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Canadian provinces band together to develop nuclear reactor technology

372 points by frabbit 7y ago

eyesbear 7y ago
Cute
StillBored 7y ago
A few years ago Toshiba was going to build a small reactor in Alaska. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galena_Nuclear_Power_Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galena_Nuclear_Power_Plant But it got canceled, and for the life of me I can't understand why anyone thinks its better to truck in heavy fuel oil for generators vs having a small reactor buried in the ground for 30 years. I've been saying for a few years now that green energy only advocates are basically on the side of coal and natural gas plants because they scream "green energy" and end up with a few MW of wind (ignoring the hydro built 50 years ago which to this day is still the majority "green energy" source) and a bunch of natural gas or in the past coal plants. If they said yes to fission 40 years ago we wouldn't be having the climate crisis discussion today. We don't have 40 more years to overbuild wind/solar and perfect battery technology at 2-5x the current price for natural gas. Because if people don't start saying "yes" for carbon free power sources like this we _WILL_ be trying to figure out how to built them in 50 years to recapture all the carbon we burned into the atmosphere while trying to avoid more and more of the forests/etc from burning.
- skybrian 7y ago
  It all depends on how much they end up costing to build compared to alternatives.
  - StillBored 7y ago
    A huge part of that is all the lawsuits and "regulations" designed to keep new plants from being built. Regulations pushed for by the green energy constituency... I'm all for safety but if you read some of the regulation stories we would be banning CT scanners from hospitals..
    - Ididntdothis 7y ago
      Fukushima was a good reminder that these “regulations” exist for good reason.
      - Tostino 7y ago
        I highly doubt the regulations the GP is referencing would have anything to do with preventing an accident like Fukushima. Regulations are not inherently bad, but they can be used in negative ways by those in power. The devil is in the details, and we'll written and though out regulations are a great thing and are absolutely necessary for society to function. It's easy for the public to lose track and conflate good regulations with regulations that are poorly written, have intentional loopholes, or are mean to stifle an industry or technology by protecting the entrenched players.
      - ekianjo 7y ago
        > Fukushima was a good reminder that these “regulations” exist for good reason. As if the Japanese nuclear market was deregulated? Japan is a developed country that loves bureaucracy so don't be afraid, there is plenty of regulation in every sector here.
        ptaipale 7y ago
        And Fukushima was built to the requirements of 1970's, not those of today (which are much stronger).
        natmaka 7y ago
        The plant was active and very well-maintained, and its operator even planned to extend it (2 more reactors). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_Nuclear_Power_Plant#Reactor_data https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_Nuclear_Powe...
        ptaipale 7y ago
        Yes, but the original location of site would not be approved today, precisely because of the risk that actualised in the tsunami (even though it is an extremely rare an unlikely occurrence - a tsunami which caused large-scale devastation where the nuclear plant's problems were just a minor issue compared to the huge loss of life and material damage from tsunami itself).
- i_feel_great 7y ago
  "... better to truck in heavy fuel oil..." Your answer right there. The nuclear power industry just doesn't lobby hard enough.
- thawaway1837 7y ago
  Only if the “green energy” people actually had that much power... In reality there are 2 forces that have stopped nuclear. NIMBYism. And terrible economics. But the green energy people are an easy punching bag for the nuclear advocates who are simply unwilling to face up to the reality of why nuclear keeps failing to take off.
  - StillBored 7y ago
    The costs to built the plants dominates the price. Once built the actual operation and fueling costs are best in class https://www.expressnews.com/business/eagle-ford-energy/article/Nuclear-energy-in-doubt-amid-high-costs-11946922.php https://www.expressnews.com/business/eagle-ford-energy/artic... The majority of the cost to build the plants are due to the crazy uncertainty about the design/build timeline every-time one is built. Given that conceptually they aren't any more complex than your average coal plant those costs are massively over inflated by a number of factors. Frankly if there was a COTS design pre-certified, then it might be possible to wipe out a huge fraction of the built cost.
    - akiselev 7y ago
      >> NIMBYism > The majority of the cost to build the plants are due to the crazy uncertainty about the design/build timeline every-time one is built. Given that conceptually they aren't any more complex than your average coal plant those costs are massively over inflated by a number of factors. Frankly if there was a COTS design pre-certified, then it might be possible to wipe out a huge fraction of the built cost. NIMBYism is a large reason why the risks are so uncertain and the costs so high. When dozens of judges at several levels have jurisdiction to require expensive and time consuming state/federal EPA, zoning, air quality, shading, etc. reviews and plaintiffs can use delay tactics to block appeals to those rulings, you get lots of uncertainty and expense.
    - Spooky23 7y ago
      Capital costs matter. If they didn’t, we wouldn’t have mortgages or lease cars.
- marcosdumay 7y ago
  Small nuclear plants are actually something that can possibly help (differently from the large ones). But I doubt anybody will get the costs down enough to make them viable, wind and solar are power horses. It's like creating a non-mainstream computer architecture at the 90's and early 00's, it won't improve fast enough to even match their speed. About emissions, coal is responsible for a huge share of emissions on electricity generation. If you replace half of it with a 0 emissions source, and the other half a source 4 times more carbon efficient, it does go a long way to help. If we are luck, this will give us enough time to develop batteries, because that is very likely what will happen.
  - ekianjo 7y ago
    > will get the costs down enough to make them viable, wind and solar are power horses. Except in areas where you don't have much sunlight or much wind exposure, and both of these sources of energies require huge land occupation which is not ideal either. Energy-density wise you can't really beat nuclear.
  - StillBored 7y ago
    I think you under-estimate the amount of CO2 produced by a NG plant simply because its 2x-4x less than coal. Put another way, adding 60% renewable to NG only 1/2's the CO2 output. At the rate of consumption growth your still increasing the total C02 footprint year over year. Plus, that solution is literally 2x-3x the CO2 footprint vs the french solution put in place 40 years ago. Explained another way, going to renewable+NG only buys you about a decade in CO2 emission reduction. If everyone magically fit that formula today, it would be the equivalent of 2009, a far cry from where we need to be. Worse, you still have the problem that you need to convert all the automobile/planes/tractors/etc somehow. Without super cheap electricity that process is going to be much slower than it needs to be. What you need is electricity so cheap that it can compensate for the inefficiencies producing hydro-carbon sources for planes and other applications where the battery technology isn't even possible with infinite economic solutions. The _ONLY_ solution we have today is fission and a reduction in the build price forced in place by COTs and precerification.
  - esqqfskaw 7y ago
- jlawson 7y ago
  The most extreme-left political advocates, who dominate green advocacy because of their high motivation, aren't interested in solving climate change alone. What they want is to dismantle what they see as an entire system of racist sexist capitalist corporate transphobic colonialist evil. Nuclear power, if it was used and solved climate change, wouldn't help with the other aspects of that goal. And, in fact, it would weaken the attempts to dismantle those aspects by taking away a strong source of panic and power. The strategy is to use climate change to spike fear and thus convince people to give up thier political power to multinational undemocratic entities and expanding bureaucracies of advocates and evironmental commissars who they ordinarily would reject. They don't want to solve the problem, they want to exploit the problem. Here's an example: https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/climate-strikes-un-conference-madrid-by-greta-thunberg-et-al-2019-11 https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/climate-strikes... "That action must be powerful and wide-ranging. After all, the climate crisis is not just about the environment. It is a crisis of human rights, of justice, and of political will. Colonial, racist, and patriarchal systems of oppression have created and fueled it. We need to dismantle them all. Our political leaders can no longer shirk their responsibilities."
  - vidarh 7y ago
    "The most extreme-left" has historically been firmly pro-nuclear. There's a massive schism between the traditional far left, whose ideologies tends to be founded on the basis of a firm belief in the advancement of technology (e.g. half of the first chapter of the Communist Manifesto is praise for the advancement brought by capitalism and what it will make possible), and the groups you describe, that tends to elicit disdain from the far left.
    - squiggleblaz 7y ago
      Indeed. I mean, "left" and "right" do an awful lot of work. "Left" simply means anyone who isn't opposed to the current order, or it can mean one of several particular ideologies. "Extreme left" would tend to mean communist. But green communists are a real thing, so while I would prefer to say "some of the extreme left is anti nuclear" or some such. Or perhaps more relevantly for the OP's point, "many greens". Because not all greens are left, and not all leftists are green. Indeed, many contemporary Green voters in Australia are positively mainstream in terms of their economics. I think in Germany they can even trend right. And in east Europe, they're outright right.
- Krasnol 7y ago
  > A few years ago Toshiba was going to build a small reactor in Alaska. What an understatement. Let's quote one of the sources there: > But the project never began the mandatory, lengthy and extremely costly process of gaining approval by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. > This would include a site license, which takes tens of millions of dollars and several years, as well as a design permit. No design of this type has ever been approved, though one other has made it through the first step of the process, which took about six years. So they were far away from "going to build" there. > I've been saying for a few years now that green energy only advocates are basically on the side of coal and natural gas plants Yeah we heard you. It's a quite popular tactic in this "last scream of nuclear" advertisement. In the same generalistic way the evil green energy only advocates could say that you are an ignorant shill. There is nobody on the side of coal who wants green energy and natural gas or gas as battery for renewables is not the same thing as coal... Fission has been in development for many decades. Eating up money and not coming up with a solution. So please...tone it down. Nuclear is expensive, dangerous and most of the countries on this planet have no space or (economic) means to make the waste disappear.
  - arkh 7y ago
    > Fission has been in development for many decades. You're thinking of fusion. Reading the comments here from France where 80% production is nuclear with a nuclear waste reprocessing site it feels like the USA problem has more to do with local regulations than technology.
    - chefkoch 7y ago
      And even they struggle to come up with replacements for their agying fleet of reactors.
    - Krasnol 7y ago
      Oh yeah France our lovely neighbour with the rotting fleet of "should have been turned off" reactors underreporting accidents and an deficitary agency managing it all while the politicians chuckle it all off due to having slept on the renewable front. Yes, yes. It's great. If you don't blow half of the continent into a radioactive paradies one day, you'll end up being overthrown by some yellow vested nutjobs who will have to pay more taxes because the money for this ridiculously subsided energy project including the waste "management" (hello Russia) has to come from somewhere and decommissioning is not even priced in yet. PS. Winter is coming. Time to buy some energy from Germany again...
- phreeza 7y ago
  Non-hydro renewables overtook hydro a couple of years ago in the US, and are on track to overtake nuclear, too, in a couple more years. https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/steo/images/Fig34.png https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/steo/images/Fig34.png
- varjag 7y ago
  Everyone was saying "yes" to fission 40 years ago. It was not until Chernobyl that global backlash against nuclear really started. The pace wasn't however particularly impressive back then already as technology, safety and waste management limitations became clear.
  - pfdietz 7y ago
    No, the backlash against nuclear long predates Chernobyl. And it was driven by economics, not safety. In the US, new nuclear construction collapsed after the first big nuclear building spree, when promises collided with reality. This was even before TMI.
- pjc50 7y ago
  People underestimate how much of the opposition to nuclear plants in the past was due to the "dual use" nature of the technology, and the proliferation of nuclear weapons. In the 80s it was hard to care about the effects of climate change in a mere hundred years when global policy was to keep civilization-destroying quantities of weapons on hand that could be delivered in 45 minutes. The war between nuclear weapons and environmentalists went "hot" when the French DGSE sank the Rainbow Warrior and murdered a photographer in retaliation for trying to stop their nuclear testing. If you think the question is solved, ask yourself this: would you prefer that Iran solve its energy needs from a fleet of nuclear reactors or a fleet of solar panels?
  - reacweb 7y ago
    I find it very hard to imagine that a 74 years old technology remains complex enough to be available only to governements.
    - lizknope 7y ago
      It's not. Nuclear fission reactors are built by large corporations like General Electric and Hitachi. If these companies wanted to they have the expertise to build a nuclear bomb but why would they unless their governments asked them to?
      - londons_explore 7y ago
        A huge number of 74 year old technologies are available for $0.75 direct from China. The fact the nuclear reactor hasn't been miniaturized to the size of a coin and included in every $15 childrens toy to power lights is in large part because of public perception and government regulation rather than real safety/health concerns - there exist plenty of typical household materials that are more dangerous than the safest nuclear materials.
        pvaldes 7y ago
        On the other hand, a child swallowing a tiny nuclear plant in the shape of a smiley would be an entirely new experience in the A&E department but that would never happens? would it?. I could see from here the lawyers salivating with a case like that. Not to mention that those toys would end in a few days in the garbage, ready to be shipped by volume to be burnt ("recycled") in some other country.
- WhompingWindows 7y ago
  The problem your comment doesn't mention is that new build nuclear is VERY expensive, far more expensive than renewables. Until new-build nuclear is MUCH cheaper, natural gas and renewables will be the vast majority of new capacity additions. All one need do is look at the debacle in South Carolina to see how expensive nuclear can truly be: https://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/energy/nuclear/abandoned-nuclear-reactors-fit-a-global-pattern-of-new-build-troubles https://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/energy/nuclear/abandone...
- cartoonfoxes 7y ago
  > But it got canceled, and for the life of me I can't understand why anyone thinks its better to truck in heavy fuel oil for generators vs having a small reactor buried in the ground for 30 years. I don't understand it either. My best guess is that nuclear is scary, and most "green energy" advocates would prefer to believe that panacea eco-friendly alternatives exist. I live in northern Canada. I've witnessed a plenty of FUD surrounding nuclear, and the concomitant excessive unrealistic optimism around wind and solar. Every year the power outages become a little more frequent, and every other year brings some new story of power projects cancelled due to "environmental concerns" and "lack of consultation". So many people seem convinced that the lack of wind and solar projects is strictly due to government bungling or never-specified interference from oil-industry incumbents. Green gets used as a kind of security blanket. You can't escape the fact that you have a carbon footprint running a car and heating your home and workplace through six months of winter. Many green energy advocates are less than serious, and are just looking to feel better. They're content to believe that someone, somewhere, is doing something. Preferably without having to think too hard or entertain compromise positions.
  - pfdietz 7y ago
    It's probably a smallish power plant. Small nuclear power plants wouldn't be competitive even with oil, due to diseconomies of scale in staffing and operation. If you want a baseload source in Alaska I'd look at geothermal. Even moderate temperature (below boiling) hot water there can be used, due to the moderate or low ambient temperature. And Alaska has many areas with good geothermal resources.
- im_with_stupid 7y ago
  I'm with you 100%. One thing that people don't realize is that nuclear technology is the only fuel technology that has nuclear regulations. If coal has a little radioactivity in it, there's no limit to what radiation can be exposed to the atmosphere in burning it. I believe the same applies to oil, gasoline, and diesel.
- cmonnow 7y ago
  Every technology has pros & cons, effects & residues. Coal : Effect/Pros - Energy/Cheap. Residue/Cons - C02/GlobalWarming Nuclear : Effect/Pros - Energy/Clean. Residue/Cons - RadioactiveWaste/Contamination. Where do the nuclear byproducts go currently ? Into the earth? Rivers? Oceans? 30 years ago, we switched from paper based products to plastic, to save trees. Today, we want to switch from plastic based products to paper, to avoid pollution. Every 'switch' will come with side-effects that the current generation is fine with, because they're not going to be ones dealing with it.
pvaldes 7y ago
A nuclear reactor designed so small that can be placed in School Gyms. The phrase says all. It seems that shootings at schools are not longer exciting enough for the three men in the photo. They could also place dynamite under the basement and a big red button in the main entrance with a "do not push" sign. Adolescents love a defy.
- 14 7y ago
  I don't think it has any context with schools other then the average person has been into a school gym and has an idea how big one of those are. If you left them guess how big one of these reactors without something to compare I would have no idea what a compact reactor would be for size. I personally thought we would see trailer sized nuclear reactors. But a gym sized one is not that big of a foot print either and can fit in any city.
- TheChaplain 7y ago
  It's a figure of speech to give the audience an idea of the size of the reactor, since a large majority of citizens have attended school. Please try to be more generous in your interpretation instead of just throwing out the worst possible scenario thinkable.
- eigenspace 7y ago
  I can’t tell if you’re trolling or not, but I’m just going to assume you’re being sincere. Nothing about that quote suggests they want nuclear reactors in schools. They’re just trying to give a sense of size. Also, Canada has had very, very few school shootings.
  - pvaldes 7y ago
    The exact phrase "Some SMR designs are small enough to fit in a gymnasium" appears in www.canada.ca, a Canadian government web page that explains the project. Is not what a random journalist just said. Is the idea that the Canadian government is carefully trying to introduce. I'm not so naive. Is obvious that the politicians had though previously about using that in public spaces. Mixing unstable radioactive atoms (now in packages "easy to transport", ehem... steal?, none less) with unstable young humans full of hormones, videogames and relationship drama (including typically cases of bullying and romantic disasters) and doing that mix in one of the places that some young dislike the most; is one of the most stupid ideas that I had seen in my entire life. Point. IMHO those three men are a public danger for everybody.
algaeontoast 7y ago
The saddest double-standard of all that’s driven by pure stupidity is the phenomenon of “environmental activists” who decry efforts to develop and deploy nuclear power. We could’ve been carbon neutral, but the green morons had to make a scene and screech “wind and solar” playing into their fictitious enemies hand (coal, natural gas etc.)
- cheez 7y ago
  The same people who screamed about wind and solar also scream about $BYND and surprise (notice the "eating meat is bad for the environment" meme coming out recently), they are funded by similar pipelines.
  - algaeontoast 7y ago
    And the most painful irony is this is getting down-voted by people who are likely convinced they're on the side of "helping the environment"...
eigenspace 7y ago
Great news. Especially with the CANDU reactors being decommissioned it’s nice to see that there’s still at least some political push to invest in nuclear, even if I think Doug Ford is a cretin. Fun fact, my father used to buy drugs in Doug Ford’s house when he was a teenager.
- Akababa 7y ago
  Was Doug Ford the one selling the drugs?
  - dmix 7y ago
    I think it's been well established Doug used to sell weed when he was a teenager.
    - Waterluvian 7y ago
      And (allegedly) crack in recent years.
    - kenneth 7y ago
      Isn't that the crack smoking mayor of Toronto? Selling weed is almost quaint by comparison.
      - selimthegrim 7y ago
        His late brother.
    - bregma 7y ago
      He still does, but it turns out he's not very good at it. His government's policy on cannabis sales is doing more to bolster the black market than its own revenues. Very suspicious, given his past connections to the black market.
  - eigenspace 7y ago
    No. My dad’s understanding was that Doug was selling larger quantities to low level dealers who people would buy from. And it was known that if you came over to Dougs house you could meet these low level dealers.
j9461701 7y ago
I would much rather live near a nuclear power plant than a coal plant. I thoroughly support this, and hope they dismantle the big smoke-belching power plant in my city in favor of clean nukes. My only concern is the scalability of this technology - mciro plants sound fine for powering far off native settlements in the far north. But for providing grid power to the urbanized south of the country, wouldn't it make more sense to build bigger plants in fewer numbers? Chernobyl, for example, was 4 reactors all hooked up to the same electrical generation equipment to save money (high quality turbines are expensive).
- lemmox 7y ago
  Saskatchewan is a little more than 1M with cities smaller that 250k and New Brunswick is even smaller. Northern Ontario is also quite sparse. I think these are pretty good areas for the tech!
  - tonyarkles 7y ago
    And we (SK) have massive high-quality Uranium deposits up north. I haven't gone too deep into the full plans here for these SMRs, but I have high hopes that other parts of the value chain will pop up here. We have a terrible habit in this province of growing/mining/drilling/whatever natural resources and then shipping them away unprocessed. Maybe we'll actually have a reason to start processing the Uranium here beyond just cleaning it up and getting it ready for export.
lemmox 7y ago
This looks like a particularly good fit for Saskatchewan with very small cities (largest is pop. ~ 250k) and almost half of the electricity currently being provided by coal plants.
WalterBright 7y ago
Bill Gates' foundation was ready to build a thorium reactor. Canada should investigate using that design.
- wolco 7y ago
  Thorium would be better in situations requiring small spaces and power where the cost could be justified. Still like the idea.
  - AYBABTME 7y ago
    As an uninformed person, I'm curious why parent might have been down voted. Is what they said wrong or misleading? The parent's post seems equal to other ones here. It's not obvious to me, and I think it would be useful if detractors would explain their disagreement when they downvote.
- dghughes 7y ago
  CANDU reactors can use thorium now with the current design.
- acidburnNSA 7y ago
  The premise is incorrect. Bill Gates' nuclear investments are centered around a liquid-metal cooled solid fueled uranium-plutonium reactor and a molten chloride salt fueled uranium-plutonium reactor. Thorium gets mixed up with molten salt technology (which also gets mixed up with liquid sodium metal), but you can do molten salt without thorium too.
- bsder 7y ago
  > Canada should investigate using that design. And then reject it. Thorium has quite a lot of engineering problems that it has yet to demonstrate that it can overcome. Look at San Onofre--an improvement to the engineering process (more accurate anti-vibration bars) caused water cooling tubes to have a resonance and wear out prematurely. And that happened in a relatively well-understood technology. Thorium isn't even close to that level of maturity.
- 7y ago
killjoywashere 7y ago
The topic is small modular reactors, which are defined as reactors producing less than 300 MW. The Voyager RTGs generate "a few hundred watts" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_generator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_ge...). The Virginia class submarines use a GE S9G, which produces 150 MWt. Power output is a mix of electric and shaft torque (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S9G_reactor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S9G_reactor) The Los Angeles class submarines use a GE S6G, which produces 165 MWt (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S6G_reactor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S6G_reactor), power output is a mix of electric and shaft torque. The Ohio class submarine uses an S6G, rated at 220 MWt (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S8G_reactor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S8G_reactor). The Nimitz class aircraft carrier use two Westinghouse A4Ws, which produce 550 MWt each (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A4W_reactor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A4W_reactor). Power output is a mix of electric and shaft torque. Chernobyl had 4 RBMK-1000 reactors which produced 3200 MWt each producing 1000 MWe (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RBMK https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RBMK) Hinkley Point B has 2 reactors at 2 x 1494 MWt, 2 x 655 MWe (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkley_Point_B_Nuclear_Power_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkley_Point_B_Nuclear_Power_...) Fukushima has multiple reactors, mainly four 784 MWe GE BWRs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_Nuclear_Power_Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_Nuclear_Powe...). So, you're looking pretty solidly at things on the scale of a fast attack submarine after shielding, turbine, management and maintenance systems, etc. These are of course not on Wikipedia's list of SMR designs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_small_modular_reactor_designs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_small_modular_reactor_...
- SECProto 7y ago
  Nuclear submarines use highly enriched uranium as a fuel. That's not a practical thing to use in civilian reactors.
  - acidburnNSA 7y ago
    You can still make that size reactor with low-enriched fuel. It just doesn't last 30 years like it does in subs. Instead, it lasts 3-5 years.
moltar 7y ago
Not sure what they are gonna research, but my understanding that the problem is not a tech one, but a NIMBY one.
- ekianjo 7y ago
  Canada is pretty empty (huge area and low density of people) so wouldn't that be easy to find a place where the NIMBY problem is non-existent?
  - casefields 7y ago
    I understand it Canada but if this were the US, it wouldn’t matter how far out into nowhere in nature you try to build. The Sierra Club and similar orgs, will be in the nearest federal/state court at each step of the way.
- olau 7y ago
  It's not. It's a tech problem. More specifically, getting the tech cheap enough.
joshlemer 7y ago
Why doesn't Saskatchewan just buy more energy from Manitoba?
- JamesCoyne 7y ago
  Manitoba Hydro's major export market is the US, with ~10x more transmission capacity compared to SK. Transmission capacity to SK is a 150MW. See here: https://www.gov.mb.ca/sd/environment_and_biodiversity/energy/initiatives/transmission.html https://www.gov.mb.ca/sd/environment_and_biodiversity/energy... Out west, the provinces are not heavily interconnected, all prefer to sell to the US. Alberta is easiest to look at. Here is their real-time supply/demand report: http://ets.aeso.ca/ets_web/ip/Market/Reports/CSDReportServlet http://ets.aeso.ca/ets_web/ip/Market/Reports/CSDReportServle... Interchange is at right. Couldn't find a source for interchange capacity in Alberta as transmission is not outright owned by the government like in MB.
dghughes 7y ago
Those not up on Canadian politics may not see what a Canadian would see here. These are three politically conservative premiers (think US state governor) that are often aggressive in their policies; cuts to social programs, anti-environmental, no carbon tax. Knowing their policies it makes this out-of-the-blue project seem suspicious. I'm all for nuclear power especially if it's using CANDU reactors and thorium. But these guys ream the carbon tax or anything remotely environmental or socially progressive. In Canada only Ontario (Ford) and New Brunswick (Higgs) have nuclear reactors generating electricity. Saskatchewan (Moe) doesn't have any reactors but they do have oil from the tar sands sharing it with Alberta on their border. Saskatchewan also has an abundance of uranium. So colour me surprised and a bit suspicious these guys would push for this. Imagine if Trump suddenly swore off coal and wanted to build more solar and wind farms. Saskatchewan has more to gain than the other two premiers.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- ghomrassen 7y ago
  Or they have a better working relationships because they same similar goals. Conservatives aren't evil bogeymen who want to destroy the environment wholesale, they want to find a realistic solution to the problem. Add to the fact that Ontario has a history of failed green projects in wind power that have eaten billions of dollars. If these conservative premiers can throw some money together, cut some red tape and get projects moving in the right direction, we should all be applauding.
  - bwood 7y ago
    I can't speak for the other provinces, but New Brunswick has a track record of throwing money at ridiculous energy projects that don't have a chance of working. For a recent example, this: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/joi-scientific-technology-update-1.5340245 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/joi-scientific-... Summary: New Brunswick's energy utility NB Power (a crown corp) spent $12M to license a nonexistent tech that violates the second law of thermodynamics.
- 7y ago
walkingolof 7y ago
There is a funding project started in Sweden to build smaller, led cooled reactors, by 2032, https://www.leadcold.com/newclear-leadcold.html https://www.leadcold.com/newclear-leadcold.html
ttul 7y ago
The three worst premiers actually did something smart. It’s mind boggling.
jhh 7y ago
Imteresting SMR ideas in my view: Nuscale [1] and the GE BW-RX 300 [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NuScale_Power https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NuScale_Power [2] https://nuclear.gepower.com/build-a-plant/products/nuclear-power-plants-overview/bwrx-300 https://nuclear.gepower.com/build-a-plant/products/nuclear-p...
sunkenvicar 7y ago
If we don’t build it China will.
- tiborsaas 7y ago
  Well, they are testing a fusion reactor next year, the HL-2M: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/11/27/china-readies-nuclear-reactor-bid-harness-sun-box-technology/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/11/27/china-readies-nu...
xorfish 7y ago
I think one of the most promising reactors in this area is the untegral molten salt reactor. It operates at low pressures, is passively cooled and has already mounted some regulatory hurdles.
- pfdietz 7y ago
  And if you let the fuel salt cool off enough, the radioactivity in it makes fluorine gas. Yum!
  - xorfish 7y ago
    Why would the radioactivity make fluorine gas?
    - pfdietz 7y ago
      Radiolysis. https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/4109510 https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/4109510 The MSR saw some of the fluorine react with UF4 to make UF6, which is volatile. There is the potential for fuel to be volatilized and transported elsewhere in the reactor system, causing possible concern for criticality accidents.
      - xorfish 7y ago
        Apparently this only happens if the salt gets below 80°C. A temperature that the salt would reach around a year after every external heating is turned of. At this time the radioactivity will also be much lower. Furthermore uranium 235 has a very long halve life and radiates very little.
        pfdietz 7y ago
        Yes, but consider what this means: in a MSR, reprocessing is not optional. Unlike a conventional oxide fueled reactor, the spent fuel cannot just be stored and ignored. So the cost of reprocessing has to be paid, even if it's not otherwise economically advantageous to have reprocessed the fuel, as it is not for today's reactors.
emsign 7y ago
My bet: They will run out of money. I mean it's tax payer's money, so they can't really run out of it. But it will be cancelled before the prototype phase, because it goes horribly overbudget.
anoplus 7y ago
Isn't it realistic for nuclear disaster to have environmental damage that will last 1000's of years without repair?
- Mrdarknezz 7y ago
  Not with current reactors.
- trasneoir 7y ago
  Some designs currently in use, if catastrophically mismanaged, yes. OTOH, some newer designs (eg LFTR) are walk-away safe: Nuclear explosions/meltdowns are physically impossible short of deliberate sabotage.
swarnie_ 7y ago
I assume America will be invading Canada shortly? Seems to be the pattern when anyone else in the world wants to develop nuclear tech.
Mrdarknezz 7y ago
Great!
tyzerdak 7y ago
Good that someone at last making it.
throw0101a 7y ago
With regards to Ontario, who are part of this announcement, the nuclear plant with the largest operating output is located in the province: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Nuclear_Generating_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Nuclear_Generating_Stati... There are a couple that have larger installed capacity, but some of it is shutdown: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_power_stations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_power_stations Interestingly, Bruce Power has a 'special forces' / SWAT team that seems to fairly well-regarded in skill: * https://www.brucepower.com/bruce-power-team-wins-u-s-national-swat-championship/ https://www.brucepower.com/bruce-power-team-wins-u-s-nationa...
- 0xffff2 7y ago
  Off topic, but does anyone else notice that Lake Huron doesn't seem to exist on the Wikimedia map tiles used for the map in the first link?
  - throw0101a 7y ago
    Noticed that as well. They're using OpenStreetMap, so it may be a rendered bug (?).
arcticbull 7y ago
Nuclear technology needs to be part of our arsenal, it’s the safest (an order or magnitude fewer desths per terawatt hour than solar) and the lowest carbon. Looking forward to seeing the results!
trasneoir 7y ago
Support for nuclear power has become my acid-test. If somebody is serious about making urgent and effective change, fission has to be on the table. Volume is the key to price - we need an internationally-vetted medium-sized design, with a supply chain that can crank out hundreds of complete "just add concrete" systems per year. As well as improving up-front costs, a ubiquitous design makes training and maintenance easier. This should improve the operation of these systems safer and cheaper.
- thepete2 7y ago
  Ditto. Many people I know are opposed to nuclear power for safety reasons (Chernobyl and Fukushima). But my understanding is that modern designs are an order of magnitude safer.
- pfdietz 7y ago
  Support for CO2 taxes is my acid-test. If a nuclear advocate uses a climate argument, but doesn't support a CO2 tax, they're just hopping on a bandwagon hoping for a handout. BTW, CO2 taxes would have to exceed $300/ton for new nuclear construction in the US to be competitive with natural gas. Do you support that high a CO2 tax?
  - trasneoir 7y ago
    I'd quibble with the price point - economies of scale can reduce the cost of nuclear pretty dramatically. That said, I've got no problem with it in principle. Pricing externalities properly seems the simplest way to solve the tragedy of the commons, but it's complicated in this case by the fact that climate is a _global_ commons. A revenue-neutral carbon tax would make it a more manageable political lift. AFAIK the US is the only country to have "solved" the bigger political problem of long-term nuclear waste storage?
    - pfdietz 7y ago
      The nuclear waste disposal problem is a can that is very kickable down the road. The "solution" in the US, and I think elsewhere, is (after ten years or so of cooling) just put the spent fuel in dry casks. This is simple and cheap and safe, and does not foreclose any future options for dealing with it. One might criticize this for foisting the problem on future generations, but I suggest this is a truly minor problem compared to others we're foisting on them, and they'll be in a better position to deal with it that we are. It would be a poor solution compared to immediate reprocessing if we lived in a High Nuclear scenario where uranium was running low, but we don't live in that world.

372 points by frabbit 7y ago

Cute

A few years ago Toshiba was going to build a small reactor in Alaska. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galena_Nuclear_Power_Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galena_Nuclear_Power_Plant But it got canceled, and for the life of me I can't understand why anyone thinks its better to truck in heavy fuel oil for generators vs having a small reactor buried in the ground for 30 years. I've been saying for a few years now that green energy only advocates are basically on the side of coal and natural gas plants because they scream "green energy" and end up with a few MW of wind (ignoring the hydro built 50 years ago which to this day is still the majority "green energy" source) and a bunch of natural gas or in the past coal plants. If they said yes to fission 40 years ago we wouldn't be having the climate crisis discussion today. We don't have 40 more years to overbuild wind/solar and perfect battery technology at 2-5x the current price for natural gas. Because if people don't start saying "yes" for carbon free power sources like this we _WILL_ be trying to figure out how to built them in 50 years to recapture all the carbon we burned into the atmosphere while trying to avoid more and more of the forests/etc from burning.

skybrian 7y ago
It all depends on how much they end up costing to build compared to alternatives.
- StillBored 7y ago
  A huge part of that is all the lawsuits and "regulations" designed to keep new plants from being built. Regulations pushed for by the green energy constituency... I'm all for safety but if you read some of the regulation stories we would be banning CT scanners from hospitals..
  - Ididntdothis 7y ago
    Fukushima was a good reminder that these “regulations” exist for good reason.
    - Tostino 7y ago
      I highly doubt the regulations the GP is referencing would have anything to do with preventing an accident like Fukushima. Regulations are not inherently bad, but they can be used in negative ways by those in power. The devil is in the details, and we'll written and though out regulations are a great thing and are absolutely necessary for society to function. It's easy for the public to lose track and conflate good regulations with regulations that are poorly written, have intentional loopholes, or are mean to stifle an industry or technology by protecting the entrenched players.
    - ekianjo 7y ago
      > Fukushima was a good reminder that these “regulations” exist for good reason. As if the Japanese nuclear market was deregulated? Japan is a developed country that loves bureaucracy so don't be afraid, there is plenty of regulation in every sector here.
      - ptaipale 7y ago
        And Fukushima was built to the requirements of 1970's, not those of today (which are much stronger).
        natmaka 7y ago
        The plant was active and very well-maintained, and its operator even planned to extend it (2 more reactors). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_Nuclear_Power_Plant#Reactor_data https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_Nuclear_Powe...
        ptaipale 7y ago
        Yes, but the original location of site would not be approved today, precisely because of the risk that actualised in the tsunami (even though it is an extremely rare an unlikely occurrence - a tsunami which caused large-scale devastation where the nuclear plant's problems were just a minor issue compared to the huge loss of life and material damage from tsunami itself).
i_feel_great 7y ago
"... better to truck in heavy fuel oil..." Your answer right there. The nuclear power industry just doesn't lobby hard enough.
thawaway1837 7y ago
Only if the “green energy” people actually had that much power... In reality there are 2 forces that have stopped nuclear. NIMBYism. And terrible economics. But the green energy people are an easy punching bag for the nuclear advocates who are simply unwilling to face up to the reality of why nuclear keeps failing to take off.
- StillBored 7y ago
  The costs to built the plants dominates the price. Once built the actual operation and fueling costs are best in class https://www.expressnews.com/business/eagle-ford-energy/article/Nuclear-energy-in-doubt-amid-high-costs-11946922.php https://www.expressnews.com/business/eagle-ford-energy/artic... The majority of the cost to build the plants are due to the crazy uncertainty about the design/build timeline every-time one is built. Given that conceptually they aren't any more complex than your average coal plant those costs are massively over inflated by a number of factors. Frankly if there was a COTS design pre-certified, then it might be possible to wipe out a huge fraction of the built cost.
  - akiselev 7y ago
    >> NIMBYism > The majority of the cost to build the plants are due to the crazy uncertainty about the design/build timeline every-time one is built. Given that conceptually they aren't any more complex than your average coal plant those costs are massively over inflated by a number of factors. Frankly if there was a COTS design pre-certified, then it might be possible to wipe out a huge fraction of the built cost. NIMBYism is a large reason why the risks are so uncertain and the costs so high. When dozens of judges at several levels have jurisdiction to require expensive and time consuming state/federal EPA, zoning, air quality, shading, etc. reviews and plaintiffs can use delay tactics to block appeals to those rulings, you get lots of uncertainty and expense.
  - Spooky23 7y ago
    Capital costs matter. If they didn’t, we wouldn’t have mortgages or lease cars.
marcosdumay 7y ago
Small nuclear plants are actually something that can possibly help (differently from the large ones). But I doubt anybody will get the costs down enough to make them viable, wind and solar are power horses. It's like creating a non-mainstream computer architecture at the 90's and early 00's, it won't improve fast enough to even match their speed. About emissions, coal is responsible for a huge share of emissions on electricity generation. If you replace half of it with a 0 emissions source, and the other half a source 4 times more carbon efficient, it does go a long way to help. If we are luck, this will give us enough time to develop batteries, because that is very likely what will happen.
- ekianjo 7y ago
  > will get the costs down enough to make them viable, wind and solar are power horses. Except in areas where you don't have much sunlight or much wind exposure, and both of these sources of energies require huge land occupation which is not ideal either. Energy-density wise you can't really beat nuclear.
- StillBored 7y ago
  I think you under-estimate the amount of CO2 produced by a NG plant simply because its 2x-4x less than coal. Put another way, adding 60% renewable to NG only 1/2's the CO2 output. At the rate of consumption growth your still increasing the total C02 footprint year over year. Plus, that solution is literally 2x-3x the CO2 footprint vs the french solution put in place 40 years ago. Explained another way, going to renewable+NG only buys you about a decade in CO2 emission reduction. If everyone magically fit that formula today, it would be the equivalent of 2009, a far cry from where we need to be. Worse, you still have the problem that you need to convert all the automobile/planes/tractors/etc somehow. Without super cheap electricity that process is going to be much slower than it needs to be. What you need is electricity so cheap that it can compensate for the inefficiencies producing hydro-carbon sources for planes and other applications where the battery technology isn't even possible with infinite economic solutions. The _ONLY_ solution we have today is fission and a reduction in the build price forced in place by COTs and precerification.
- esqqfskaw 7y ago
jlawson 7y ago
The most extreme-left political advocates, who dominate green advocacy because of their high motivation, aren't interested in solving climate change alone. What they want is to dismantle what they see as an entire system of racist sexist capitalist corporate transphobic colonialist evil. Nuclear power, if it was used and solved climate change, wouldn't help with the other aspects of that goal. And, in fact, it would weaken the attempts to dismantle those aspects by taking away a strong source of panic and power. The strategy is to use climate change to spike fear and thus convince people to give up thier political power to multinational undemocratic entities and expanding bureaucracies of advocates and evironmental commissars who they ordinarily would reject. They don't want to solve the problem, they want to exploit the problem. Here's an example: https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/climate-strikes-un-conference-madrid-by-greta-thunberg-et-al-2019-11 https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/climate-strikes... "That action must be powerful and wide-ranging. After all, the climate crisis is not just about the environment. It is a crisis of human rights, of justice, and of political will. Colonial, racist, and patriarchal systems of oppression have created and fueled it. We need to dismantle them all. Our political leaders can no longer shirk their responsibilities."
- vidarh 7y ago
  "The most extreme-left" has historically been firmly pro-nuclear. There's a massive schism between the traditional far left, whose ideologies tends to be founded on the basis of a firm belief in the advancement of technology (e.g. half of the first chapter of the Communist Manifesto is praise for the advancement brought by capitalism and what it will make possible), and the groups you describe, that tends to elicit disdain from the far left.
  - squiggleblaz 7y ago
    Indeed. I mean, "left" and "right" do an awful lot of work. "Left" simply means anyone who isn't opposed to the current order, or it can mean one of several particular ideologies. "Extreme left" would tend to mean communist. But green communists are a real thing, so while I would prefer to say "some of the extreme left is anti nuclear" or some such. Or perhaps more relevantly for the OP's point, "many greens". Because not all greens are left, and not all leftists are green. Indeed, many contemporary Green voters in Australia are positively mainstream in terms of their economics. I think in Germany they can even trend right. And in east Europe, they're outright right.
Krasnol 7y ago
> A few years ago Toshiba was going to build a small reactor in Alaska. What an understatement. Let's quote one of the sources there: > But the project never began the mandatory, lengthy and extremely costly process of gaining approval by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. > This would include a site license, which takes tens of millions of dollars and several years, as well as a design permit. No design of this type has ever been approved, though one other has made it through the first step of the process, which took about six years. So they were far away from "going to build" there. > I've been saying for a few years now that green energy only advocates are basically on the side of coal and natural gas plants Yeah we heard you. It's a quite popular tactic in this "last scream of nuclear" advertisement. In the same generalistic way the evil green energy only advocates could say that you are an ignorant shill. There is nobody on the side of coal who wants green energy and natural gas or gas as battery for renewables is not the same thing as coal... Fission has been in development for many decades. Eating up money and not coming up with a solution. So please...tone it down. Nuclear is expensive, dangerous and most of the countries on this planet have no space or (economic) means to make the waste disappear.
- arkh 7y ago
  > Fission has been in development for many decades. You're thinking of fusion. Reading the comments here from France where 80% production is nuclear with a nuclear waste reprocessing site it feels like the USA problem has more to do with local regulations than technology.
  - chefkoch 7y ago
    And even they struggle to come up with replacements for their agying fleet of reactors.
  - Krasnol 7y ago
    Oh yeah France our lovely neighbour with the rotting fleet of "should have been turned off" reactors underreporting accidents and an deficitary agency managing it all while the politicians chuckle it all off due to having slept on the renewable front. Yes, yes. It's great. If you don't blow half of the continent into a radioactive paradies one day, you'll end up being overthrown by some yellow vested nutjobs who will have to pay more taxes because the money for this ridiculously subsided energy project including the waste "management" (hello Russia) has to come from somewhere and decommissioning is not even priced in yet. PS. Winter is coming. Time to buy some energy from Germany again...
phreeza 7y ago
Non-hydro renewables overtook hydro a couple of years ago in the US, and are on track to overtake nuclear, too, in a couple more years. https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/steo/images/Fig34.png https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/steo/images/Fig34.png
varjag 7y ago
Everyone was saying "yes" to fission 40 years ago. It was not until Chernobyl that global backlash against nuclear really started. The pace wasn't however particularly impressive back then already as technology, safety and waste management limitations became clear.
- pfdietz 7y ago
  No, the backlash against nuclear long predates Chernobyl. And it was driven by economics, not safety. In the US, new nuclear construction collapsed after the first big nuclear building spree, when promises collided with reality. This was even before TMI.
pjc50 7y ago
People underestimate how much of the opposition to nuclear plants in the past was due to the "dual use" nature of the technology, and the proliferation of nuclear weapons. In the 80s it was hard to care about the effects of climate change in a mere hundred years when global policy was to keep civilization-destroying quantities of weapons on hand that could be delivered in 45 minutes. The war between nuclear weapons and environmentalists went "hot" when the French DGSE sank the Rainbow Warrior and murdered a photographer in retaliation for trying to stop their nuclear testing. If you think the question is solved, ask yourself this: would you prefer that Iran solve its energy needs from a fleet of nuclear reactors or a fleet of solar panels?
- reacweb 7y ago
  I find it very hard to imagine that a 74 years old technology remains complex enough to be available only to governements.
  - lizknope 7y ago
    It's not. Nuclear fission reactors are built by large corporations like General Electric and Hitachi. If these companies wanted to they have the expertise to build a nuclear bomb but why would they unless their governments asked them to?
    - londons_explore 7y ago
      A huge number of 74 year old technologies are available for $0.75 direct from China. The fact the nuclear reactor hasn't been miniaturized to the size of a coin and included in every $15 childrens toy to power lights is in large part because of public perception and government regulation rather than real safety/health concerns - there exist plenty of typical household materials that are more dangerous than the safest nuclear materials.
      - pvaldes 7y ago
        On the other hand, a child swallowing a tiny nuclear plant in the shape of a smiley would be an entirely new experience in the A&E department but that would never happens? would it?. I could see from here the lawyers salivating with a case like that. Not to mention that those toys would end in a few days in the garbage, ready to be shipped by volume to be burnt ("recycled") in some other country.
WhompingWindows 7y ago
The problem your comment doesn't mention is that new build nuclear is VERY expensive, far more expensive than renewables. Until new-build nuclear is MUCH cheaper, natural gas and renewables will be the vast majority of new capacity additions. All one need do is look at the debacle in South Carolina to see how expensive nuclear can truly be: https://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/energy/nuclear/abandoned-nuclear-reactors-fit-a-global-pattern-of-new-build-troubles https://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/energy/nuclear/abandone...
cartoonfoxes 7y ago
> But it got canceled, and for the life of me I can't understand why anyone thinks its better to truck in heavy fuel oil for generators vs having a small reactor buried in the ground for 30 years. I don't understand it either. My best guess is that nuclear is scary, and most "green energy" advocates would prefer to believe that panacea eco-friendly alternatives exist. I live in northern Canada. I've witnessed a plenty of FUD surrounding nuclear, and the concomitant excessive unrealistic optimism around wind and solar. Every year the power outages become a little more frequent, and every other year brings some new story of power projects cancelled due to "environmental concerns" and "lack of consultation". So many people seem convinced that the lack of wind and solar projects is strictly due to government bungling or never-specified interference from oil-industry incumbents. Green gets used as a kind of security blanket. You can't escape the fact that you have a carbon footprint running a car and heating your home and workplace through six months of winter. Many green energy advocates are less than serious, and are just looking to feel better. They're content to believe that someone, somewhere, is doing something. Preferably without having to think too hard or entertain compromise positions.
- pfdietz 7y ago
  It's probably a smallish power plant. Small nuclear power plants wouldn't be competitive even with oil, due to diseconomies of scale in staffing and operation. If you want a baseload source in Alaska I'd look at geothermal. Even moderate temperature (below boiling) hot water there can be used, due to the moderate or low ambient temperature. And Alaska has many areas with good geothermal resources.
im_with_stupid 7y ago
I'm with you 100%. One thing that people don't realize is that nuclear technology is the only fuel technology that has nuclear regulations. If coal has a little radioactivity in it, there's no limit to what radiation can be exposed to the atmosphere in burning it. I believe the same applies to oil, gasoline, and diesel.
cmonnow 7y ago
Every technology has pros & cons, effects & residues. Coal : Effect/Pros - Energy/Cheap. Residue/Cons - C02/GlobalWarming Nuclear : Effect/Pros - Energy/Clean. Residue/Cons - RadioactiveWaste/Contamination. Where do the nuclear byproducts go currently ? Into the earth? Rivers? Oceans? 30 years ago, we switched from paper based products to plastic, to save trees. Today, we want to switch from plastic based products to paper, to avoid pollution. Every 'switch' will come with side-effects that the current generation is fine with, because they're not going to be ones dealing with it.

pvaldes 7y ago

A nuclear reactor designed so small that can be placed in School Gyms. The phrase says all. It seems that shootings at schools are not longer exciting enough for the three men in the photo. They could also place dynamite under the basement and a big red button in the main entrance with a "do not push" sign. Adolescents love a defy.

14 7y ago
I don't think it has any context with schools other then the average person has been into a school gym and has an idea how big one of those are. If you left them guess how big one of these reactors without something to compare I would have no idea what a compact reactor would be for size. I personally thought we would see trailer sized nuclear reactors. But a gym sized one is not that big of a foot print either and can fit in any city.
TheChaplain 7y ago
It's a figure of speech to give the audience an idea of the size of the reactor, since a large majority of citizens have attended school. Please try to be more generous in your interpretation instead of just throwing out the worst possible scenario thinkable.
eigenspace 7y ago
I can’t tell if you’re trolling or not, but I’m just going to assume you’re being sincere. Nothing about that quote suggests they want nuclear reactors in schools. They’re just trying to give a sense of size. Also, Canada has had very, very few school shootings.
- pvaldes 7y ago
  The exact phrase "Some SMR designs are small enough to fit in a gymnasium" appears in www.canada.ca, a Canadian government web page that explains the project. Is not what a random journalist just said. Is the idea that the Canadian government is carefully trying to introduce. I'm not so naive. Is obvious that the politicians had though previously about using that in public spaces. Mixing unstable radioactive atoms (now in packages "easy to transport", ehem... steal?, none less) with unstable young humans full of hormones, videogames and relationship drama (including typically cases of bullying and romantic disasters) and doing that mix in one of the places that some young dislike the most; is one of the most stupid ideas that I had seen in my entire life. Point. IMHO those three men are a public danger for everybody.

algaeontoast 7y ago

The saddest double-standard of all that’s driven by pure stupidity is the phenomenon of “environmental activists” who decry efforts to develop and deploy nuclear power. We could’ve been carbon neutral, but the green morons had to make a scene and screech “wind and solar” playing into their fictitious enemies hand (coal, natural gas etc.)

cheez 7y ago
The same people who screamed about wind and solar also scream about $BYND and surprise (notice the "eating meat is bad for the environment" meme coming out recently), they are funded by similar pipelines.
- algaeontoast 7y ago
  And the most painful irony is this is getting down-voted by people who are likely convinced they're on the side of "helping the environment"...

eigenspace 7y ago

Great news. Especially with the CANDU reactors being decommissioned it’s nice to see that there’s still at least some political push to invest in nuclear, even if I think Doug Ford is a cretin. Fun fact, my father used to buy drugs in Doug Ford’s house when he was a teenager.

Akababa 7y ago
Was Doug Ford the one selling the drugs?
- dmix 7y ago
  I think it's been well established Doug used to sell weed when he was a teenager.
  - Waterluvian 7y ago
    And (allegedly) crack in recent years.
  - kenneth 7y ago
    Isn't that the crack smoking mayor of Toronto? Selling weed is almost quaint by comparison.
    - selimthegrim 7y ago
      His late brother.
  - bregma 7y ago
    He still does, but it turns out he's not very good at it. His government's policy on cannabis sales is doing more to bolster the black market than its own revenues. Very suspicious, given his past connections to the black market.
- eigenspace 7y ago
  No. My dad’s understanding was that Doug was selling larger quantities to low level dealers who people would buy from. And it was known that if you came over to Dougs house you could meet these low level dealers.

j9461701 7y ago

I would much rather live near a nuclear power plant than a coal plant. I thoroughly support this, and hope they dismantle the big smoke-belching power plant in my city in favor of clean nukes. My only concern is the scalability of this technology - mciro plants sound fine for powering far off native settlements in the far north. But for providing grid power to the urbanized south of the country, wouldn't it make more sense to build bigger plants in fewer numbers? Chernobyl, for example, was 4 reactors all hooked up to the same electrical generation equipment to save money (high quality turbines are expensive).

lemmox 7y ago
Saskatchewan is a little more than 1M with cities smaller that 250k and New Brunswick is even smaller. Northern Ontario is also quite sparse. I think these are pretty good areas for the tech!
- tonyarkles 7y ago
  And we (SK) have massive high-quality Uranium deposits up north. I haven't gone too deep into the full plans here for these SMRs, but I have high hopes that other parts of the value chain will pop up here. We have a terrible habit in this province of growing/mining/drilling/whatever natural resources and then shipping them away unprocessed. Maybe we'll actually have a reason to start processing the Uranium here beyond just cleaning it up and getting it ready for export.

lemmox 7y ago

This looks like a particularly good fit for Saskatchewan with very small cities (largest is pop. ~ 250k) and almost half of the electricity currently being provided by coal plants.

WalterBright 7y ago

Bill Gates' foundation was ready to build a thorium reactor. Canada should investigate using that design.

wolco 7y ago
Thorium would be better in situations requiring small spaces and power where the cost could be justified. Still like the idea.
- AYBABTME 7y ago
  As an uninformed person, I'm curious why parent might have been down voted. Is what they said wrong or misleading? The parent's post seems equal to other ones here. It's not obvious to me, and I think it would be useful if detractors would explain their disagreement when they downvote.
dghughes 7y ago
CANDU reactors can use thorium now with the current design.
acidburnNSA 7y ago
The premise is incorrect. Bill Gates' nuclear investments are centered around a liquid-metal cooled solid fueled uranium-plutonium reactor and a molten chloride salt fueled uranium-plutonium reactor. Thorium gets mixed up with molten salt technology (which also gets mixed up with liquid sodium metal), but you can do molten salt without thorium too.
bsder 7y ago
> Canada should investigate using that design. And then reject it. Thorium has quite a lot of engineering problems that it has yet to demonstrate that it can overcome. Look at San Onofre--an improvement to the engineering process (more accurate anti-vibration bars) caused water cooling tubes to have a resonance and wear out prematurely. And that happened in a relatively well-understood technology. Thorium isn't even close to that level of maturity.
7y ago

killjoywashere 7y ago

The topic is small modular reactors, which are defined as reactors producing less than 300 MW. The Voyager RTGs generate "a few hundred watts" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_generator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_ge...). The Virginia class submarines use a GE S9G, which produces 150 MWt. Power output is a mix of electric and shaft torque (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S9G_reactor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S9G_reactor) The Los Angeles class submarines use a GE S6G, which produces 165 MWt (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S6G_reactor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S6G_reactor), power output is a mix of electric and shaft torque. The Ohio class submarine uses an S6G, rated at 220 MWt (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S8G_reactor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S8G_reactor). The Nimitz class aircraft carrier use two Westinghouse A4Ws, which produce 550 MWt each (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A4W_reactor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A4W_reactor). Power output is a mix of electric and shaft torque. Chernobyl had 4 RBMK-1000 reactors which produced 3200 MWt each producing 1000 MWe (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RBMK https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RBMK) Hinkley Point B has 2 reactors at 2 x 1494 MWt, 2 x 655 MWe (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkley_Point_B_Nuclear_Power_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkley_Point_B_Nuclear_Power_...) Fukushima has multiple reactors, mainly four 784 MWe GE BWRs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_Nuclear_Power_Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_Nuclear_Powe...). So, you're looking pretty solidly at things on the scale of a fast attack submarine after shielding, turbine, management and maintenance systems, etc. These are of course not on Wikipedia's list of SMR designs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_small_modular_reactor_designs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_small_modular_reactor_...

SECProto 7y ago
Nuclear submarines use highly enriched uranium as a fuel. That's not a practical thing to use in civilian reactors.
- acidburnNSA 7y ago
  You can still make that size reactor with low-enriched fuel. It just doesn't last 30 years like it does in subs. Instead, it lasts 3-5 years.

moltar 7y ago

Not sure what they are gonna research, but my understanding that the problem is not a tech one, but a NIMBY one.

ekianjo 7y ago
Canada is pretty empty (huge area and low density of people) so wouldn't that be easy to find a place where the NIMBY problem is non-existent?
- casefields 7y ago
  I understand it Canada but if this were the US, it wouldn’t matter how far out into nowhere in nature you try to build. The Sierra Club and similar orgs, will be in the nearest federal/state court at each step of the way.
olau 7y ago
It's not. It's a tech problem. More specifically, getting the tech cheap enough.

joshlemer 7y ago

Why doesn't Saskatchewan just buy more energy from Manitoba?

JamesCoyne 7y ago
Manitoba Hydro's major export market is the US, with ~10x more transmission capacity compared to SK. Transmission capacity to SK is a 150MW. See here: https://www.gov.mb.ca/sd/environment_and_biodiversity/energy/initiatives/transmission.html https://www.gov.mb.ca/sd/environment_and_biodiversity/energy... Out west, the provinces are not heavily interconnected, all prefer to sell to the US. Alberta is easiest to look at. Here is their real-time supply/demand report: http://ets.aeso.ca/ets_web/ip/Market/Reports/CSDReportServlet http://ets.aeso.ca/ets_web/ip/Market/Reports/CSDReportServle... Interchange is at right. Couldn't find a source for interchange capacity in Alberta as transmission is not outright owned by the government like in MB.

dghughes 7y ago

Those not up on Canadian politics may not see what a Canadian would see here. These are three politically conservative premiers (think US state governor) that are often aggressive in their policies; cuts to social programs, anti-environmental, no carbon tax. Knowing their policies it makes this out-of-the-blue project seem suspicious. I'm all for nuclear power especially if it's using CANDU reactors and thorium. But these guys ream the carbon tax or anything remotely environmental or socially progressive. In Canada only Ontario (Ford) and New Brunswick (Higgs) have nuclear reactors generating electricity. Saskatchewan (Moe) doesn't have any reactors but they do have oil from the tar sands sharing it with Alberta on their border. Saskatchewan also has an abundance of uranium. So colour me surprised and a bit suspicious these guys would push for this. Imagine if Trump suddenly swore off coal and wanted to build more solar and wind farms. Saskatchewan has more to gain than the other two premiers.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
ghomrassen 7y ago
Or they have a better working relationships because they same similar goals. Conservatives aren't evil bogeymen who want to destroy the environment wholesale, they want to find a realistic solution to the problem. Add to the fact that Ontario has a history of failed green projects in wind power that have eaten billions of dollars. If these conservative premiers can throw some money together, cut some red tape and get projects moving in the right direction, we should all be applauding.
- bwood 7y ago
  I can't speak for the other provinces, but New Brunswick has a track record of throwing money at ridiculous energy projects that don't have a chance of working. For a recent example, this: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/joi-scientific-technology-update-1.5340245 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/joi-scientific-... Summary: New Brunswick's energy utility NB Power (a crown corp) spent $12M to license a nonexistent tech that violates the second law of thermodynamics.
7y ago

walkingolof 7y ago

There is a funding project started in Sweden to build smaller, led cooled reactors, by 2032, https://www.leadcold.com/newclear-leadcold.html https://www.leadcold.com/newclear-leadcold.html

ttul 7y ago

The three worst premiers actually did something smart. It’s mind boggling.

jhh 7y ago

Imteresting SMR ideas in my view: Nuscale [1] and the GE BW-RX 300 [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NuScale_Power https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NuScale_Power [2] https://nuclear.gepower.com/build-a-plant/products/nuclear-power-plants-overview/bwrx-300 https://nuclear.gepower.com/build-a-plant/products/nuclear-p...

sunkenvicar 7y ago

If we don’t build it China will.

tiborsaas 7y ago
Well, they are testing a fusion reactor next year, the HL-2M: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/11/27/china-readies-nuclear-reactor-bid-harness-sun-box-technology/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/11/27/china-readies-nu...

xorfish 7y ago

I think one of the most promising reactors in this area is the untegral molten salt reactor. It operates at low pressures, is passively cooled and has already mounted some regulatory hurdles.

pfdietz 7y ago
And if you let the fuel salt cool off enough, the radioactivity in it makes fluorine gas. Yum!
- xorfish 7y ago
  Why would the radioactivity make fluorine gas?
  - pfdietz 7y ago
    Radiolysis. https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/4109510 https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/4109510 The MSR saw some of the fluorine react with UF4 to make UF6, which is volatile. There is the potential for fuel to be volatilized and transported elsewhere in the reactor system, causing possible concern for criticality accidents.
    - xorfish 7y ago
      Apparently this only happens if the salt gets below 80°C. A temperature that the salt would reach around a year after every external heating is turned of. At this time the radioactivity will also be much lower. Furthermore uranium 235 has a very long halve life and radiates very little.
      - pfdietz 7y ago
        Yes, but consider what this means: in a MSR, reprocessing is not optional. Unlike a conventional oxide fueled reactor, the spent fuel cannot just be stored and ignored. So the cost of reprocessing has to be paid, even if it's not otherwise economically advantageous to have reprocessed the fuel, as it is not for today's reactors.

emsign 7y ago

My bet: They will run out of money. I mean it's tax payer's money, so they can't really run out of it. But it will be cancelled before the prototype phase, because it goes horribly overbudget.

anoplus 7y ago

Isn't it realistic for nuclear disaster to have environmental damage that will last 1000's of years without repair?

Mrdarknezz 7y ago
Not with current reactors.
trasneoir 7y ago
Some designs currently in use, if catastrophically mismanaged, yes. OTOH, some newer designs (eg LFTR) are walk-away safe: Nuclear explosions/meltdowns are physically impossible short of deliberate sabotage.

swarnie_ 7y ago

I assume America will be invading Canada shortly? Seems to be the pattern when anyone else in the world wants to develop nuclear tech.

Mrdarknezz 7y ago

Great!

tyzerdak 7y ago

Good that someone at last making it.

throw0101a 7y ago

With regards to Ontario, who are part of this announcement, the nuclear plant with the largest operating output is located in the province: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Nuclear_Generating_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Nuclear_Generating_Stati... There are a couple that have larger installed capacity, but some of it is shutdown: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_power_stations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_power_stations Interestingly, Bruce Power has a 'special forces' / SWAT team that seems to fairly well-regarded in skill: * https://www.brucepower.com/bruce-power-team-wins-u-s-national-swat-championship/ https://www.brucepower.com/bruce-power-team-wins-u-s-nationa...

0xffff2 7y ago
Off topic, but does anyone else notice that Lake Huron doesn't seem to exist on the Wikimedia map tiles used for the map in the first link?
- throw0101a 7y ago
  Noticed that as well. They're using OpenStreetMap, so it may be a rendered bug (?).

arcticbull 7y ago

Nuclear technology needs to be part of our arsenal, it’s the safest (an order or magnitude fewer desths per terawatt hour than solar) and the lowest carbon. Looking forward to seeing the results!

trasneoir 7y ago

Support for nuclear power has become my acid-test. If somebody is serious about making urgent and effective change, fission has to be on the table. Volume is the key to price - we need an internationally-vetted medium-sized design, with a supply chain that can crank out hundreds of complete "just add concrete" systems per year. As well as improving up-front costs, a ubiquitous design makes training and maintenance easier. This should improve the operation of these systems safer and cheaper.

thepete2 7y ago
Ditto. Many people I know are opposed to nuclear power for safety reasons (Chernobyl and Fukushima). But my understanding is that modern designs are an order of magnitude safer.
pfdietz 7y ago
Support for CO2 taxes is my acid-test. If a nuclear advocate uses a climate argument, but doesn't support a CO2 tax, they're just hopping on a bandwagon hoping for a handout. BTW, CO2 taxes would have to exceed $300/ton for new nuclear construction in the US to be competitive with natural gas. Do you support that high a CO2 tax?
- trasneoir 7y ago
  I'd quibble with the price point - economies of scale can reduce the cost of nuclear pretty dramatically. That said, I've got no problem with it in principle. Pricing externalities properly seems the simplest way to solve the tragedy of the commons, but it's complicated in this case by the fact that climate is a _global_ commons. A revenue-neutral carbon tax would make it a more manageable political lift. AFAIK the US is the only country to have "solved" the bigger political problem of long-term nuclear waste storage?
  - pfdietz 7y ago
    The nuclear waste disposal problem is a can that is very kickable down the road. The "solution" in the US, and I think elsewhere, is (after ten years or so of cooling) just put the spent fuel in dry casks. This is simple and cheap and safe, and does not foreclose any future options for dealing with it. One might criticize this for foisting the problem on future generations, but I suggest this is a truly minor problem compared to others we're foisting on them, and they'll be in a better position to deal with it that we are. It would be a poor solution compared to immediate reprocessing if we lived in a High Nuclear scenario where uranium was running low, but we don't live in that world.