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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

#241

Post by anonymous_user9 »

awesome_dude wrote: post #229
protocolture wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Tectonic and erosion processes take place over millions of years, so they aren't an issue for waste that's only dangerous for tens of thousands of years.

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

#242

Post by fc417fc802 »

awesome_dude wrote: post #223
fc417fc802 wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Do please explain how it's fallacious? I've made the claims that one, there is a sufficiently low volume of waste produced per unit of generation that geologic disposal is affordable and scalable and that two, said geological disposal is in fact safe. Where's the fallacy?

It appears to me that you are attached to a position that you aren't capable of defending.

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

#243

Post by protocolture »

fsuts wrote: post #239
protocolture wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

If not aware - uk government is backing Roll Royce to produce small reactor solutions (SMR). And Rolls is going around the world signing up sales agreements for them. The underlying tech though is yet to be proven, so some risk won’t deliver on time/to budget/at all.

SMR's seem like a pipe dream tbh.

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

#244

Post by chongli »

theptip wrote: post #221
chongli wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Overcast winter days tend to be very calm as well. These are periods of minimal solar+wind generation and maximal heating demand.

Having a grid with no baseload generation and only storage is going to spell disaster during extended cold+calm periods. Rolling blackouts when it’s -30C outside…

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

#245

Post by lo_fye »

So we're willing to put our greatest national asset (the environment) at risk in the name of "moar power". Well that's just great.

I hope Jimmy Carter's ghost will be just as willing to help us out the next time a reactor goes into meltdown as his physical self was the first time that happened. RIP Jimmy Carter.

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

#246

Post by fc417fc802 »

qlte wrote: post #203
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…

Political constraints are extremely important in the real world if the goal is to actually get things done. Yucca Mountain isn't actually a viable solution because, despite the technical arguments in favor, it lacks the support to implement. Similar problem if local communities fight new nuclear plants tooth and nail, dragging out the timelines/increasing costs. Having the "correct" argument based on objective facts…

Thankfully a handful of countries have managed to approve and begun building out permanent geologic disposal sites at this point so as long as at least one of them is willing to sell disposal services the problem is now globally solved. At least provided a given country has the political will to pay to export their waste but that seems like a much lower barrier to overcome.

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

#247

Post by magicalist »

red75prime wrote: post #225
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…

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

> 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.

That's not what it says. It says that would be the cost assuming the current grid and power came from only solar or only nuclear. The majority of the cost then is for overprovisioning and storage, especially to handle the lack of sun in the winter.

The actual low cost power comes from mixes of renewables, that they note nuclear can't compete with (especially in their hypothetical future energy system with things like scheduled EV charging). They give an example of offshore wind (66%), solar (8%), CCGT (26%) (primarily natural gas) for 66 EUR/MWh, or, restricting to biomass for the gas plant: offshore wind (84%), solar (13%), CCGT (3%) at 99 EUR/MWh.

(it's also worth noting that this is for Denmark. Something like 98% of Canadians live south of Denmark's southernmost line of latitude).

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

#248

Post by Tiktaalik »

llbbdd wrote: post #204
garbagewoman wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think they shouldn’t negotiate with native tribes?

If they're not building reactors on the land allocated to native tribes, why should they?

First Nations have treaties with Canada with constitutionally protected land use rights that have implications beyond tiny reserves. Rights to hunt and fish can be implicated by heavy industrial land use which compels a duty to consult. Doesn't mean that First Nations can veto a project, but also doesn't mean that all this can be ignored.

All of this is more complex in British Columbia where in many places treaties were never signed and so the land is unceded and under unresolved land claim.

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

#249

Post by throwaway69123 »

qlte wrote: post #222
MostlyStable wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

when you're comparing on a cost basis are you amortizing the cost of the nuclear power plant over the multiple lifetime cycles of PV+Battery as the nuclear power plant will outlast many such cycles, nuclear plants if maintained can effectively last forever.

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

#250

Post by stubish »

exmadscientist wrote: post #73
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…

> I will never understand why so many otherwise smart people keep trying to make nuclear happen in their minds. I don't really get this either. I've come to think that it comes down to two pieces. The easy piece is that some people don't seem to realize just how good renewable power sources have gotten in the last 10-20 years. Nuclear has simply been outcompeted in so many ways. But this happened pretty quickly, so n…

It is a political choice. Pro-nuclear propaganda in Australia is all about the long time frames, and the fossil fuels needed until they start coming online. Climate targets get to be pushed back, scrapping 2030 targets in favor of 2050 targets. It keeps coal, gas and oil money flowing for another generation. And the problem of actually building and paying for the nuclear power plants is also next generations problem, as they are expected to all be over cost and delayed, and not a priority once all the new gas plants are online. Everybody knows all this, but nuclear still gets traction because when you put lipstick on it and take all the most optimistic estimates from the salesmen, it looks like a pro-environmental policy. One that the right and far right can get behind, because it is not what the greens are saying needs to happen and anything those communists want must be bad.

I don't know if it is similar in Canada. Solar is less viable, relying more on wind. And they have more experience building and running nuclear power plants.

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