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A first for Canada: New type of nuclear plant opening by 2028

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Re: A first for Canada: New type of nuclear plant opening by 2028

#111

Post by clarionbell »

supert56 wrote: post #89

My only question about nuclear is why is it okay to bury the nuclear waste? I can understand that it might be fine to bury small amounts in specific stores but if countries slowly adopt nuclear energy at scale then over time won’t we be burying a lot of waste that, correct me if I’m wrong, has to be stored for thousands of years? I don’t understand how this can be sustainable long term. I also think it’s maybe arroga…

Think about it this way.

All of the uranium used as fuel came from the ground. Now, we will be putting smaller quantity of other, also radioactive, materials into ground. Lot of places have high natural levels of radiation[0], sometimes they even make it as a spa location[1].

People were living around radiation since before they were people. And they managed. We still do.

In the end the question is if we want some radioactive pollution that is easy to contain in the near term, or a lot more carbon pollution that is impossible to contain in the near term.

One is destroying the planet as we speak. The other might be a problem few centuries in the future, if there is one.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Background_radiation#Areas_wit...

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%A1chymov#Spa

Re: A first for Canada: New type of nuclear plant opening by 2028

#112

Post by Galaxeblaffer »

worik wrote: post #70
prawn wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also thought we should've developed a nuclear waste industry here in South Australia. There was a 'citizen's jury' on the topic a while back but obviously public opinion swayed political action to rule it out. We have a lot of "unused" and stable land well away from population centres. I imagine transport from afar is an issue though.

Storing waste is too expensive to contemplate. Wherever it is put the high level waste (not much in quantity but...) is deadly and a silent killer for over a hundred thousand years. This is geologically significant time period, and we can make bets, but have no guarantee of any place on Earth being stable on those time scales. So it must be monitored. For a hundred thousand years That would be us making future genera…

I'm pretty sure they'd rather deal with a bit of entombed nuclear waste buried deep in the ground instead of a dead, polluted and depleted planet.

Re: A first for Canada: New type of nuclear plant opening by 2028

#113

Post by ncmncm »

jp0d wrote: post #16
wryun wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Takes too long to build fission plants to replace coal in the short term; easy to spin up lots of wind/solar. We've also got a ridiculous amount of renewable potential. (I'm a candidate for the Fusion Party; we'd like to remove the ban on nuclear power in Australia because it would enable research)

I'm all for renewable power and environmentally sustainable technologies. This includes Solar, Beach, Wind power and Nuclear power. Preferably Hydrogen fuel cell cars over battery powered cars (purely for less batter and less toxic material to recycle and also logistically more feasible for long distance driving). We Australians need to raise awareness about its effectiveness. The new compact fusion reactor designs f…

There will be no compact fusion power. Money put into that is money wasted that could have been spent on something that has a chance of making a difference.

Likewise, nukes: a dollar plowed into nukes generates, many years later, much less power than a dollar of renewables that start producing immediately. You spend on coal the whole time while the nuke is being built, and the amount you have spent just on coal, by then, would have bought as much renewable generating capacity as your nuke.

Re: A first for Canada: New type of nuclear plant opening by 2028

#114

Post by ncmncm »

wumpus wrote: post #33
jp0d wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm all for renewable power and environmentally sustainable technologies. This includes Solar, Beach, Wind power and Nuclear power. Preferably Hydrogen fuel cell cars over battery powered cars (purely for less batter and less toxic material to recycle and also logistically more feasible for long distance driving). We Australians need to raise awareness about its effectiveness. The new compact fusion reactor designs f…

It's a shame that so many people are still pushing hydrogen for individual vehicles despite its total failure in the marketplace... despite significant subsidies.

Hydrogen fueled cars could be substantially more energy-efficient than battery-electric cars, but it doesn't matter much, because energy is very quickly getting cheaper, so the point where it simply doesn't matter.

Re: A first for Canada: New type of nuclear plant opening by 2028

#115

Post by duskwuff »

PeterisP wrote: post #73
voidfunc wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't nuclear plants need vast amounts of water? Australia's kinda lacking that in the middle of the country.

The middle of the country has no need for large quantities of power as almost nobody lives there - almost all Australians live on the coasts near to water.

Or, to generalize even further -- the vast majority of Australians live in or around a handful of cities along the southeast coast of the country (Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, Canberra), or one city on the west coast (Perth).

A map of the country's population density may help bring this into perspective: https://i.redd.it/9mw8ttqqu0b41.jpg

Re: A first for Canada: New type of nuclear plant opening by 2028

#116

Post by yodelshady »

wumpus wrote: post #30
arcticbull wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we'd started building reactors when we first said it'd take too long, we'd have all the reactors we need. Instead of saying it's going to take too long, let's just start :) we might surprise ourselves in a few years.

Did you spend the same amount of money on solar/wind instead? How did that turn out?

In my country, which is a relative success story for wind?

apparently circa. $ 40 billion, for, right now... one GW. On average - and be assured I have checked this - five, which puts it in the same cost / GW as nuclear, and a capacity factor, not of sixty percent as advertised, but twenty-five. And we don't dump a megatonne or so of CO2 into the atmosphere a week running gas plants to cover nuclear variability. As alluded to by someone else, big wind projects are starting to run into the same levels of NIMBYism as nukes, because the footprint is huge.

You want to advocate for less nuclear, that megatonne a week is something you answer for.

Re: A first for Canada: New type of nuclear plant opening by 2028

#117

Post by Hikikomori »

ncmncm wrote: post #108
greenknight wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having direct involvement in the wind industry... most plan -> completion developments take 5-10 years. heck even one from 2013 still hasnt had ground broken. The main reason? NIMBYs. Loads of people go out to the countryside to retire. imagine what these retires would do if their picturesque landscape is now comprised of windfarms? and they dont have anything else to do to fill up their day?

Two words: Offshore wind.

How far though?

Re: A first for Canada: New type of nuclear plant opening by 2028

#118

Post by Cthulhu_ »

Hikikomori wrote: post #117
ncmncm wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two words: Offshore wind.

How far though?

Here's a list of offshore windmill parks in the North Sea: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_offshore_wind_farms_in.... The closest ones to my country are about 13 kilometers offshore.

Bonus numbers, the horizon 'drops off' at 5 KM distance, and modern windmills are about 300m high.

Re: A first for Canada: New type of nuclear plant opening by 2028

#119

Post by baud147258 »

ncmncm wrote: post #108
greenknight wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having direct involvement in the wind industry... most plan -> completion developments take 5-10 years. heck even one from 2013 still hasnt had ground broken. The main reason? NIMBYs. Loads of people go out to the countryside to retire. imagine what these retires would do if their picturesque landscape is now comprised of windfarms? and they dont have anything else to do to fill up their day?

Two words: Offshore wind.

offshore wind has even longer timescale and you still have local opposition from NIMBYs and you add local fishers and conservation activists (I remember one project off the coast of France that received opposition from the Sea Shepherd)

Re: A first for Canada: New type of nuclear plant opening by 2028

#120

Post by dsomers »

ncmncm wrote: post #96
sofixa wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They are much more expensive than equivalent renewables, This statement reflects the quality of the comment. Renewables need significant storage to be directly comparable, cost-wise, to nuclear. There are no currently existing grid level storage solutions, same as SMRs, and both are invested in. And you're missing a huge part of the equation - we're talking about Canada, the northern cold parts. Which renewables wo…

Signicant storage is cheap and getting cheaper, much faster than wind or solar ever did. By the time we have built out enough renewables to benefit from storage, storage will be cheap enough to hardly notice.

Hi, I’m curious, can you tell me about the most promising storage technology being rolled out now?
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