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

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

#281

Post by leonidasrup »

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…

The US has operating Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico, a deep geological repository licensed to store transuranic radioactive waste for 10,000 years.

But it's only used to store military nuclear waste, not civilian nuclear waste.

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

#282

Post by somenameforme »

brainwad wrote: post #272
red75prime wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I chose those numbers to emphasize the system cost. Too many people go "Solar panels are cheap! Why don't we have them everywhere?" That's why.

Even then, the costs came down 10x in a decade, so it seems foolish to commit to nuclear which has no prospects of getting cheaper.

It will likely become significantly more expensive at scale. At current nuclear usage we use about 60,000 tons of uranium year powering nuclear reactors. [1] Global reserves are around 6 million tons, with estimates putting potential reserves around double that. [2] So that's enough for about 2 centuries of usage at current levels. Bump up nuclear by 10x and we're at 20 years until we're out, assuming all those potential reserves can be found.

The claims of endless nuclear energy rely on salt-water extraction which is like 3 parts per billion and not at all economical, or the development of breeder reactors which as of yet also remain prohibitively expensive, significantly more dangerous/finnicky owing to using liquid sodium as a coolant, and offer much easier weaponization.

Back in the 70s Exxon predicted the impacts of widespread CO2 output, but hand-waved it away. I feel people are doing the exact same thing with nuclear, and probably under the exact same motivation. They are biased towards nuclear and want it to work, and so are either ignoring the issues or assuming/hoping for a future technological breakthrough to resolve them, but as of yet that breakthrough appears nowhere in sight.

[1] - http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2026/ph241/flanagan2/

[2] - https://www.visualcapitalist.com/charted-global-uranium-rese...

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

#283

Post by rob74 »

magicalist wrote: post #247
red75prime wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Something like 98% of Canadians live south of Denmark's southernmost line of latitude

...while also having a colder climate than the Danish. At least while the Gulf Stream is still working.

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

#285

Post by kelseydh »

PaulHoule wrote: post #104
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…

They don’t seem to have any plans to build more CANDU, in so many ways the world has moved on for instance those centrifuges have made uranium enrichment more economical for most countries except (seemingly) the US and Iran. What is exciting to me is that these just installed the first module of the BWRX 300 at Darlington. I was so afraid that BWRX was going to be another SMR that gets talked about for decades but it…

Exciting development. I really wish somebody would nail a commercially viable Thorium reactor but it seems there are real engineering complications around scaling molten salt reactors.

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

#286

Post by leonidasrup »

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.

You would be surprised how much toxic industrial waste is been currently stored in deep geological repositories.

For example Herfa-Neurode underground repository contains (as of 2025):

https://www.kpluss.com/en-us/our-business-products/waste-man...

690,000 tons of waste containing dioxins and furans , 220,000 tons of waste containing mercury, 127,000 tons of waste containing cyanide, and 83,000 tons of toxic waste containing arsenic. Each year additional waste is added and it will be toxic forever.

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Untertagedeponie_Herfa-Neurode

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

#287

Post by Animats »

epistasis wrote: post #215
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.

Ok, I was kind of excited about this, until you pointed out the dates. Of all Western developed countries, Canada is pretty much the last hope for a country with the skills to build nuclear at something that's within spitting distance of being economical. The US and France have shat the bed royally over the past two decades, they're out of the game of construction competence. The UK stopped doing their own and outsou…

China's current plan: Since the country’s first Hualong One unit came online in 2021, 6 additional units have begun commercial operation, 16 units are under construction, and 18 units have received government approval in China. According to the CNNC, the Hualong One will become the country’s mainstream type of third-generation thermal reactor by 2030.

The Hualong One is a successor of the Westinghouse AP1000. The US has two of those operational, at Vogtle. Then Westinghouse Nuclear went bankrupt. China has four operational. All later units in China are Hualong One units or later designs.

These are all classic pressurized water reactors, all about 1 gigawatt. Nothing exotic here. The technology is known and works well.

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

#288

Post by roenxi »

dosisking wrote: post #236
crote wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Hypothetically, a train could derail, the train was carrying nuclear waste, the derailment occurred in a highly populated area, near a Virology Lab. The lab was damaged, which released a deadly form of Smallpox, which spread to every corner of the Earth, killing every single human. That would be pretty bad, but not sure if it would be the absolute worst.

You don't need the nuclear waste in that, the train could derail, be carrying a lazy courier transporting a deadly bio-hazard, and unleash a deadly virus and kill literally everyone. From a human-centred perspective that is probably the worst case.

If we're talking non-human it is a bit harder.

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

#289

Post by Glawen »

nickserv wrote: post #146
consensus1 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see that France has the most nuclear heavy grid and also some of the cheapest energy costs and lowest CO2 emission per unit energy in the world. When I see that matched by a solar / wind focused grid I will believe the cheap renewables hype. And even when I see that, the low energy density still has its own problems. The amount of resources needed for the panels and batteries is massive in itself. And the land area…

France has higher prices than several EU countries. Spain in particular has low prices thanks to their solar and wind, and the Nordics thanks to hydro.

And the germanics have higher price than France, which can benefit from importing cheap spanish power (when not in outage) and reselling it at 5x to germanic countries.

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

#290

Post by p2detar »

fsh wrote: post #277
ChadNauseam wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The basic premise of "have a factory that produces reactors small enough to ship" always made sense to my uneducated mind. Is there a flaw in the idea? It seems like it should be much cheaper than if every reactor were bespoke

With smaller reactors, one needs more of everything: reactor vessels, containment structures, cooling systems, generators, etc. This is why industrial facilities are usually built as large as reasonably possible, and why SMRs fell out of fashion as soon as GW-class reactors became feasible in the 1960s.

SMRs have their use. Depending on the model and design you can build them or even bring them [0] to a remote place where you want to build industry but the infrastructure and access to electrical grid is lacking. I'd argue nowadays they are even more important with the huge rise in electricity demand.

0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akademik_Lomonosov

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