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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

#161

Post by ttul »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #47
ttul wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Canada is not an infrastructure “joke.” It is a country with some world-class delivery organizations operating inside a political system that too often destroys continuity. Relative to the G7, that makes it mediocre and volatile, not uniquely incompetent. And, in nuclear specifically, probably no worse positioned than its peers, though the ten-reactor rhetoric is substantially more ambitious than the underlying commi…

> As a Canadian, I think Canada’s primary hurdle is not a lack of engineering competence, but rather political volatility I never said it was a problem of engineering competence, you read that into my statement Political volatility getting projects delayed and cancelled is why we're a joke

You're right: you didn’t claim a lack of engineering competence. I introduced that distinction. Sorry. If the question is whether the Canadian society can build reliably, then governance and political instability count as part of its overall competence, not as external excuses.

I would agree with you that political volatility exists and stifles an otherwise decent country. It's very frustrating.

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

#162

Post by ttul »

phil21 wrote: post #42
ttul wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Canada is not an infrastructure “joke.” It is a country with some world-class delivery organizations operating inside a political system that too often destroys continuity. Relative to the G7, that makes it mediocre and volatile, not uniquely incompetent. And, in nuclear specifically, probably no worse positioned than its peers, though the ten-reactor rhetoric is substantially more ambitious than the underlying commi…

You can have all the technical competence in the world, but if those competent people are not allowed to build things your society simply is inept at building stuff in the end. It's a choice society has made. It's certainly not unique to Canada though. The US and other western societies have made similar choices. Much less risky to employ a lot of expensive people to come up with reasons to not build stuff vs. taking…

Good points. I would refine my comment: Canada has isolated examples of excellent megaproject execution, but lacks a system that reproduces that performance reliably. The nuclear announcement is credible only insofar as Canada can replicate the OPG/Bruce fleet-program model—stable authority and funding, standardized designs, repeat teams and accumulated learning—rather than its usual election-cycle, one-off megaproject model.

I dearly hope that we're not going to see that model again, but maybe that's likely.

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

#163

Post by jleyank »

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…

What if it becomes urgent to reduce CO2? There's a lot of places without hydro or geothermal power, and if you needs gobs of power for, say, making aluminum you need as much as you can get power wise.

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

#165

Post by morkalork »

genxy wrote: post #86
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…

Always wanted to go to ... Uranium City. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_City

While you're at it, add Radium Springs and Asbestos to your itinerary!

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

#166

Post by manquer »

chollida1 wrote: post #105
manquer wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You could be right about the Korean plants. I only relied on google to give me the top 5 nuclear plants active in the world. The Korean plants you mention were not on the list.

Wikpedia has more info, plus WNN and other industry publications usually are more up-to date.

Kori[1] has 7 operational units today and 1 commissioning and 1 under construction

Hansul[2] has 8 operational units and another 2 more under construction.

All 4 new units are APR-1400 reactors ~1400 MW capacity. Kori should retains its top position, Saeul-3 in Kori Phase II has already reached criticality in April.

Tianwan in China will come close but its 7/8 units are slightly behind in construction than Saeul-3/4 in South Korea, plus the plant is also bit smaller at 6600MW now . The Russian VVER-1200 design China are using is also slightly smaller than Korean APR-1400.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kori_Nuclear_Power_Plant

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanul_Nuclear_Power_Plant

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

#167

Post by protocolture »

fsuts wrote: post #18

I’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.

>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.

Its crazy how fast britain has fallen off nuclear, the original british nuclear rollout should have stood the UK up as a permanent nuclear energy powerhouse but France took it from them.

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

#168

Post by fooster »

PaulHoule wrote: post #106
fooster wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I wouldn’t say you cannot but I also wouldn’t say it is proven that you can.

Cannot with our current level of technology. You are not going to provide the required level of power in Canada during the winter with wind or solar with todays battery technology.

I asked Claude:

"If combined wind+solar output drops to ~10% of nameplate during one of these (a standard threshold), a ~77 GW fleet sized to meet average winter demand produces ~7.7 GW against a ~22 GW cold-snap peak — a 14 GW shortfall that storage alone has to cover. That works out to roughly 340 GWh for a 1-day lull, ~1 TWh for 3 days, ~1.7 TWh for 5 days, ~2.4 TWh for a week, and ~3.4 TWh for 10 days. Ontario's entire current and under-construction battery fleet sits in the single-digit GWh range, so even a mild 3-day lull needs ~100-200x what's actually being built, and a serious week-plus event needs 400-600x — which is why lithium-ion batteries work fine for hourly duration but make no economic sense at the multi-day scale these lulls demand."

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

#169

Post by amanaplanacanal »

zdragnar wrote: post #79
awesome_dude wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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…

Most waste isn't spent fuel, it's contaminated other things. You aren't reprocessing any of that.
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