A nuclear reactor in the Alberta Oil sands would take care of a large amount of the CO2 produced in the production of crude.
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Canada plans 'nuclear renaissance' with up to 10 reactors built by 2040
81–90 of 500 posts
Re: Canada plans 'nuclear renaissance' with up to 10 reactors built by 2040
#82Earlier 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.
Nuclear is the most expensive type of electrical power generation. Diversity is good, but enough of it is achievable with cheaper options.
Re: Canada plans 'nuclear renaissance' with up to 10 reactors built by 2040
#83[dead]
I think most (all?) nuclear plants use once-thru cooling. There is a water intake upstream (or in an ocean/lake) of the plant, the water passes through the cooling loop interfacing with a heat exchanger that has hot heavy water from the core on the other side. Some of the water is evaporated in hyperboloid cooling towers, and the rest is discharged downstream (or back in the ocean/lake)
Re: Canada plans 'nuclear renaissance' with up to 10 reactors built by 2040
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 lawsu…
Chernobyl was almost the largest disaster in all of history. I'm not saying nuclear reactors are unsafe now, but the reality is that a true disaster at a nuclear power plant literally means the end of huge amounts of land, enough to end entire countries or large parts of continents. You can't say things like that about walking or other types of transport...
Chernobyl's reactors were fundamentally unsafe designs from an engineering perspective, to say nothing of the perverse incentives at play because of the Soviet political system. We've learned a lot since the RBMK was designed in the 1960s.
Re: Canada plans 'nuclear renaissance' with up to 10 reactors built by 2040
#85[dead]
Leaving aside that Canada is huge, waste is really just not that much of a problem. It would be easy to safely store all the waste that will ever be produced at a dedicated storage site, if you could drum up the political will for such a site to exist. But really, it's even easier to just store it all on-site. Not that much waste is produced; stick it in a cask and leave it alone.
This is why I always scoff at people talking about the scarcity of landfill space. We have damn near unlimited space here. It might not look like it if you never leave a major city, but if you drive up north you will see nothing but trees forever.
The only hard part is ensuring your waste doesn't enter the water system, but that's just bog standard mining engineering.
Re: Canada plans 'nuclear renaissance' with up to 10 reactors built by 2040
#86Makes 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…
Always wanted to go to ... Uranium City.
Re: Canada plans 'nuclear renaissance' with up to 10 reactors built by 2040
#87A nuclear reactor in the Alberta Oil sands would take care of a large amount of the CO2 produced in the production of crude.
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Absolutely ridiculous that I was down voted and flagged for some mild griping about the state of my province's inability to execute on infrastructure projects, but offhand jokes (I hope it's a joke) about nuking my home is completely fine?
:/
Re: Canada plans 'nuclear renaissance' with up to 10 reactors built by 2040
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 lawsu…
>Building nuclear doesn't stop you from building whatever else you want.
It kind of does though, since it demands pretty lavish subsidies to be built at all and those subsidies would give WAY more bang for the buck if used on pumped storage, batteries, solar and wind.
You also have to cap liability in case of nuclear disaster. Private insurers won't touch nuclear power with a barge pole unless taxpayers are forced to pay for disaster cleanup. As a taxpayer Id rather not have that liability.
Re: Canada plans 'nuclear renaissance' with up to 10 reactors built by 2040
#89Oh my god, yes, please. It should be 100 over the next 10 years but this is a great start. We should be cranking these out and building cities in the north with clean unlimited power.
Every time I see something interesting about nuclear power, comments like this pop up. Which makes me skittish. We need responsible growth. We need to acknowledge that there is no magic bullet for power generation, just managed risks. We need to acknowledge that those risks exist for all power sources, to varying degrees, and take different forms (whether it is the environmental impact or reliability of the power gri…
I was being a little flippant there - but I think we've gone way too far in the "nuclear is risky" direction, largely because of Chernobyl, which was a) a very specific disaster caused by a perfect storm of bad decisions and bad luck and b) not that deadly. In the US about as many people die every year due to coal pollution as have yet (or will ever) die because of Chernobyl. About the same number die in Europe every year because of a lack of AC. Those are just invisible risks that we accept already and we need to start seeing them.
Re: Canada plans 'nuclear renaissance' with up to 10 reactors built by 2040
#90I’m not Canadian so news to me that Canada has built nuclear plants around the world. As in the UK we were previously asking a French-Chinese partnership to build here so not sure why Canada didn’t get chosen for that.
So France and Canada both build nuclear plants. Must be something in the french language that makes folks just want to do the cool stuff.
If it is anything like all my french cookware, it will be done wonderfully.