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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

#491

Post by Moldoteck »

credit_guy wrote: post #490
Moldoteck wrote: post #489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Proliferation is irrelevant. It was not a Candu reactor what India have used and without Russia's help it's unlikely it would have happened. But there are easier and cheaper pathways - uranium enrichment distributed to be stealthy Related to US, it'll happen sooner or later https://www.nucnet.org/news/atkinsrealis-to-begin-licensing-...

> Proliferation is irrelevant I would not be so cavalier about that. > It was not a Candu reactor what India have used It was a heavy water reactor, called CIRUS [1], based on the NRX reactor that later evolved into the CANDU reactor [2]. > But there are easier and cheaper pathways - uranium enrichment distributed to be stealthy Iran tried that. It is not easy to keep centrifuges stealthy, you need tens of thousands…

I meant it's irrelevant in the context of reactors not in general

It's easier to keep them stealthy vs getting it from a reactor that operates under special conditions where Russia definitely helped, especially under current IAEA rulling

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

#492

Post by Jedd »

Moldoteck wrote: post #482
Jedd wrote: post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you say 'all' - is that five? Since 1999?

I mean these https://www.opg.com/news-resources/newsroom/our-stories/stor... https://news.ontario.ca/en/release/1007558/ontario-delivers-...

Your first link to OPG - suggests, when looking at https://www.opg.com/about-us/ - that they have TWO nuclear power stations in their fold, and it's not clear how many of them were refurbished over what time period.

Your second link suggests a refurbishment of ONE power station.

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

#493

Post by Zopieux »

b112 wrote: post #478
Zopieux wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The concrete is a small part of the problem. Flooding gigantic areas and stopping the natural water flow have serious consequences for widelife, but most people don't care enough.

Actually, I addressed that in my comment. There are no real serious consequences for wildlife, instead, the local ecosystem changes and different wildlife moves in. You do realise that rivers are constantly shifting, disappearing, lakes forming and disappearing, that none of this is static, yes?

I do. There is quite the delta between a immense & sudden reservoir and a meandering river shifting its (otherwise similarly sized, and unintterrupted) bed over decades.

I'm not even touching on the human concerns regarding population displacement.

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

#494

Post by motohagiography »

pfdietz wrote: post #158
motohagiography wrote: post #95

new micro reactor tech makes this much more appealing. We probably don't need Darlington scale plants, we just need a capacity to add new ones. Diversifying the ownership and management of them would also improve the economic benefits. We would need a leverage cap on securitization of energy as debt collateral. Something akin to banking leverage limits of 10-20x for them to be operated responsibly. We should have mor…

Micro reactors have micro markets. The diseconomies of scale kill it for general grid power.

that's a philosophical view. We don't want a single grid, we want power in places we need it. Building for a single grid has a bunch of expensive opinions that serve mainly to provide a control layer instead of serving the basic economic need.

A micro reactor can practically fund itself on model training, data processing, and cryptocurrencies, and where it can't there is actual usage.

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

#495

Post by Moldoteck »

Jedd wrote: post #492
Moldoteck wrote: post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean these https://www.opg.com/news-resources/newsroom/our-stories/stor... https://news.ontario.ca/en/release/1007558/ontario-delivers-...

Your first link to OPG - suggests, when looking at https://www.opg.com/about-us/ - that they have TWO nuclear power stations in their fold, and it's not clear how many of them were refurbished over what time period. Your second link suggests a refurbishment of ONE power station.

ONE station has SEVERAL units

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

#497

Post by martinbfine »

gucci-on-fleek wrote: post #60
martinbfine wrote: post #37

[dead]

> But what do they do with the waste? The Canadian Shield [0] is uniquely well-suited for this: it's remote, sparsely populated, and geologically stable. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Shield

[dead]

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

#498

Post by Jedd »

Moldoteck wrote: post #495
Jedd wrote: post #492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your first link to OPG - suggests, when looking at https://www.opg.com/about-us/ - that they have TWO nuclear power stations in their fold, and it's not clear how many of them were refurbished over what time period. Your second link suggests a refurbishment of ONE power station.

ONE station has SEVERAL units

Okay, so not to detract too much from this tiny handful of refurbs - where the assessment, design, build etc were already done, and target state was well understood (it was to get back to whatever parameters and specs they had previously built at the same location), are there any contra-examples of Canadian hubris around budget and schedule on large projects where things might go wrong?

Eglington Crossing light rail - 6 year delay (to 15 year total) with a tripling in cost to $15B - so about $1b per kilometre of light rail.

Peace River hydroelectric - costing double ($16B) original budget.

Vancouver wastewater - a 4x budget creep (to $4B) and a 10y delay so far - it hasn't opened yet.

My point is that it's not only nuclear fission power plants that are grossly underestimated in terms of cost and complexity, but rather, all large infrastructure projects.

Just happens that on top of all that, the estimated numbers for LCoE, payback, clean-up, opex, etc for nuclear fission are also misrepresented (or misunderstood, depending how cynical you are).

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

#499

Post by pfisch »

themaninthedark wrote: post #437
crote wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the worst accident involving a Model T, maybe a dozen dead? Early steam boilers aren't going to be much worse either. Nuclear accidents are essentially unlimited in size. Nothing else can do that kind of country-sized - let alone it being permanent . Chernobyl showed the potential impact. Fukushima showed that even several decades down the line things can still rapidly run out of control. All the knowledge and…

Steam boilers have a lot of regulation, all written in blood. Entire boats would explode killing most/all onboard. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_boiler_explosions

Do you understand the scale of Chernobyl if they had failed to stop the meltdown? Half of eastern europe would be uninhabitable. It would've killed 100s of millions.

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

#500

Post by pfdietz »

xp84 wrote: post #435
pfdietz wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1. No, it doesn't It does, for the reason I gave. You didn't give a reason why not. > 2. Other tech has to actually show this rapid advance, and not be the permanent state of fiction Incredibly, you seem unaware of just how rapidly the cost of solar and wind and batteries have dropped. If we project the demonstrated experience curve of PV forward another five doublings or so, PV energy will be delivered at under $0…

> nuclear hasn't been very good at delivering them quickly or economically, unlike renewables and storage. Kind of circular reasoning / begging the question here, since in North America we essentially stopped building nuclear over 35 years ago .[1] We stopped because people were scared of nuclear, and thus a ton of regulatory roadblocks were increased, making it uneconomic. Note that the changes in regulations post-1…

> We stopped because people were scared of nuclear,

This is the usual line nuclear advocates use, but it doesn't fit the facts. Nuclear stopped because it became clear it wasn't competitive with alternatives. There were large cost overruns, increased risk from demand growth slacking, and large new sources of power becoming available from PURPA and natural gas.

As the famous Forbes cover story said:

“The failure of the U.S. nuclear power program ranks as the largest managerial disaster in business history, a disaster on a monumental scale. The utility industry has already invested $125 billion in nuclear power … only the blind, or the biased, can now think that most of the money has been well spent.”

Forbes: Nuclear Follies, February 11, 1985

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