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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

#381

Post by yifanl »

padjo wrote: post #371
upbeat_general wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same way you do for planes, cars, etc. You have long(ish) life-cycles and some pieces that can be independent (e.g., same turbine engine on several plane models).

Brings its own risks. See the 737max debacle. Now imagine that but causing a massive radiation leak and requiring all your power stations to be be put offline while a fix is found.

This is good to keep in mind, but we'd need a substantial proliferation of nuclear before we get into a position where over-standardization is a problem.

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

#382

Post by 1970-01-01 »

Animats wrote: post #208

OK, so when does the first one come online? "The strategy calls for construction to start on two new large-scale reactors by 2035, for five more to be planned or under development by 2040 and for at least one reactor to be under construction outside Ontario by 2035." That's not serious. Construction start is too far away.

It's hard not to fully agree with this take. The facts are obviously putting the actual timelines into fantasy territory, where projects fizzle and die. Even a 10-year plan should be flagged as high-risk as solar and wind builds tied to grid battery continues to explode in growth.

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

#383

Post by consensus1 »

pfdietz wrote: post #343
troupo wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then what would you use for seasonal storage?

In the short term, one would burn natural gas in turbines. The marginal cost of displacing this by using nuclear instead would lead to an enormous cost per unit of CO2 avoided, so high that most other uses of fossil fuels would be eliminated first (like, all use in ground vehicles). In the long term, either non-fossil fuels burned in turbines (e-fuels like hydrogen or biofuels), or bulk thermal storage of renewable e…

I would prefer to reduce emissions using technology that exists today, I know it works, and I have seen it operate at national grid scale, not speculative future tech.

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

#384

Post by JensKnipper »

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

You can combine solar with wind. And the good thing: wind is complementary to solar. So no need for solar overcapacity and massive energy storage.

https://freeingenergy.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Graph-s...

Edit: this is exactly what your link is showing > Demonstrates that mixed wind–solar portfolios outperform single technologies.

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

#385

Post by stinkbeetle »

TomK32 wrote: post #346
stinkbeetle wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A biogas turbine for the last few percent of demand?? Peak electricity demand occurs when solar generation has dropped to nearly zero. It's not the last few percent, it's the last 90 something percent demand. This is the entire problem with solar (and wind, though slightly different patterns). If you're going to "they should just" it, you really need to know at least that. It's just a hard problem even in Australia.…

Solar farms come with batteries included these days https://reneweconomy.com.au/the-solar-farm-that-winds-down-a... and https://octopusaustralia.com.au/our-projects/fulham-solar-fa... and https://edp.com/en/asia-pacific/australia/merino-solar-farm and https://www.pv-magazine-australia.com/2026/06/23/australias-... That's a new trend and easy to miss but it will push out coal and gas. And as much as a cyclist I dislik…

> Solar farms come with batteries

So it's no longer "just solar" with a biogas turbine for the remaining few % demand, is it? It's solar with batteries to cover 3x the current daily solar output plus perhaps more to deal with multi-day fluctuations.

> That's a new trend and easy to miss

It's not new and not easy to miss, it's obvious they need storage to cover any more demand. This has literally been the biggest issue for solar for at least 20 years.

> but it will push out coal and gas.

Maybe. How much more credible are these claims than the "solar killed coal" idiocy from years ago? I mean solar and battery tech does continue to get better so you can mindlessly point to that and yes if it kept continuing surely it would push out fossil fuels (everywhere including airplanes and ships). But if we are talking actual timeframes and realistic technology projections?

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

#386

Post by LearnYouALisp »

awesome_dude wrote: post #321
roenxi wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I keep coming back to this to reply but I cant really figure out how to tackle it. Theres so much of a particular view of the world in each statement. The problem you're running in to is most likely that you asked someone to define a subjective measure. What you then bump into with the anti-nuclear crowd is safety has one standard for most things and then a different, inconsistent standard when "nuclear" gets menti…

I love how the pro nuclear crowd deals in misinformation to denigrate anyone that dares not agree with them. They asked for my standard - despite it being a tactic to try and throw the thread, they got their reply and then complained. You decided a pile on was appropriate with some wild theories that only live in your imagination.

Hi, what's your physics understanding of the problem?

You need to get very concrete. The waste is the problem, not the containment. You can find out what the 'background' levels are X m away from containers, and the containers--and their containers--are very strong and stable.

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

#387

Post by LearnYouALisp »

protocolture wrote: post #230
tuna74 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 loca…

> Nuke should push coal and gas out.

Speaking of which, do you happen to know how many TBq (or what) other methods are putting into the atmosphere and hydrosphere?

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

#388

Post by ta20240528 »

mixdup wrote: post #373
padjo wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brings its own risks. See the 737max debacle. Now imagine that but causing a massive radiation leak and requiring all your power stations to be be put offline while a fix is found.

Nothing about the 737 MAX situation had anything to do with the fact that it was standardized and every plane wasn't bespoke. That is a weird thing to compare this to. You could absolutely still screw it up if you were designing each reactor from scratch every time

Huh, a lot on the 737 Max situation was due to standardisation.

Boeing didn't want the time, expense, and hassle of certifying (= standardising) a new narrow-body aeroplane, so they continued to reuse the FAA type certificate (= standardised design) of the original 737 from 1966.

This meant they had to keep, inter alia, the short landing gear, which in turn made the wings lower to the ground, which forced them to position the new big engines ahead of the CG, which forced them to add the faulty MCAS computer, which killed all those people.

Admittedly the decision to use just a single sensor on said MCAS was due to systematic, decades long corruption and emasculation of the FAA.

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

#389

Post by pfdietz »

consensus1 wrote: post #383
pfdietz wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the short term, one would burn natural gas in turbines. The marginal cost of displacing this by using nuclear instead would lead to an enormous cost per unit of CO2 avoided, so high that most other uses of fossil fuels would be eliminated first (like, all use in ground vehicles). In the long term, either non-fossil fuels burned in turbines (e-fuels like hydrogen or biofuels), or bulk thermal storage of renewable e…

I would prefer to reduce emissions using technology that exists today, I know it works, and I have seen it operate at national grid scale, not speculative future tech.

You do highlight something there: the case for nuclear requires one to assume that the competing technologies stop their rapid advance. If not, the 40 (or 60, or 80) year investment horizons needed to partially shore up the bad economics of nuclear become utterly absurd.

(The criticism that renewables don't last as long as nuclear suddenly looks like praise when viewed in this light; renewables don't need those very long time horizons to pay out.)

But making this bet, that renewables will suddenly come up short, that the experience curves will suddenly break their historic trends on the log-log plot, has never worked out well.

Something like hydrogen seems guaranteed to be available if needed. Realize that green hydrogen is needed even in a nuclear-powered world, because of existing hydrogen demand that is currently satisfied by steam reforming of fossil fuels (mostly natural gas). So lots of hydrogen will be made; it doesn't require new technology to make some more.

I'll add that if you are sticking to currently available commercial technologies, nuclear is a loser, since burner reactors are far too fuel-inefficient to last very long on existing estimated uranium resources. The current estimate of uranium resources at 3x current price would provide the world's current rate of primary energy demand for just 5 years, if burner reactors were used.

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

#390

Post by mixdup »

ta20240528 wrote: post #388
mixdup wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing about the 737 MAX situation had anything to do with the fact that it was standardized and every plane wasn't bespoke. That is a weird thing to compare this to. You could absolutely still screw it up if you were designing each reactor from scratch every time

Huh, a lot on the 737 Max situation was due to standardisation. Boeing didn't want the time, expense, and hassle of certifying (= standardising) a new narrow-body aeroplane, so they continued to reuse the FAA type certificate (= standardised design) of the original 737 from 1966. This meant they had to keep, inter alia, the short landing gear, which in turn made the wings lower to the ground, which forced them to pos…

So the problem was that they diverged from the standard design in key important ways. The trick would be not to do that, to actually stick to the standard design. Or, to make sure that the impacts of deviations are fully accounted for and incorporated back into the overall design and project

Again, the standardization didn't cause the problem. Boeing's piss poor engineering culture did. There's no reason that they couldn't have built the plane how they wanted but in a way that didn't crash. Similarly, it's entirely possible that each of these nuclear reactors will be built with flexible designs per project that result in half of them melting down.

Safety and quality control is critical no matter what strategy they use

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