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Canada begins Small Modular Reactor strategy roadmap

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21–30 of 52 posts

Re: Canada begins Small Modular Reactor strategy roadmap

#21

What many people is this thread don't realize is that nuclear is by far the cleanest form of energy for the environment. It has no intermittancy problems like Wind and Solar. The process of building nuclear is extremely clean compared to building wind turbines and solar panels which devastate the environment due to the rare metals needed and production process. Its also vastly friendlier for humans and animals. The n…

I think you need to look at the research and data that have accumulated over the past 5 years. Nuclear seemed like a great investment 5 years ago, but there have been big changes.

Not only are solar/wind safer and cleaner, paired with modern battery storage they are now considerably cheaper and more effective at providing base load. And prices are still going down, while nuclear prices are if anything increasing.

Re: Canada begins Small Modular Reactor strategy roadmap

#22

What many people is this thread don't realize is that nuclear is by far the cleanest form of energy for the environment. It has no intermittancy problems like Wind and Solar. The process of building nuclear is extremely clean compared to building wind turbines and solar panels which devastate the environment due to the rare metals needed and production process. Its also vastly friendlier for humans and animals. The n…

I think you need to look at the research and data that have accumulated over the past 5 years. Nuclear seemed like a great investment 5 years ago, but there have been big changes. Not only are solar/wind safer and cleaner, paired with modern battery storage they are now considerably cheaper and more effective at providing base load. And prices are still going down, while nuclear prices are if anything increasing.

Well,I think the picture is still much more in favor of nuclear than you seem to suggest although I'd agree renewables have gotten a lot better, though less so on their environmental impact (just having solar panels on land kills natural wildlife and destroys habitats). But I think we'd both agree people should look at the data and research this, b/c whatever you think nuclear still has tons of potential, it has already solved most of the problems wind/solar have, and the public has a false perception of it as a "boogie man" which has and will just lead to bad choices and misaligned public policy.

Re: Canada begins Small Modular Reactor strategy roadmap

#23

What many people is this thread don't realize is that nuclear is by far the cleanest form of energy for the environment. It has no intermittancy problems like Wind and Solar. The process of building nuclear is extremely clean compared to building wind turbines and solar panels which devastate the environment due to the rare metals needed and production process. Its also vastly friendlier for humans and animals. The n…

I don't doubt that the technology works great. My concern is that the fully loaded lifecycle cost of spent nuclear fuel disposal/storage or reprocessing is not being taken into account when calculating dollars per megawatt-hour generated. This can be very costly and is frequently an economic externality of the cost to build and operate civilian nuclear power.

Re: Canada begins Small Modular Reactor strategy roadmap

#24
"Canada has launched a process to prepare a roadmap to explore the potential of on- and off-grid applications for small modular reactor (SMR) technology."

I'm a fan of building more nuclear reactors but this tag-line doesn't give me much hope - in essence it's a "process to plan to explore the potential". There's not even a hint of experimental science much less development in that sentence (I hope these are the writers words and that Canada's plans are (or involve) a bit more concrete.

Re: Canada begins Small Modular Reactor strategy roadmap

#25

What many people is this thread don't realize is that nuclear is by far the cleanest form of energy for the environment. It has no intermittancy problems like Wind and Solar. The process of building nuclear is extremely clean compared to building wind turbines and solar panels which devastate the environment due to the rare metals needed and production process. Its also vastly friendlier for humans and animals. The n…

I don't doubt that the technology works great. My concern is that the fully loaded lifecycle cost of spent nuclear fuel disposal/storage or reprocessing is not being taken into account when calculating dollars per megawatt-hour generated. This can be very costly and is frequently an economic externality of the cost to build and operate civilian nuclear power.

This is definitely being taken into account. For a quick summary see: https://www.thenakedscientists.com/articles/questions/how-mu...

Re: Canada begins Small Modular Reactor strategy roadmap

#26
post #9

At least with the current technology there are too many downsides to nuclear power. The nuclear waste issue still hasn't been solved, and nuclear accidents do happen, apparently despite all the security measures. Small reactors, maybe even mobile, can only make this worse.

Nuclear accidents happen, yes... at power plants with designs which were outlawed on safety grounds 40 years ago. If you want to prevent nuclear accidents, you should be supporting attempts to build new reactors, because that's the fastest route to getting the old ones decommissioned.

It is only because on the insistence of Admiral Hyman G. Rickover than Pressurized water reactors (PWRs) constitute a majority of all western nuclear power plants. He rejected "crazy thermodynamic cycles that everyone else wants to build". So we got stuck with PWR inherent flaws. Check "The Rickover Effect: How One Man Made a Difference" (http://bit.ly/2FiJQ1u)

Re: Canada begins Small Modular Reactor strategy roadmap

#27
Too little to late. I hate to get political, but this is more of a political issue than a technical one. The earth is already on track for another massive extinction due to climate change caused by warming global temperatures and human consumption. Instead of worrying about a few radioactive waste sites we have instead created a global and spectacularly hard to fix problem.

We put a man on the moon in less than a decade without any prior experience or technical know-how but we can’t figure out how to make safer nuclear reactors and install them? Bowl of shit.

Re: Canada begins Small Modular Reactor strategy roadmap

#28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't doubt that the technology works great. My concern is that the fully loaded lifecycle cost of spent nuclear fuel disposal/storage or reprocessing is not being taken into account when calculating dollars per megawatt-hour generated. This can be very costly and is frequently an economic externality of the cost to build and operate civilian nuclear power.

This is definitely being taken into account. For a quick summary see: https://www.thenakedscientists.com/articles/questions/how-mu...

I really don't think north American nuclear waste costs can be estimated with any fixed ceiling to cost overruns, considering the expensive Fiascos that were WIPP and yucca mountain.

Re: Canada begins Small Modular Reactor strategy roadmap

#29

What many people is this thread don't realize is that nuclear is by far the cleanest form of energy for the environment. It has no intermittancy problems like Wind and Solar. The process of building nuclear is extremely clean compared to building wind turbines and solar panels which devastate the environment due to the rare metals needed and production process. Its also vastly friendlier for humans and animals. The n…

Sorry, in the sum as you present it, it is wrong. It is correct that nuclear has the potential to produce a lot of energy without emitting CO2. And I am always happy to see new concepts for a more practical usage of nuclear energy. But the current way we are using nuclear energy has a lot of flaws, especially in the face of the ever cheaper reneweable energies. To address your points in more details:

- nuclear power plants might not occupy much space compared to other forms of energy production, but nuclear plants are extremely expensive. To the point where new building projects based on the conventional nuclear technologies are starting to fail because of cost basis. And there is nothing clean about mining and processing the needed uranium. Mining uranium is very bad for the environment and the workers as the uranium-rich soil radiates.

- it is also not true that the production of wind turbines and solar panes "devastate" the environment more than any other industrial production.

- it is not vastly friendlier for humans and animals. Beyond the issues with the mining of uranium and potential hazards whenever radioactive material is handled, operating a nuclear power plant has an environmental impact, even if it is only for the needed water cooling.

- as far as I am aware, no country has so far solved the issue with the long term storage of used fission material.

- and there are the meltdowns. While the exact number of people directly killed by the meltdowns are debatable, there are many more suffering long-term damage for the radiation exposure. They have rendered quite some large areas completely inhabitable for humans. And I am writing these lines from Bavaria, where there are still limits on eating mushrooms from the local forests, and where wild boar has to be checked for radiation before it is considered safe for human consumption. This is over 30 years after the Chernoby incident, and over 1000km away from the reactor. And it is expected to last for at least 20 more years.

So far the usage of nuclear energy has had quite a negative environmental impact already. Not to imagine a large incident in a more populated area. Japan got away lucky that the radiactive contamination was not blown towards the Tokyo region.

You write, that nuclear energy has no intermittancy problems - yes it mostly does not depend on the weather for the amount of energy produced. Except when it does, as power plants have to be shut down depending on the supply of cooling water, or when the water temperatures get to high, etc. Or when there are technical reasons which force a complete shutdown. Then the whole plant goes down removing a significant amount of energy production from the grid. In the last days, a lot of solar and wind power was transmitted from Germany to France due to extreme weather conditions

As said before, building new nuclear plants has become extremely expensive. Meanwhile the prices for wind and solar have gone down rapidly and below the price of new nuclear installations. There are also little risks to the population. If you are not standing below a failing wind generator or falling from your roof while installing solar, there are no risks. No contaminations, and the dismantling is a relatively cheap progress compared the dismantling of nuclear power plants - which is estimated to vastly exceed 1 billion per plant.

Re: Canada begins Small Modular Reactor strategy roadmap

#30

What many people is this thread don't realize is that nuclear is by far the cleanest form of energy for the environment. It has no intermittancy problems like Wind and Solar. The process of building nuclear is extremely clean compared to building wind turbines and solar panels which devastate the environment due to the rare metals needed and production process. Its also vastly friendlier for humans and animals. The n…

I find it hard to look at nuclear when much of what is limiting solar and wind is political. So far every nuclear accident we've seen are going to be around for forever timescales. The US could have been at the forefront of solar and wind power but it continually tries to push coal.

> but it continually tries to push coal

Let's clarify that China, Germany and Japan are consuming more coal per dollar of GDP than the US is. Those are the #2, #3, and #4 economies. Coal dominates both German and Chinese energy. The US coal industry has been contracting rapidly, falling back to 1985 levels, losing about 1/3 of output. China on the other hand, is still consuming as much coal as the rest of the world combined and four times that of the US.

Japan for its part, plans to open four dozen new coal plants in the next decade.

> The US could have been at the forefront of solar and wind power

The US invented modern solar and is at the forefront. As of early 2017, the US was still getting more of its energy from solar than China (not growing nearly as fast however). The US is adding dramatically more solar capacity than anybody else not named China. Capacity equivalent to four or five nuclear power plants, every year. In 2016 the US added 10 times as much solar capacity as what Germany did (an early leader), and nearly twice that of Japan.

The US is #2 in wind power globally and will remain there indefinitely. It's also at the forefront there. It's adding the equivalent of two or three nuclear power plants worth of wind energy capacity per year, while US energy consumption is flat.

The US has 30 times the installed wind energy generation capacity vs Japan for example.

Currently there are only three major players in wind energy. China, the US, Germany. Germany is starting to fall far behind the US just due to economic size variance.

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