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Canada plans 'nuclear renaissance' with up to 10 reactors built by 2040

cbc.ca

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Re: Canada plans 'nuclear renaissance' with up to 10 reactors built by 2040

#31

Post by rickydroll »

chollida1 wrote: post #7

Makes alot of sense. Canada has: - one of the largest uranium reserves - a well respected and safe nuclear design in CANDU - experience with building and refurbishing nuclear reactors(Darlington) and for Ontario itself A need for more baseload to work with the large amount of solar and wind that Ontario has added in the last 10 years. Saskatchewan also now has a potential need for nuclear for industrial use now that…

> Ontario itself A need for more baseload to work with the large amount of solar and wind that Ontario has added in the last 10 years.

Chasing baseload is a fool's game. You will always have a mismatch between power needed and power produced. Power storage is necessary to move excess power produced to times of excess power need. e.g., shave the peaks to fill the valleys.

Any storage reduces the need for baseload and peaker plants. 4-6 hrs move daytime excess solar to fill evening needs. Overnight baseload excess can refill the batteries to cover the morning excess need before solar fully kicks in. Expanding battery capacity to 8-12 hours further reduces the need for expensive power sources such as nuclear and gas.

Re: Canada plans 'nuclear renaissance' with up to 10 reactors built by 2040

#32

Post by phil21 »

rickydroll wrote: post #31
chollida1 wrote: post #7

Makes alot of sense. Canada has: - one of the largest uranium reserves - a well respected and safe nuclear design in CANDU - experience with building and refurbishing nuclear reactors(Darlington) and for Ontario itself A need for more baseload to work with the large amount of solar and wind that Ontario has added in the last 10 years. Saskatchewan also now has a potential need for nuclear for industrial use now that…

> Ontario itself A need for more baseload to work with the large amount of solar and wind that Ontario has added in the last 10 years. Chasing baseload is a fool's game. You will always have a mismatch between power needed and power produced. Power storage is necessary to move excess power produced to times of excess power need. e.g., shave the peaks to fill the valleys. Any storage reduces the need for baseload and…

Your power storage is the Uranium fuel, which is a better battery than batteries. Much denser and lasts longer.

In a sanely designed grid you overprovision non-reliable renewables like solar and wind to provide your peak daytime usage and nuclear (or hydro if you are lucky enough) takes up the rest during the night and when wind is not blowing. Batteries to further flatten the duck curve and provide grid firming as required.

Then you have fallback to nuclear and load shedding programs for rare seasonal issues solving that last 1-3% that is incredibly expensive with non-dispatchable power sources. No need to build natural gas plants that sit idle 95% of the time. You overbuild solar since it's basically free from a capex standpoint and use that to charge your batteries when the sun shines.

This lets you maximize capital investment over your entire generating fleet while still providing relatively cheap and - most importantly - reliable power for industrial usage.

Of course, the choice society has made to make nuclear exceedingly expensive might make it pencil out that it's cheaper to subsidize natural gas. But I think that's naive and foolish for the long run.

Nuclear waste would be the other large remaining issue, but again - society chose to create that problem and not solve it. It's not technical in nature.

Batteries have no reasonable path forward for seasonal storage in many locations in the world. Nuclear does. Solving overnight storage is simply not interesting, as it's the easy problem to solve.

tldr; Build it all. Nuclear, solar, wind, batteries, and hell - even natural gas as a last resort.

Re: Canada plans 'nuclear renaissance' with up to 10 reactors built by 2040

#33

Post by manquer »

chollida1 wrote: post #26
preisschild wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately its just a small boiling water reactor. More capacity is needed in most parts of the world. Lager reactors are needed.

I mean, Ontario runs the Bruce nuclear plant which is the second largest in the world in terms of the power it generates at 6,610 MW, Japan gets the top nod with a plant that generates 7,965 MW.

Kashiwazaki-Kariwa ? It has been not in full commercial service for close to two decades now. Only one unit recently restarted this year. 6 units are offline now

There are two South Korean plants (Kori, Hangul) larger than Bruce

Re: Canada plans 'nuclear renaissance' with up to 10 reactors built by 2040

#34

Post by sleepyguy »

thisislife2 wrote: post #30
sleepyguy wrote: post #13

Should look at the the historical record and consider the scale of cost overruns and delays that major nuclear projects have experienced. While everyone involved may have good intentions, the reality is that these projects often end up costing significantly more and taking much longer than originally projected. Wind and solar could be deployed for a fraction of the proposed $100 billion investment and should be consi…

How viable is Solar in Canada given its weather? (I am ignorant about it and only know that it's really cold and cloudy most of the time).

A city like Calgary gets 233 days of sunny days a year. All across the prairies there is plenty of days filled with sun. British Columbia would probably not be great (like Seattle) but they could probably generate wind and hydro.

Re: Canada plans 'nuclear renaissance' with up to 10 reactors built by 2040

#35

Post by cmrdporcupine »

thisislife2 wrote: post #30
sleepyguy wrote: post #13

Should look at the the historical record and consider the scale of cost overruns and delays that major nuclear projects have experienced. While everyone involved may have good intentions, the reality is that these projects often end up costing significantly more and taking much longer than originally projected. Wind and solar could be deployed for a fraction of the proposed $100 billion investment and should be consi…

How viable is Solar in Canada given its weather? (I am ignorant about it and only know that it's really cold and cloudy most of the time).

Alberta is one of the best locales for solar on the continent -- it's sunny most of the year -- and had an exploding renewables sector.

Until the far right O&G lobbyist provincial government kneecapped the sector.

Re: Canada plans 'nuclear renaissance' with up to 10 reactors built by 2040

#38

Post by cmrdporcupine »

alephnerd wrote: post #11
zybftjmvs wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A village near me in southern Alberta just built a huge wind farm.

That project was absolutely funded before Alberta slashed all funding for renewables projects [0]. This as well as the failed pipeline projects have made Canadian infrastructure projects very high risk from a lending perspective, becuase there's now a non-insignificant risk that a province can welch out of financing a deal purely for short term political gain. This announcement is a good announcement, but it's just b…

Not just slashed funding but actually banned renewables projects for a period of time and then when they removed the ban they kneecapped them with extremely prejudicial regulations that asymmetrically apply to renewables projects but not to dirty oil and gas projects (which have left a mess of abandoned wells across the province).
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