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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

#341

Post by Tiktaalik »

mabbo wrote: post #309
photochemsyn wrote: post #12

The background on Canada's plans for small modular reactors (of which this is just one of three projects) can be found here: https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Canadian-provinc... Supposedly this is promoting clean energy and fighting climate change, but the details don't always match this rhetoric. In particular they're thinking they can use nuclear power to replace piped-in natural gas to mine the Alberta…

> The better option is to just leave the tar in the ground. A town not too far from where I grew up had most of it's economy based around a single factory (Hershey Chocolate in Smith's Falls, Ontario). There were lots of other stores and whatnot, but money flowed into the town via the factory paying workers' salaries, then bounced between hands from in shops, services, whatever else. When I was in high school, that f…

We've known about this impending problem for decades. That no Albertan political party has been honest with Albertans about the future is disappointing. Easier to kick the can down the road.

Nuclear could be the thing that provides a route forward. Given BC's seismic issues, it's probably not a great place for nuclear power plants and there's really no more rivers to dam. Alberta should be pivoting away from oil and toward becoming a nuclear power provider to BC, the Prairies and the United States.

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

#342

Post by c1ccccc1 »

niek_pas wrote: post #148
ghostly_s wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's really not that simple. Enriching the raw materials and subjecting them to fission results in a waste product with quite different characteristics than the input.

I know nothing about nuclear physics; could you elaborate? How are the input and output different?

Uranium 235 can decay by splitting into two smaller nuclei and releasing some free neutrons. Frequently those smaller nuclei are themselves radioactive. Uranium has a very long half life, on the order of billions of years, so the natural rate of decay is very low. This makes it relatively safe, since there is not too much radiation produced per second. Many of the product nuclei that can be formed have a much shorter half life. So they emit more radiation, though on the plus side they don't last as long. In nature, these smaller nuclei are still formed, but at a very low rate. In a nuclear reactor, the uranium is bombarded with a large number of neutrons, and it has a chance of splitting whenever a neutron hits it. So there's a high rate of decay, and as a result, once the fuel has been in the reactor for a while, it contains a large amount of those fission products. That's what makes the waste more dangerous: it has isotopes in it that decay faster and therefore emit more radiation per second than pure uranium.

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

#343

Post by chaostheory »

smiley1437 wrote: post #228
chaostheory wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Security is a bigger issue now that the world is moving away from globalism which means less trade. The major powers have less barriers to conflict including cyber warfare. So what would happen if a disaster somehow hit one of these mini plants?

Which sort of disaster were you thinking? These new miniplants don't require power or water, loss of either causes shutdown.

I'm not very familiar with them; so they're immune to causing a sudden, ecological disaster?

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

#344

Post by hocuspocus »

pydry wrote: post #286
DennisP wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crappy reactors from the 1970s occasionally go boom. We have much better designs now, like the one in the article: > The radioactive materials stay fully encased for their entire life and beyond. It's a very robust, strong fuel that's designed to make sure it indefinitely keeps the fuel safely inside the pellet. > Some of the main differences that the MMR has from conventional nuclear plants is that the reactor canno…

I'll be convinced once they start shouldering the accident liability. Not before. Crappy reactors from the 70s are the only financially viable reactors these days. Also the ones Germany is being raked across the coals for trying to shut down.

The remaining reactors in operation in Germany are Konvoi PWRs, neither a crappy design nor from the 70s.

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

#345

Post by ecnahc515 »

caymanjim wrote: post #340
robotnikman wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The nuclear plants need to be built near water Not always. The Palo Verde nuclear plant in my state is in the middle of the desert far from any body of water, and also the largest in the country in terms of net generation.

For those like me who wondered how it cools: it evaporates municipal sewage.

So it's still near a town/city then?

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

#346

Post by aerostable_slug »

tablespoon wrote: post #326
pjc50 wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>> 1. Vast swathes of uninhabited land can absorb some of the risks/fears associated with a nuclear accident > The nuclear plants need to be built near water, which means they're likely to end up near habitation. Would seawater work? Does Australia have any "vast swathes of uninhabited land" near the sea? > Like renewables, much of the cost of nuclear is in construction - unlike renewables, this has gone up not down…

Note that in some areas, environmental regulation prevents once-through water cooling because wee-small creatures that go through the plant are killed. The outflow may also be problematic.

Local (to me) example: Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant killed all the abalone in its discharge cove during its first hot run due to the increased water temperature. There were so many that before the plant the spot was known to locals as "abalone cove". You could rock pick to your heart's content and not even need a wetsuit. On the other hand, they do have rather fascinating sea life in that cove due to the higher temps there vs. the cold Pacific just a few feet away (they used to have a show-and-tell marine biology lab onsite for visitors to check out). Anyway, to relicense DCPP, the plant would likely need to switch to cooling using the signature big towers people associate with nuclear plants, which is obviously a titanic effort.

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

#347

Post by aerostable_slug »

marcosdumay wrote: post #336
oblio wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's silly for electricity. Electricity will never, ever be a free market. The barriers to entry are almost insurmountable, especially capital requirements (production + distribution, especially distribution) but also the myriad safety regulations. Might as well involve the government and gain some accountability, because with corporations, there is 0 accountability.

Yeah, distribution is a huge can of worms. But production (and storage, as soon as it makes economical sense) are quite easy to entry. There are many cars that are more expensive than a small sized hydro or solar plant.

Note that managing lots of small generation is much harder than a few big ones that are contractually bound to behave according to certain rules. Distributed generation is extremely exciting, but it's also a big challenge.

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

#348

Post by belorn »

ncmncm wrote: post #100
belorn wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solar/wind/storage is always a better option as long as the storage solution isn't replaced by burn fossil fuel, which like the tarsand oil detail, is the kind of detail that sadly pop up in practically all places where the solar/wind/storage solution is being promoted. The fossil fuel need to stay in the ground. I am fairly enthusiastic about both renewables and nuclear, but I am a bit pessimistic about storage. The…

There are dozens of storage methods that all work, the only remaining uncertainty being which will be cheapest, or otherwise most useful. Hydrogen and ammonia synthesis will not be cheapest, but will arguably be most useful. It is strange that people proposing storage methods frequently seem unable to reason about cost, so propose absurdly expensive realizations of their ideas. What will end up deployed will be the m…

I have read both government studies on energy storage solutions and studies done by financial advisors to people who invest in the energy sector. The issue is always the high cost, with only specific places and situations where it is economical viable. In particular, if you can discharge the storage 365 days a year from 100% to 0%, selling at fairly high peak price, and do so for a capacity of 1-6hrs (depending on location and peak price), then it can be made profitable to operate a storage solution (depend also a bit on subsidies). Every other solution has yet to be found economical viable, and all of those other solutions are significant more expensive than nuclear.

There are some alternative use cases. If you can convert the energy directly to a substance that an industry consume, like hydrogen in steel production, then the economics start to shift a bit. Hydrogen is produce today through natural gas, and if we include the carbon tax and introduce some subsidies to those who want to use renewables, then green hydrogen can be made to price match grey hydrogen in steel manufacturing. It not perfect, and its not storage, but it does reduce the use of fossil fuels. Burning the hydrogen for power however is still several times more expensive than nuclear, and I don't think people are willing to pay that kind of money in order to avoid nuclear power.

The current way most governments seem to operate is to build out renewable generating capacity while also build out equal or greater amount of fossil fuel generating capacity. Looking at the Ukraine war, looking at the climate, and just looking at air pollution or graphs over fossil fuel usage, I am not optimistic that the current strategy are working at all. If anything it look exactly what the fossil fuel lobbying are pushing which is a future where they still hold a significant position and where the high peak price results in about as much profits as in the past but for a significant less amount of actually product.

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

#349

Post by lkbm »

adrianN wrote: post #234
arcticbull wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed I was talking about using nuclear to provide a constant base load that you do not scale up and down. You use renewables for variable load.

Well either nuclear is cheaper than renewables+backup (for peak load), then you want to use 100% nuclear, or renewables+backup are cheaper, then you want to use 100% that. I don't see a scenario where you run nuclear for baseload and renewables+backup for peaks, but maybe I'm wrong.

Well, if the renewables in question were hydro, I'd say you're wrong, because hydro is fantastic for scaling up and down on demand.

But since we're mostly talking about solar, that doesn't apply. What may apply is that solar will have highest output when it's sunny, whereas in a hot climate, demand will peak when it's sunny — which aren't quite the same thing, but strongly correlated.

That said, you need to be able to handle hot, cloudy days, and for that reason you may be right that you're best off going entirely with one or the other.

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