” of courses extraordinarily complex water systems,” he writes.
Lévesque recalls a conversation with “one of the best Hydro experts” saying that this project must be kept in reserve. It “would be, in a way, the swan song of major hydraulic works”. The solution ? Spare the Far North for the time being and move immediately to the development of the thermal and thermonuclear sector.
Without turning away from its James Bay hydroelectric project announced in 1971, the Liberal government of Robert Bourassa launched the construction of Gentilly-2 in 1973, with federal assistance. “After the development of the most profitable hydraulic sites, Hydro-Québec considers that sooner or later it will be necessary to turn to nuclear power,” explains Professor Mahdi Khelfaoui, of the Department of Human Sciences at UQTR. In the gradual transition from hydro to nuclear power that is coming, Gentilly-2 is in a way the second step, after Gentilly-1, in this direction. »
Senior managers at Hydro-Québec are divided. “There were the beavers – if we can call them that – and those who were more favorable to nuclear power, that’s for sure,” underlines Stéphane Savard, professor in the Department of History at UQAM. At the time, “Hydro-Québec thought that we would run out of rivers to develop around the 2000s,” he recalls.
The president of the state company, Roland Giroux, then stepped on the accelerator. In May 1975, he published a plan which provided for the construction of around thirty nuclear reactors over a period of fifteen years, between 1985 and 2000. Hydro-Québec went so far as to identify six locations in the St. Lawrence valley, at Beauharnois, Grondines, Sainte-Croix, Montmagny, Saint-Roch-des-Aulnaies and Rivière-des-Caps. The project would have irreparably transformed the skyline of the river with its great waters.
The moratorium
The idea of a nuclear Quebec was neither dead nor buried when René Lévesque took power in 1976. [Parizeau] will continue to advocate for the development of this sector until the submission of the white paper from the Minister for Energy, Guy Joron. This plan imposes a moratorium on the development of future nuclear power plants. Mr. Parizeau will then “settle down” [à l’avis des autres] », observes his biographer.
Before this moratorium arrived, nuclear power had a good reputation. “We are not yet in nuclear disasters,” recalls Stéphane Savard. The Three Mile Island nuclear accident in 1979 and the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 brought the notion of danger into the debate.
The first Quebec energy policy, unveiled in 1978 by Minister Joron, established the end of the development of future nuclear power plants. This decision was reinforced at the start of the following decade by the economic crisis, which caused a drop in demand for electricity. The project to build the Gentilly-3 nuclear power plant was abandoned in 1983.
Parizeau agrees with the general opinion. In the interviews he gave to Pierre Duchesne at the end of the 1990s, the former supporter of nuclear power did not elaborate on his pleas in favor of this sector. “When I brought this to him for the biography, he didn’t elaborate much on it,” recalls Mr. Duchesne. There was uneasiness. »
Parizeau renounced his nuclear ambitions when he took power in 1994. His former chief of staff, Jean Royer, “did not really have” discussions on this subject with his faithful ally. “Mr. Parizeau is anything but nostalgic, so it’s very rare that we come back to discussions,” he emphasizes in an interview.
In 2012, having just hosted her first Council of Ministers, PQ Prime Minister Pauline Marois announced the closure of Quebec’s only nuclear power plant, Gentilly-2. Pierre Duchesne is sitting around the table: he is Minister of Higher Education. “We could clearly see that development costs, despite technological development, were excessive,” he explains today. Does Mr. Sabia’s interest in nuclear power prove young Parizeau right? “I find it very, very perilous to pretend to be capable of making a dead person speak like Mr. Parizeau, with all his capacity to include a set of elements in his analysis. I can say one thing, however: he is a man who was capable of recognizing his mistakes,” replies Mr. Duchesne.