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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

#221

Post by theptip »

chongli wrote: post #195
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…

We're talking about Ontario. I live in Ontario. The sky is overcast 8 months of the year. We're not building enough storage to charge for 4 months and drain for 8.

You have wind right?

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

#222

Post by qlte »

MostlyStable wrote: post #142
eqvinox wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear is the most expensive type of electrical power generation. Diversity is good, but enough of it is achievable with cheaper options.

The cost is a choice. Not inherent to the power. We could choose literally any day to make it dramatically cheaper.

Even if every bit of regulation was scrapped and uranium was free, there are still significant costs to steam turbine based thermal plants plus the reactor itself that can't be hand waved away. As PV costs and now grid-scale storage keep dropping rapidly, the economics of a nuclear plant that takes 5-10 years to get running at full capacity (in the very optimistic case) and even longer to break even look increasingly questionable.

PV solar + batteries is a dead simple, solid state design that's easily scalable without huge up front capital requirements. We're not at the point yet where nuclear doesn't pencil out anywhere, but with current trends it's getting closer by the year.

I wish we built more nuclear 20-30 years ago when the competition was coal and gas but unfortunately we didn't and now the equation has changed. Shutting down existing reactors that are still viable is a bad move to be clear, but new plants are becoming increasingly hard to justify economically.

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

#223

Post by awesome_dude »

fc417fc802 wrote: post #211
awesome_dude wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're repeating the problem - You're saying that there is less waste to deal with which magically means it's safe. You do understand that don't you?

You appear to be reiterating an irrational position. I provided links to overviews of the topic; I strongly suggest at least skimming them. The quantity of unavoidable high level waste would appear to be sufficiently small that geological disposal is a cost effective solution. The high level waste in question is not magically safe. Rather the various reprocessing and disposal methods have been extensively engineered…

I said from the start that the argument you presented was fallacious, and all you did was present it, now, because you have no other argument, you're working on aggressive attacks.

You're on your own now. Bye.

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

#224

Post by crote »

AngryData wrote: post #108
pfisch wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

To be fair Chernobyl was designed what, 15 years after the invention of nuclear technology? Even discounting all the politicial and management control problems, the engineering and scientific knowledge of nuclear reactor design was still in its infancy. Imagine if we judged the safety of automobiles on pre-Model-T cars. Or steam boilers and engines on the first 20 yearrs of their invention.

What's the worst accident involving a Model T, maybe a dozen dead? Early steam boilers aren't going to be much worse either. Nuclear accidents are essentially unlimited in size. Nothing else can do that kind of country-sized - let alone it being permanent.

Chernobyl showed the potential impact. Fukushima showed that even several decades down the line things can still rapidly run out of control. All the knowledge and experience in the world isn't going to save you when something unexpected happens and things are just waiting to spiral out of control.

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

#225

Post by red75prime »

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…

The massive solar overcapacity that is required to deal with seasonal variation and the massive energy storage make this endeavor much more costly than nuclear.

For example, in Denmark[1] a solar-dominated grid would cost around 565 EUR/MWh. A nuclear-dominated grid would cost around 141 EUR/MWh.

[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S036054422... Fig. 3

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

#227

Post by crote »

vkou wrote: post #128
markvdb wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not convinced. The problem is with the human layer of managing large complicated projects. Nuclear could become less unsafe once humanity has found ways not to go commity horrble violence every other generation.

> The problem is with the human layer of managing large complicated projects. I guess we should stop having large, complicated projects. Potable water mains, road and rail networks, the power grid, the internet, bridges, medicine, etc, are all too complicated for humans to manage. I mean, nuclear is only the safest form of energy generation that humanity has ever produced, but you're absolutely right.

What's the absolute worst that could happen when a water mains breaks? What's the absolute worst that could happen when a train derails? What's the absolute worst that could happen when a backhoe snacks on a fiber trunk?

Now, what's the absolute worst that could happen when a nuclear reactor spirals out of control?

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

#228

Post by crote »

jleyank wrote: post #163
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…

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.

It if "becomes urgent" (it already is), spending a decade and a half building a reactor won't exactly be helpful, will it?

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

#229

Post by awesome_dude »

protocolture wrote: post #212
awesome_dude wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not. The time frame we are talking about invalidates the "safety" because the earth's crust moves and warps, which allows water to access that sort of storage

Why dont you suggest what "safe" looks like, and we can discuss your understanding of safety. Its clear to me that the issue is your standards and not actual waste disposal.

My understanding is that this material remains toxic to life for thousands, to tens of thousands of years.

Safe means that it's stored such that there's no harm to the environment for that lifetime.

In all "bury it" scenarios, the place where the waste is buried will be subject to change resulting in water, air, able to interact with that waste when normal tectonic and erosion processes do their thing.

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

#230

Post by protocolture »

tuna74 wrote: post #25
whh wrote: post #14

Hopefully this will kick Australia into gear.

Australia is really good for solar, why build nuclear?

I am not even close to being a Solar doomer, but you need to have more options than just Solar/Wind.

Nuke shouldn't replace Solar, it shouldn't be a competition. Nuke should push coal and gas out.

Solar isn't just about having big empty spaces either, it needs to be located near where people who service it actually want to live. AEMO used to have a policy of not revealing where upcoming solar projects were to be located, leading to multiple competing solar farms, only the first of which would be connected to the grid, the remaining projects being left sitting there doing nothing until transmission upgrades could be completed.

Not to mention, we dont have anything like the battery capacity needed to hold daytime voltage overnight. The Elon Musk battery in SA being famous for supplying a few minutes to hold over a voltage drop from a QLD coal plant failure, while gas came online to support it.

Nuclear isnt as bad as they say for cost either. Every report funded in Australia factors in the sovereign risk that the government might start or permit a project and kill it due to politics.

Theres no practical reason why we couldn't mirror the British rollout, bringing a reactor on every 3-5 years or whatever it was, except that most of those blokes are retired and we would like the british did, build the nuclear industry here from scratch.

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