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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

#131

Post by orthecreedence »

jmyeet wrote: post #126
xp84 wrote: post #64

Earlier 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…

> Building nuclear doesn't stop you from building whatever else you want. If you build the solar and wind you don't need the nuclear. That's the point. > Also, you're predictably citing a couple of bad nuclear accidents, over like 70 years of nuclear generation. Here we go with hand-waving away all the uncomfortable counterexamples. It's hard to get exact numbers because of plant decmossioning and that some nuclear r…

> If you build the solar and wind you don't need the nuclear.

Don't forget the enormous battery arrays for winter, cloudy skies, or wildfire smoke. Hope you have enough batteries. But you won't, so ok, now you need gas reactors to fill in the blanks. Isn't that what we're trying to get away from?

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

#132

Post by nomel »

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.

> Larger reactors are needed.

Genuine question: Why? Why not many smaller reactors? Small modular reactors seem pretty neat.

Is there an efficiency loss/total cost difference with smaller reactors?

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

#133

Post by mixdup »

OJFord wrote: post #62
mixdup wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 e…

Yeah I mean obviously each one would be managed on its own to an extent but one big problem we have in the US at least is that we build so few reactors that each one is bespoke. They may be based generally on certain designs but they will vary enough that operators and maintenance engineers have to train and be certified on each one, and that training and certification does not carry over to any other facility. Parts are bespoke and can't be used from one to another

If Canada builds them all similar enough that you only need one simulation/training facility, parts can be used between all of them, engineers can move from one to the other, and otherwise they are as close to each other as possible they will get incredible economies of scale that we don't typically get in North America in this industry

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

#135

Post by xienze »

theeyescanner wrote: post #85
delecti wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> but if you drive up north you will see nothing but trees forever.

Problem is you'll get some tribe coming out of the woodworks claiming whatever inaccessible area hundreds of miles from civilization is some sacred ground that can't be touched.

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

#136

Post by fc417fc802 »

awesome_dude wrote: post #98
zdragnar wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For one thing, nuclear power plants produce much less waste than most people imagine. Waste can also be reprocessed into new fuel, further reducing it. In the US, we have a suitable site that has been authorized and cancelled for 20 some years now: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Mountain_nuclear_waste_r... The reasons it keeps being cancelled, and the waste is stored on-site at nuclear plants instead, is purely…

I've never understood how people think "less" solves the issue, it's not negligible and asking to increase the number of plants surely increases the waste. Reprocessing, isn't infinite. There's going to be waste to deal with. You've not presented any technical solutions, instead you made it political by claiming that's the only problem. Do you have an actual understanding of the problems or are you just pushing nucle…

I think it is you who hasn't bothered to do basic research before forming an opinion. I suggest at least skimming the wikipedia page on radioactive waste. [0] There's also a page documenting the various national management plans. [1]

> I've never understood how people think "less" solves the issue, it's not negligible ...

It just needs to be little enough that the cost of constructing long term storage space isn't cost prohibitive.

The amount produced is something like 25 to 30 tons per GW per year before reprocessing; after reprocessing it's something like ~5% of that. Unfortunately I couldn't readily find numbers for the dilution rate when vitrifying the waste for geological disposal. Regardless, that amount is almost nothing when considered in terms of volume. A full size shipping container is somewhere between 75 and 108 cubic meters depending on which standard you prefer. To give a rough idea that equates to ~180 (US) tons of borosilicate glass (one of the materials commonly used to vitrify high level waste) on the low end (assuming I got the math right).

There are also alternative disposal methods to consider such as breeder reactors (rather expensive at present) or horizontal drillholes.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-level_radioactive_waste_m...

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

#137

Post by gs17 »

Shitty-kitty wrote: post #103
jmyeet wrote: post #49

Earlier 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…

China, Canada, Sweden and others, are not stupid. We really don't understand how it is that all the experts say that Nuclear needs to be parts of the equation but all of you "online activist" keep insisting that, they are just idiots and industry shills. It is the same playbook the anti-vaxers use.

The same China that started construction on at least 10 reactors last year?

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

#138

Post by credit_guy »

preisschild wrote: post #20

CANDUs are cool, hope to see more in the world

I love nuclear reactors and CANDU are quite cool. But I don't think that today we have any reasons to build CANDU reactors, except possibly that Canada can demonstrate they can build them for cheaper than others can build light water reactors. The ability to build is something that has little to do with the technical merits of a nuclear reactor design. But all things being equal, a PWR or a BWR should cost less per GW than a CANDU reactor and have other advantages too:

- main problem with CANDU: proliferation. India was able to build nuclear weapons after using a Canadian built heavy water reactor (basically a CANDU reactor) [1]. There is no guarantee that another country will not try something similar in the future, the design has no built in proliferation resistance. An operator can remove irradiated fuel at any time, and if the IAEA discovers they engage in plutonium manufacturing and they get on a black list, they can manufacture their own fuel quite easily, because CANDU uses non-enriched uranium. With light water reactors, you need enriched fuel, so if you are flagged as a proliferator no fuel manufacturer will be allowed to sell you fuel, and it's going to be much harder for you to manufacture your own fuel, since you can't enrich. If you can enrich uranium, you might as well try to build a uranium bomb (like Iran is trying to do). Also, with light water reactors, you refuel only at discrete times, generally about 18 months apart, so it is much more difficult to extract lightly irradiated fuel without being caught by the IAEA.

Now some less important problems:

- because CANDU uses non-enriched uranium, it produces much more nuclear waste per GWh compared to light water reactors. Nuclear waste is not the boogeyman nuclear anti-advocates make it to be, but still, if you generate 5-10 times more nuclear waste than the mainstream alternatives, it is less than ideal.

- there is one positive reactivity feedback loop in a CANDU design. Because of that CANDU designs are not licenseable in the US. The Canadian nuclear regulator is comfortable that the design is stable [2], but if you can choose between a design with one positive feedback loop and one without any positive feedback loop, why would you choose the first?

- heavy water is a worse moderator than light water (by a large factor). It [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India_and_weapons_of_mass_dest...

[2] https://www.cnsc-ccsn.gc.ca/eng/resources/research/safety-an...

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

#139

Post by garbagewoman »

xp84 wrote: post #64
jmyeet wrote: post #49

Earlier 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…

You think they shouldn’t negotiate with native tribes?

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

#140

Post by triceratops »

pfisch wrote: post #78
xp84 wrote: post #64

Earlier 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 was almost the largest disaster in all of history

Not at all hyperbole when you consider how badly it poisoned the well for future nuclear projects.

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