We knew there’d be a lot of people who’d say Canadian province Ontario’s embarrassing suspension of its plans for new nuclear reactors is good news, but who knew one of them would be Ontario premier, Dalton McGuinty?

‘Here's the good news: Under previous projects we didn't find out about the high pricing until we were half or three-quarters of the way or five years into the damned things,’ the premier said.

That’s some fine spin as Premier McGuinty tries to save the blushes of his administration. Only at the last minute did it realise that accepting the price tag for the new reactors would be like falling for one of those email scams promising a share of riches locked in Nigerian bank accounts.

(If only the Finnish government had had the same flash of inspiration before embarking on the farcical construction of the OL3 EPR reactor at Olkiluoto in Finland. We imagine there are quite a few people referring to that reactor as a ‘damned thing’ as well.)

This is just the latest example of countries finding new nuclear reactors unaffordable. Apart from OL3 in Finland, remember Turkey’s disastrous tendering process for its first nuclear reactor? The price of electricity from a new reactor was pegged at three times the average price of electricity in Turkey. Premier McGuinty could have saved him and his administration a lot of hassle if he’d only read the news.

Just how his plans for new reactors in Ontario come back from this he isn’t saying. Somehow, the price of these new reactors has to be reduced by two-thirds to match the province’s budget. Good luck with that. In the meantime, while Ontario crosses its fingers and waits for the price of nuclear power to fall, how about investing in cheaper, more reliable and safer alternatives?