(This post was originally created in November 2020. Updated April 2022.)

Since the GoCo contract was signed, costs to Canadian taxpayers appear to have almost quadrupled. According to AECL financial reports, its parliamentary appropriations rose from $327-million in 2015 to $1.3-billion (approved) for the year ending March 31, 2021. AECL’s nuclear waste liabilities have not gone down, but appear to have increased by about $200-million.

Parliamentary Appropriations

Here are the figures and references for parliamentary appropriations to AECL:

$327 million in 2015

$491 million in 2016

$784 million in 2017

$826 million in 2018

Reference is the Five Year Consolidated Financial Summary in AECL’s annual report 2018, page 390

Parliamentary appropriations to AECL:

$829 million in 2019

$868 million in 2020

Reference is the Five-Year Financial Summary table on page 35 of AECL’s annual report 2019-20, page 35

Approved parliamentary appropriations for the year ending March 31, 2021 are $1.3 billion. The reference is Page 30 in this document: https://www.aecl.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/AECL-2020-2021-Q1-Financial-Report.pdf The quote reads as follows:

The appropriations approved for operating and capital expenditures for the year ending March 31, 2021 total $1,254 million.

$1.254 billion rounded to two figures is $1.3 billion. So the parliamentary appropriations for AECL have risen from $327 million in 2015 to $1.3 billion in 2020-21, which is roughly quadrupled.

Update April 2022 ~ appropriations approved for year ending March 31, 2022 were $1.23 billion (see blue highlight below).

This table is from the Atomic Energy of Canada Limited 2021-22 Third Quarter Financial Report page 29

Nuclear Waste Liabilities

The figures for the nuclear waste liabilities are in the second last line in the table entitled Five-year financial summary, on page 36 of AECL’s annual report 2019-20 The report refers to the liabilities as “Decommissioning and waste management provision and contaminated sites liabilities”

In the farthest right column, the figure for 2106 is 7.87 billion which matches what the Auditor General reported in his special report in 2017 which said:

“One element of the Corporation’s mandate concerns decommissioning and waste management to deal with the results of decades of nuclear activities at the Corporation’s sites and with the cleanup of waste at orphan sites for which the federal government has assumed responsibility. The cost of this work is estimated at over $7.9 billion as of 31 March 2016.”

Report of the Auditor General of Canada to the Board of Directors of Atomic Energy of Canada Limited—Special Examination—2017 https://www.oag-bvg.gc.ca/internet/English/parl_oag_201711_07_e_42672.html

The figure on the farthest left is the amount of the liabilities for 2020. It is $8.06 billion or 8.1 billion, rounded to two figures.

The difference between the liabilities in 2016 at $7.9 billion and 2020 at $8.1 billion is a small increase of $200 million.