2028 just in time
A first for Canada: New type of nuclear plant opening by 2028
271–280 of 415 posts
Re: A first for Canada: New type of nuclear plant opening by 2028
#272There had never been a land war in a country with nuclear power until 2022. It just strikes me that safely operating a nuclear plant requires you to make predictions about the distant future that are not possible to make.
Re: A first for Canada: New type of nuclear plant opening by 2028
#273> SMRs are nuclear reactors that typically produce up to 300 megawatts (MW) of electricity, which is enough energy to power 300,000 homes for one year. I suppose anyone who has some knowledge re electricity knows what they're trying to say here, and for anyone who doesn't it won't make much difference, but reading a sentence like this still hurts me a little. MW (megawatts) are a measure of power, not energy. This me…
Indeed. If you're going to be heating all those houses with electricity, instead of gas, coal, or wood, then you'll likely need much more than 1kW per home. Especially when winter hits -30C.
If you build your house better, you won't need very much energy at all to heat or cool it. The passive house standard used in Sweden calls for a maximum of 20 kWh/(m²yr), which translates to ~3,700 kWh per year for a 2,000 ft² home.
Re: A first for Canada: New type of nuclear plant opening by 2028
#274Earlier quoted context omitted.
Until they need replacement components for any of this. Which they will need evry couple of years. Then they will need centralized infrastructure in form of manufacturing plants, roads, rail and finally (because it is imported from China most likely) ports. Every step producing greenhouse gasses or other pollution. Self sufficiency of this sort is largely a sub-urban myth. A comfortable, optimistic one, but a myth no…
Decades, IIRC, not years. Yes, total independence is unrealistic and will be until we have von Neumann universal constructors, but we are starting to get to the point where big footprint homes could reasonably be energy-independent for normal daily use.
be careful claiming that solar PV systems last decades. Many recent builds have components that fail including the panels, junction boxes, the panel-to-panel connectors and the inverters themselves.
Solar isn't as reliable as the solar industry would have you believe. Worst part, a single component failure often takes large sections of the system offline. With domestic systems, that's the entire system.
Re: A first for Canada: New type of nuclear plant opening by 2028
#275Earlier quoted context omitted.
Until they need replacement components for any of this. Which they will need evry couple of years. Then they will need centralized infrastructure in form of manufacturing plants, roads, rail and finally (because it is imported from China most likely) ports. Every step producing greenhouse gasses or other pollution. Self sufficiency of this sort is largely a sub-urban myth. A comfortable, optimistic one, but a myth no…
"evry couple of years" .. umm nope. Try every 10-20 years for the inverter and every 20-30 years for the panels. Roof-top solar in Australia is cheap and almost ubiquitous.
this is far from the truth. NREL have great reports and ongoing research into how often solar panels fail. You are correct in that it isn't every couple of years but it is not as long as 20 years. The number of solar PV panels that have been around that long, let alone survived that long is small.
Re: A first for Canada: New type of nuclear plant opening by 2028
#276Earlier 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)
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?
Sure, I should have said _relatively_ easy. But see how much of a reaction you'd get to a fission power station (regardless of the rights and wrongs of it...).
Re: A first for Canada: New type of nuclear plant opening by 2028
#277Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think that the economic argument is that it isn't viable for a private company to start a nuclear power-plant, it would require government involvement, and lots of people don't want the government to get involved in something that they think no-government entities can handle.
In the US, private companies have built all our nuclear plants. And reactors like this little one in Canada will make it a lot easier.
With entirely public money and underwriting.
Re: A first for Canada: New type of nuclear plant opening by 2028
#278Earlier 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)
Conventional reactors take a long time because they're very large, custom-built at the site, and we don't build many of them. That doesn't really say anything about reactors like the one in the article, which is small enough to build in a factory and transport to the site.
Even the one proposed has a six-year timeframe (what's the bet that timeframe isn't met?). Imagine trying to get an SMR reactor up in Australia within 10 years, given the legislative environment and the public opposition to it.
Re: A first for Canada: New type of nuclear plant opening by 2028
#279Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hi, I’m curious, can you tell me about the most promising storage technology being rolled out now?
pumped hydro, depending on geography
Canada has plenty of mountains to support conventional pumped hydro.
There are a lot of interesting variations on pumped hydro that do not depend so much on geography. Undersea variations are most interesting. Wikipedia explains some of them.
Undersea compressed air is also interesting: a bag anchored to the sea bed is inflated with air. Advantage is it needs no mechanical or electrical apparatus underwater.
Similarly, a float attached to a pulley anchored to the seabed, attached to an electric winch onshore, or on the side of a wind turbine post.
There are the usual rapidly improving battery chemistries, prominently iron-air batteries, with utility-scale factories already under construction, to deliver in 2023, with plenty of time to spare.
Re: A first for Canada: New type of nuclear plant opening by 2028
#280This is really exciting. I wish we had nuclear power here in Australia. I know I might get downvoted for this comment. But with advancement in technology and large amount nuclear fuel (Uranium deposit) available, it's a great choice. 1. Vast swathes of uninhabited land can absorb some of the risks/fears associated with a nuclear accident. With technology like this, the risks are even lower. 2. It's lot cleaner than c…
The nuclear plants need to be built near water, which means they're likely to end up near habitation. Like renewables, much of the cost of nuclear is in construction - unlike renewables, this has gone up not down over the years. > Of course the coal companies won't like that. This is a fairly important reason why it's not going to happen in Australia.
the SMR reactors are designed to be created in a factory, and shipped to the site. Each one will use an identical plan for the local site construction, and should greatly reduce construction costs, and get rid of all the red tape around getting each site design approved.