Canada may need to double — if not triple — the power we make to get to net-zero emissions by 2050
Canada may need to double — if not triple — the power we make to get to net-zero emissions by 2050
I guess the time is now to start building nuclear so that it is running in a decade.
only thing I really worry about with nuclear is the need for water, if we can handle that part with waste or salt water then I'm all for trying it
Interesting, I didn't know about the water use. Apparently most use sea water.
No, no ,no!!!! Nuclear is bad mmmmkay? I would like to present you with a link to a video where we use carbon tax to. And then support greener energies and green tech to make the earth a cleaner. We need to accept that we damgee the earth and the more we put towards carbon tax will. The video will consist of apologies, thoughts and prayers, including reconciliation, and the pathway to the future. Please fine the link here:
Sounds about right. But I worry about the nimby backlash to all this. Where I am in eastern Ontario, there is already blowback (if you'll pardon the expression) to wind power, let alone more traditionally contentious options like nuclear and hydro dams.
The whole Ontario electrical sector has been hugely mis-managed by NDP, PC and Liberal governments. Even at current power rates, maintenance and upgrade budgets aren't adequate, let alone expansion, and certainly not new nuclear. The moratorium on offshore wind was exceptionally bad policy as was the half-assed privatization attempt.
The last greenfield nuke plant built in Canada was Darlington and it ended up way over budget (equivalent of $23B in today's money) and 5 years behind schedule. The Bruce refurbishments have been pretty successful, the Point Lepreau refurbishment, much less so. But new nuclear is a completely different ball of wax. With AECL being sold off to SNC by Harper, we don't have the domestic talent for new CANDUs anymore. The experience with AP1000s (V.C.Summer, Vogtle) and EPRs (Hinkley Point C, Flamanville, Olkiluoto, Taishan) has been really dismal.
Not just the Bruce refurbishments but the ongoing Darlington one. I would definitely not call the grid upgrades mismanagement either. The new corridor from Bruce to the GTA makes expanding Bruce nuclear and escarpment wind possible, and ice storms aren't going to be taking down hundreds of 50 year old hydro pylons anymore. We under-invested for 2 decades, and then had to play catch up, which, yes is an example of poor management, but lets give credit where it's due. There's plenty of success to point to.
I've heard there is talk of adding new reactors at the Bruce site, though it's basically only that at this point. Talk. Do you think they would not be of the CANDU/heavy water design? That would be unfortunate. I've always felt we had good tech but abysmal management in the nuclear sector.
There's a world where the green party and environmentalists are pro-nuclear instead of conspiracy nuts
Canada is in a uniquely good position for nuclear, we have a massive domestic supply of uranium and a lot of geographically safe areas to build power plants, plus good access to water for cooling.
I am hopeful for small modular reactors (SMR's). They have the potential for significant construction cost savings, are less of a risk from terrorism/disaster, and can often be located closer to the load (long power lines lose power).
There have been a number of studies that have SMRs are being as expensive or higher than conventional nuclear, with the added downside of higher levels of waste, anywhere from 2 to 30 times as much as conventional nuclear depending on the tech used.
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2111833119
Part of the reason for scaling up reactors in the first place was the expectation that output would scale faster than costs. That hasn't really panned out to the extent expected.
I guess from a physics standpoint, one would expect an SMR to be somewhat less fuel efficient in that a nuclear reactor is essentially a furnace and the surface area to volume ratio favours a larger design to retain the heat. SMR proponents like to spin this as a "feature", however, in that they would be less likely to meltdown and that safety trumps efficiency in reactor design. Another point they claim from the safety standpoint is that if you had say a dozen SMRs replacing a single traditional reactor, you could routinely take one off-line for inspection/maintenance without a huge hit on power generation.
I don't know enough about this and most of what I read is anecdotal though, so take it with a grain of salt. There may still be a case for them in northern communities, many of which are off the grid and use large diesel/gas generators? I guess it would depend on how well SMRs can follow load, which has tended to be a problem with nuclear power.
Can't nuclear waste be recycled back into nuclear fuel anyway?
Thanks for sharing this, I didn't know how the waste compared to conventional nuclear.
Make it a code requirement to have a way to generate SOME power for all commercial buildings. A flat top warehouse is prime location for solar panels. Anything higher than 5-6 storeys is prime location for wind power generation.
Power or food. My city has started rooftop greenhouses.
I bet we can do it, if we need to. Actually the original headline suggests that too.
Fyi, these estimates almost always wildly over-estimate the amount of power needed to electrify everything. When carefully calculated, it's much less because fossil fuel infrastructure is just so damned inefficient. You burn most of it up just getting it from the ground to the engine or furnace, which themselves are wildly inefficient compared to electric versions. The book Electrify! has a detailed breakdown. It's America-centric, but applies to Canada well enough.
With better transmission lines there's also huge rooms for load sharing efficiency improvements, but I would still argue that we should be vastly overbuilding electricity production. Everything in society is cheaper and easier when energy prices are lower, and if we don't have the same carbon cost to that production there's no reason not to spend money there as a giant subsidy to everyone.
In general, we should be overbuilding because we are parked right North of the second largest consumer of electricity in the world and electricity prices in a lot of US states is crazy expensive.