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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

#61

Post by loloquwowndueo »

jmyeet wrote: post #49
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…

I don't understand the online obsession with nuclear power in spite of all the evidence that it's simply not economical. Canada needs new power now. Not 15-20 years from now, which is how long it takes to build a new nuclear power plant. And it can be done today, incrementally with renewable sources and before anyone screams "baseload", that's what batteries are for if it really comes down to it. Nuclear power is the…

You’re missing the point which is to create jobs, it’s what the Canadian government is pushing really hard for now, with all the infrastructure projects it’s launching.

Something that will need people working on building for 15 years sounds about right for what government is doing now.

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

#62

Post by OJFord »

mixdup wrote: post #23
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…

>15 seems...ambitions, but if we're going to spend at a federal level this is probably one of the better things to invest in. If they can make them cookie cutter as much as possible and not unique snowflakes like has been the pattern at least in the US, they can probably do it both on the timeline and a somewhat reasonable cost basis If they build 15 individual projects instead of managing this as a single big projec…

> If they build 15 individual projects instead of managing this as a single big project, yeah that is very ambitious

Surely it would increase variance of outcomes, but the expectation is the same of each and overall?

Agree it would be mad though. Seems already a bit mad not to standardise internationally on a rough blueprint, or the modular thing in the news occasionally, and just churn out basically the same thing everywhere as needed.

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

#63

Post by cmrdporcupine »

barbazoo wrote: post #12
_aavaa_ wrote: post #5

Title is misleading, they want to start building not “build” (I.e. be operational). Though that only moves the needles from impossible to laughable. > If our goal is to double our grid and build a low-carbon economy in less than 25 years, there is no credible plan to do that without nuclear energy There are plenty of credible plans, they all involve wind and solar. But as anyone watching clean energy news will know,…

Doesn't nuclear make sense to increase baseline capacity where hydro isn't available?

Ontario has no more room to grow on the hydro front, and doesn't realistically want to import it from Quebec.

So it's natural gas, nuclear, or renewables. And the Conservative gov't here has a bit of a bias against the latter. It's been growing the natural gas sector, undoing a lot of the hard work the previous Liberal gov't had put in on the wind side. Likely nuclear lobbyists now have their ear.

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

#64

Post by xp84 »

jmyeet wrote: post #49
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…

I don't understand the online obsession with nuclear power in spite of all the evidence that it's simply not economical. Canada needs new power now. Not 15-20 years from now, which is how long it takes to build a new nuclear power plant. And it can be done today, incrementally with renewable sources and before anyone screams "baseload", that's what batteries are for if it really comes down to it. Nuclear power is the…

All forms of generation have downsides.

> Canada needs new power now. Not 15-20 years from now,

Building nuclear doesn't stop you from building whatever else you want. Though I assume that Canada being Canada, it'll take 15 years just to complete the requisite negotiations with every indigenous tribe and to arrive at a settlement with whatever environmental and assorted NIMBY groups are already warming up their lawsuit-filing laptops right now.

Also, you're predictably citing a couple of bad nuclear accidents, over like 70 years of nuclear generation. Both are actually pretty well understood. If we applied that risk management logic to forms of transport, you wouldn't even be allowed to walk anywhere.

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

#65

Post by cmrdporcupine »

actionfromafar wrote: post #50
swader999 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live right in the affected area and allowing more turbines against the eastern slopes of the Rockies would be tragic. Can't put a price on this viewscape.

Oh but you can.

Growing up in Alberta in the 70s and 80s I routinely saw photographs and illustrations with oil pumps set against a vista of a wheat field with foothills and mountains in the background, and this was held up as beauty.

We canoed and camped along upper North Saskatchewan, the Brazeau, Pembina, etc in the foothills. Spent half my childhood in the back of the car on the forestry Trunk Road breathing in kicked up sand and gravel from logging trucks in front of us. Couldn't go more than a few hundred feet without hitting a forestry clear cut, or an oil and gas pipe or cutline or a natural gas installation. The whole eastern slopes were already carved up into resource extraction zones then. Pulp and paper mills were the thing that Don Getty was pushing as a "growth" industry then (they were a flop) and they did _lovely_ things to the rivers.

Wind farms though. Terrible things. Eye sore.

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

#66

Post by fooster »

jmyeet wrote: post #49
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…

I don't understand the online obsession with nuclear power in spite of all the evidence that it's simply not economical. Canada needs new power now. Not 15-20 years from now, which is how long it takes to build a new nuclear power plant. And it can be done today, incrementally with renewable sources and before anyone screams "baseload", that's what batteries are for if it really comes down to it. Nuclear power is the…

Another other things nuclear power plants don't take 15-20 to build in sensible economies. You also cannot use wind & solar + batteries to replace nuclear power.

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

#67

Post by credit_guy »

preisschild wrote: post #22
p2detar wrote: post #4

To my surprise Canada are actually quite ahead with the Darlington New Nuclear Project. There is a construction site [0] with work taking place. Not sure how Kairos Power are progressing in the USA. Nice job, Canada. 0 - https://www.neimagazine.com/news/darlington-smr-secures-fina...

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

> Unfortunately its just a small boiling water reactor.

It is not just a small boiling water reactor. It is a 300 MW-electric boiling water reactor, and if successful, it will be followed by 3 more of the same type for a total of 1.2 GW-electric. That is more than an AP-1000 reactor, and much less risky.

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

#68

Post by SugarReflex »

echelon wrote: post #54
tuna74 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Australia is really good for solar, why build nuclear?

Why not have a diverse set of energy inputs so your energy economy isn't fragile? Some black swan event could kill solar. Maybe some mega volcano explodes. It would suck to be 50+% dependent on it in that case. We should have wind, solar, nuclear, geothermal, hydro, tidal, and even fossil fuels. We should have a total capacity in greater abundance than what we have today so that we can grow.

Great answer, also I imagine that in terms of space, one nuclear reactor would be equivalent to 10 square KM of solar panels (or something like that)

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

#69

Post by awesome_dude »

phil21 wrote: post #32
rickydroll wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 r…

> 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.

Care to explain, I've never seen a genuine solution that goes beyond hand waving, bad faith arguing, and aggressiveness.

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

#70

Post by acchow »

sleepyguy wrote: post #34
thisislife2 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Calgary is quite sunny at 2400 hrs/year.

But not nearly as much as Vegas (3800) or LA (3250) or SF (2950).

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