Canada plans 'nuclear renaissance' with up to 10 reactors built by 2040 • Hacker News Board

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

#341

Post by leonidasrup » Tue, Jun 23, 2026, 9:40 AM UTC

Animats wrote: post #301

kelseydh wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The trouble with molten salt thorium reactors is that they need an attached chemical plant that processes molten sodium mixed with radioactive elements. This is not something a utility wants to own, maintain, and operate. Here are some studies on such plants.[1] No full scale long-running salt reprocessing plant has ever been built. The great thing about boiling water reactors is that you just have to handle water. T…

There is also the political aspect.

Online reprocessing of nuclear fuel necessary for some thorium fuel cycle designs (reprocessing inside the nuclear power plant) could increase the risk of nuclear proliferation. U.S. government, as a general policy, doesn't like when non-weapon states do nuclear reprocessing.

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

#342

Post by bildung » Tue, Jun 23, 2026, 9:44 AM UTC

stymaar wrote: post #274

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…

And you forgot the most important one, that justify nuclear over the alternatives: - is very far North and can't really use solar at all for 3 month per year because in winter the nights are long, the weather is terrible and the sun is always low in the sky.

Canada (at least the part with people) seems to be significantly more in the south than most of Northern Europe, where PV seems to work just fine?

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

#343

Post by pfdietz » Tue, Jun 23, 2026, 9:47 AM UTC

troupo wrote: post #305

pfdietz wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah yes, the ridiculous strawman engineering of saying batteries would be used for seasonal storage.

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 electricity. These both have lousy round trip efficiency (maybe 40%), but that's still cheaper than using batteries, because the capex per unit of storage capacity is far lower, and the cost of the RTE is low when there are so few charge-discharge cycles (as happens with seasonal storage); cost of seasonal storage is dominated by capex, which is why using high-capex batteries for it is such a bad idea.

Personally, I consider bulk thermal storage of cheap DC-coupled PV the most promising approach, as being pursued by Standard Thermal. They claim to be able to deliver 365/24/7 heat at 600 C for $3-5/GJ, which is competitive with Henry Hub natural gas.

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

#344

Post by pfdietz » Tue, Jun 23, 2026, 9:49 AM UTC

troupo wrote: post #323

arkh wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Then what would you use for seasonal storage? Like Germany: coal and the energy provided by the rest of the EU. So Nordic countries hydro and nuclear, and some French nuclear. While lobbying to make all those interconnections increase domestic prices for the providers.

> Like Germany: coal and the energy provided by the rest of the EU. So, from actual non-intermittent sources like checks notes nuclear?

No, nuclear is terrible for covering seasonality, since unless it's used with high capacity factor the cost per kWh skyrockets.

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

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Post by leonidasrup » Tue, Jun 23, 2026, 9:49 AM UTC

lukan wrote: post #331

leonidasrup wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Biomass in Demark is in large part not green technology. Could be even worse then fossil gas. "The utmost amount (46%) of wood pellets comes from the Baltic countries (Latvia and Estonia) and 30% from the USA, Canada and Russia.6 Estonia and Latvia have steadily been the primary exporters of biomass to Denmark, mainly in the form of wood pellets and wood chips." https://noah.dk/Biomass-consumption-in-Denmark

Even if the wood is imported, it still counts as green, as it regrowing and does not add CO2 that was in the ground before. (So it depends how much CO2 the ships used to transport it there)

1. We can comfortable say that the CO2 from burned wood stays in the atmosphere for at-least 100 years (time necessary for the next tree to grow), with all the associated effects.

2. I could not imagine scaling biomass to country like India or China to cover the same share in electricity production mix as in Dermark (Denmark currently produces 20% of electricity from Bioenergy).

https://ourworldindata.org/profile/energy/denmark

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

#346

Post by TomK32 » Tue, Jun 23, 2026, 9:49 AM UTC

stinkbeetle wrote: post #293

rgmerk wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You pay for it. There is - arguably a case for nuclear power in cold miserable places like Canada or Northern Europe because solar - by far the cheapest form of renewable energy, and still with a substantial runway to get cheaper - produces the least amount of energy precisely when those places need it most. Australia, being a warm, sunny place, has far less seasonal variation in solar production, and at worst bas a…

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 dislike cars, the nice thing about electric cars is the potential that most often they can be charged at a time when it is convenient for the network. Mind you, cars just sit around 95% of the time.

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

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Post by inglor_cz » Tue, Jun 23, 2026, 9:52 AM UTC

fsh wrote: post #207

nomel wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Larger reactors are needed. Genuine question: Why? Why not many smaller reactors? Small modular reactors seem pretty neat. Is there an efficiency loss/total cost difference with smaller reactors?

Like most industrial sites, large reactors are much more economical than small ones. This is why nobody has built SMRs since the 1950s.

Technically yes, but in the case of nuclear, regulatory cost is what matters more. If the paperwork needed for construction of one large scale reactor is much more expensive than that needed for construction of a hundred smaller identical reactors, then the SMRs will win.

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

#348

Post by tmellon2 » Tue, Jun 23, 2026, 10:17 AM UTC

Totally unnecessary : I did the Math to cross-verify - Elon Musk is 100 % right !

Just ONE square mile of batteries and a TOTAL of 100 x 100 square miles of Solar can power the entire USA 24/7. Area required will be much lesser for Canada.

See : https://finance.yahoo.com/sectors/energy/articles/elon-musk-...