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A first for Canada: New type of nuclear plant opening by 2028
- Mountain_Skies 4y agoNew type of nuclear plant in Canada? Do we need to put Jimmy Carter on standby in case something goes wrong?
- ttul 4y agoTo the extent that nuclear power plants emit waste heat, you can use this waste heat to counteract the frigid temperatures found in the Canadian hinterland, displacing the need for natural gas and oil heating of industrial processes.
- Manuel_D 4y agoDesalination through waste heat is also viable. It's "free" energy in the sense that it would have otherwise gone unused.
- ars 4y agoDesalination does not use heat anymore, it's all membrane based. Also, you'd need enough heat to boil water, but the waste heat, by definition, is lower than the boiling point of water (otherwise the turbine doesn't work).
- Manuel_D 4y agoDesalination can be done through osmosis, which is membrane based. It can also be done through evaporation, which is much less efficient. But if you have a free source of heat, that inefficiency is a non issue. The waste heat from a steam turbine is higher than boiling. Otherwise the turbine wouldn't work. The boiler turns water into steam, which produces pressure to drive a turbine. The condenser takes the low pressure steam and condenses it back to water.
- rkagerer 4y agoThat would only help near the coasts. Most of Canada's population is in southern Ontario and Quebec where there's no saltwater.
- BeeBoBub 4y agoThis is an interesting idea for waste heat. Is the waste heat a nuclear power plant produces significant? My understanding is you want all your heat working to spin your turbine.
- Manuel_D 4y agoYes, ideally all the energy released by the reactor would go into the turbine. But no engine is 100% efficient, and waste heat is inevitable. Waste heat is "free" energy in the sense that it would have otherwise not been harnessed for something useful.
- wumpus 4y agoHow does this work with solar panels and wind turbines? I know that fossil fuel plants have a lot of waste heat that enables cogeneration, but I've never heard of that with solar or wind.
- illirik 4y agoA fossil fuel plant will burn fuel to produce heat. Some of this heat will be used for generation, and the remainder is waste heat. A solar panel or wind turbine, on the other hand, does not produce significant amounts of heat in operation - a PV solar panel would only get somewhat warm, a wind turbine would only achieve some friction heating - to where it is not economical to harness this relatively small amount of energy (compared to waste heat from an exothermic generation process, like nuclear fission or hydrocarbon combustion)
- arcticbull 4y agoSolar panels are super thermally inefficient generally speaking, collecting about 20% of the energy that hits the panel. They are dark, and this leaves a lot of heat available for the gathering. You can get solar systems that heat water as well, especially in rooftop solar. This also cools the panels down and makes them more efficient. Not much, but measurably. Something like this. [1] Of course, in the winter in Canada, you have to bleed the system otherwise the water will freeze in the tubes and they'll burst. There's no free heat from a wind turbine. [1] https://dualsun.com/en/product/hybrid-panel-spring/ https://dualsun.com/en/product/hybrid-panel-spring/
- SkyMarshal 4y agoHow do you transfer the waste heat from the nuclear plant to the industrial processes that would use it in place of oil and gas? Just co-locate them all together?
- robonerd 4y agoYou can pipe steam for a few miles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_heating https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_heating Though for industrial purposes (rather than just heating buildings) you'd probably have to be closer.
- ars 4y agoThe waste heat from a power plant (any kind), is not hot enough to make steam, unless you deliberately make it less efficient. You can make hot water though.
- ComputerGuru 4y agoJust a reminder that “steam” does not directly imply any specific temperature threshold as it is a function of relative pressure. Pumped into a (near) vacuum, warm water will turn to “steam.” (Cost of pulling a vacuum not considered.)
- robonerd 4y agoWhat's to say that demand needs to be met with waste heat? Couldn't a plant tap off and sell some of the steam that would otherwise be sent to the turbines?
- jamincan 4y agoYes, and that has been done in the past. It comes at the cost of lower power production, though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Nuclear_Generating_Station#Bruce_Bulk_Steam_System,_1972%E2%80%932006 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Nuclear_Generating_Stati...
- LatteLazy 4y agoWhich is great if you don't mind living a few 100m from a live nuclear plant, and you have a massive backup heat supply when the plant is closed for maintenance...
- nuclear_nick 4y ago
- jp0d 4y agoThis is really exciting. I wish we had nuclear power here in Australia. I know I might get downvoted for this comment. But with advancement in technology and large amount nuclear fuel (Uranium deposit) available, it's a great choice. 1. Vast swathes of uninhabited land can absorb some of the risks/fears associated with a nuclear accident. With technology like this, the risks are even lower. 2. It's lot cleaner than coal and natural gas, which are still the primary sources of our electricity. 3. There will be a huge demand for electric cars in the near future drawing massive amount power from the grid. Nuclear power would be a lot cheaper and enable us to truely go green. Of course the coal companies won't like that. I can't see any reason why don't have nuclear energy. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
- ggm 4y agoWe should have moved on this in the sixties when it was possible. It's impossible to get traction on this ever since. Maybe the nuclear subs will provide impetus
- jp0d 4y agoI think in a way it's good that we didn't do that in the sixties. Nuclear reactors are a lot more advanced and safer these days. Probably never too late to get onto it.
- ggm 4y agoYou haven't been in the arguments about "why nuclear makes no sense now" much have you? the post-60s time to deploy skyrocketed, in lawsuits. By now, its a 20+ year fight to do anything with nuclear, even on federally owned land. in 20 years, the argument runs that either its too late, or the cost of PV/Wind has dropped to make it irrelevant. The problem space we're in now is multi-dimensional. Purely on economic and rational engineering grounds you are right. Bring politics to the table and no, there is no clear time now or in the future where it will "work" to propose nuclear for powergen, where if we had installed the worse, 2/3 gen stuff in the 60s we'd be arguing about replacement, but with a good investment in nuclear physics engineering, and baseload supply demands which had displaced brown coal already.
- photochemsyn 4y agoThe background on Canada's plans for small modular reactors (of which this is just one of three projects) can be found here: https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Canadian-provinces-release-strategic-plan-for-SMRs https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Canadian-provinc... Supposedly this is promoting clean energy and fighting climate change, but the details don't always match this rhetoric. In particular they're thinking they can use nuclear power to replace piped-in natural gas to mine the Alberta tar sands and make (very dirty) syncrude for export to refineries in the USA, maybe China too. Yes, that does reduce natural gas use... but you're still burning dirty tarsand oil. The better option is to just leave the tar in the ground. Otherwise, SMRs sound kind of interesting, but there's been a lot of failed innovation in nuclear reactors in the past. Some of us might remember when safe and reliable and innovative pebble bed reactors were going to be the thing that made nuclear acceptable everywhere, and that ended up going nowhere: https://thebulletin.org/2009/06/the-demise-of-the-pebble-bed-modular-reactor/ https://thebulletin.org/2009/06/the-demise-of-the-pebble-bed... > "For some, helium-cooled, graphite-moderated reactors such as the PBMR have always been the ultimate evolution of fission reactor design. The use of helium and graphite allows the reactor to burn the fuel efficiently and to operate at much higher temperatures than conventional light water reactors. It is hoped the temperatures would be high enough to allow for the reactor’s heat to be used directly for industrial processes such as hydrogen production and tar sands processing. High temperature reactors can also be designed to use thorium-based fuel as well as uranium and can be developed as fast neutron reactors that don’t need moderators." I was enthusiastic about nuclear 20 years ago... now, not so much, since solar/wind/storage really gives more watts per dollar invested, with less side issues (security, uranium supply, waste storage). Nuclear has a niche, but it's going to remain small.
- a_square_peg 4y agoI really don't know enough about this to know if it's a good idea or not (it sounds like it could be quite useful) but in any case I'm very glad to see Canada doing something new in technology.
- DennisP 4y agoCanada is turning out to be quite the country for nuclear innovation, because their regulators are much friendlier to new technology than the NRC in the US. Terrestrial Energy (a molten salt reactor company) has spoken highly of them, and Moltex (another MSR company) moved there as a result.
- TedDoesntTalk 4y agoDoes this reactor split uranium atoms? If not, how does it generate heat?
- j16sdiz 4y agoYes. It take TRISO fuel in pellets. https://www.ans.org/news/article-2830/a-first-triso-fuel-made-in-canada/ https://www.ans.org/news/article-2830/a-first-triso-fuel-mad... https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/triso-particles-most-robust-nuclear-fuel-earth https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/triso-particles-most-robu...
- tempestn 4y ago> SMRs are nuclear reactors that typically produce up to 300 megawatts (MW) of electricity, which is enough energy to power 300,000 homes for one year. I suppose anyone who has some knowledge re electricity knows what they're trying to say here, and for anyone who doesn't it won't make much difference, but reading a sentence like this still hurts me a little. MW (megawatts) are a measure of power, not energy. This means the "per year" part is meaningless. Also for what it's worth, 300MW for 300k homes is 1kW/home, which is a pretty old rule of thumb for average household power use. I believe the current average in Canada (and the US) is considerably higher But that's also just the average; the peak is much higher. 300MW is the peak output for the plant, so the true number of homes it could power is lower regardless, absent storage. None of that to say the prospect isn't exciting! And I suppose the source here is the weather network, so perhaps they're a bit outside their area of expertise.
- mnw21cam 4y agoIndeed. If you're going to be heating all those houses with electricity, instead of gas, coal, or wood, then you'll likely need much more than 1kW per home. Especially when winter hits -30C.
- mjevans 4y agoIt would be nice if much of the waste heat could be expelled in ways more similar to Iceland's geothermal solutions.
- ClumsyPilot 4y agoRussia has directed waste heat fron reactors into the district heating network, it's perfectly realistic.
- sudosysgen 4y agoNot just Russia, it was relatively common across the Soviet bloc.
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- eternauta3k 4y agoNot sure if it's quite the same thing, but Argentina has been building a modular reactor for a while now. Doesn't look like it'll be ready anytime soon (probably financing problems). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAREM https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAREM https://world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Nucleoelectrica-contracted-to-complete-CAREM-25 https://world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Nucleoelectrica-cont...
- ncmncm 4y ago"Financing problems" translates to "people finally recognized it could never earn back what they would need to put in to finish it".
- eternauta3k 4y agoNo, this is just Argentina being broke as usual. It's a prototype.
- ncmncm 4y agoEven moreso, then. If no rich country would prototype it, getting Argentina to sign on had to be corruption.
- urban_winter 4y agoDoes anyone understand this? "Some of the main differences that the MMR has from conventional nuclear plants is that the reactor cannot meltdown as the heat is passively released into the environment..." 300MW is a lot of energy to passively release into the environment. Does this design really fail safe? And if so, how? The Fukushima issues were caused (IIRC) by failure of the backup generators to run the cooling system after the reactors were shut down. Do these small reactors really not need any external power when in that state? And do they get into this state by default? I.e. do they shut themselves down without external power and if the control systems fail? That would seem to be a massive safety advantage if it's true. I remember reading about UK magnox reactors where the graphite control rods were held above the core by electrically powered actuators and which were designed to fall into the core (and stop the reaction) if there was a power failure. Perhaps these reactors are similar.
- rich_sasha 4y agoThis is all somewhat complicated. Most modern designs claim that if you just switch everything off, the reactor is safe. This is either because having no machinery around the reactor working still makes it safe, or the few critical components have tons of redundancy, and everything is designed to be “broken”. 300MW is what the reactor produces with the moderators retracted. You put them in place and the reaction stops immediately. So you don’t need to cool 300MW passively. What you do have is the residual heat, and fission products decaying away and giving more heat. I’m not sure what power output that equates to, but far, far less than 300MW, and decreasing over time too as shorter-lived fission products go away. Some major advantages of small reactors in this context: - the ratio of volume (r^3) to surface area (r^2) is better so it’s easier to cool - there is simply less bad stuff in any one reactor so the tail risks are smaller
- clomond 4y agoFor getting an intuition on it, I would recommend the clip from HBO’s Chornobyl which ELI5’s a nuclear meltdown. [1] If the reactor is air cooled, that can be translated as “the heat can just burn off” as there isn’t a liquid cooling system, reducing this failure mode. As mentioned in the video, reactions are about balance. If a ‘safe’ SMR gets shut off or has its systems fail, you would want the accelerators / enablers of the reaction to disappear, and roll out the reaction. This is unlike most fission reactors in use today which are a ‘balanced dance’ where lots of the design is focused on reducing the speed of the burn (like a constant stream of water on a fire) rather than say controlling the oxygen of a fire with limited fuel. SMRs aim be more of the “control the oxygen” type of reaction rather than “keep the fire cool” kind of reaction. (Forgive my vast oversimplification, but this is my intuition on it). [1] https://youtu.be/TmIEI4ky-Zc https://youtu.be/TmIEI4ky-Zc
- supert56 4y agoMy only question about nuclear is why is it okay to bury the nuclear waste? I can understand that it might be fine to bury small amounts in specific stores but if countries slowly adopt nuclear energy at scale then over time won’t we be burying a lot of waste that, correct me if I’m wrong, has to be stored for thousands of years? I don’t understand how this can be sustainable long term. I also think it’s maybe arrogant of us to assume that it will always be safe to just store it and that something won’t happen that could disrupt that. I’m no expert on this though so if someone has a great explanation I’d love to understand it.
- sofixa 4y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repository https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repo... Is a good starting point. There has been a lot of thought put into this.
- clarionbell 4y agoThink about it this way. All of the uranium used as fuel came from the ground. Now, we will be putting smaller quantity of other, also radioactive, materials into ground. Lot of places have high natural levels of radiation[0], sometimes they even make it as a spa location[1]. People were living around radiation since before they were people. And they managed. We still do. In the end the question is if we want some radioactive pollution that is easy to contain in the near term, or a lot more carbon pollution that is impossible to contain in the near term. One is destroying the planet as we speak. The other might be a problem few centuries in the future, if there is one. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Background_radiation#Areas_with_high_natural_background_radiation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Background_radiation#Areas_wit... [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%A1chymov#Spa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%A1chymov#Spa
- ghostly_s 4y agoIt's really not that simple. Enriching the raw materials and subjecting them to fission results in a waste product with quite different characteristics than the input.
- ncmncm 4y ago> "300 megawatts (MW) of electricity ... is enough energy to power 300,000 homes for one year." This statement reflects the quality of the article. There is nothing very interesting about SMRs. They are much more expensive than equivalent renewables, so they will only be built by coercion of ratepayers who would be better served by the alternative.
- sofixa 4y ago> They are much more expensive than equivalent renewables, This statement reflects the quality of the comment. Renewables need significant storage to be directly comparable, cost-wise, to nuclear. There are no currently existing grid level storage solutions, same as SMRs, and both are invested in. And you're missing a huge part of the equation - we're talking about Canada, the northern cold parts. Which renewables would run there ( maybe wind?) and which storage solution could be viable to withstand the cold and storms and what not?
- ncmncm 4y agoSignicant storage is cheap and getting cheaper, much faster than wind or solar ever did. By the time we have built out enough renewables to benefit from storage, storage will be cheap enough to hardly notice.
- dsomers 4y agoHi, I’m curious, can you tell me about the most promising storage technology being rolled out now?
- omegabravo 4y agopumped hydro, depending on geography
- ncmncm 4y agoCanada has plenty of mountains to support conventional pumped hydro. There are a lot of interesting variations on pumped hydro that do not depend so much on geography. Undersea variations are most interesting. Wikipedia explains some of them. Undersea compressed air is also interesting: a bag anchored to the sea bed is inflated with air. Advantage is it needs no mechanical or electrical apparatus underwater. Similarly, a float attached to a pulley anchored to the seabed, attached to an electric winch onshore, or on the side of a wind turbine post. There are the usual rapidly improving battery chemistries, prominently iron-air batteries, with utility-scale factories already under construction, to deliver in 2023, with plenty of time to spare.
- mbgerring 4y agoI’ll take the over on 2028, anybody want to take the under?
- bluenose69 4y agoThe article contains the phrase "300 megawatts (MW) of electricity, which is enough energy to power 300,000 homes for one year." Why "one year", not "one second" or any other time interval? A generous interpretation might be that the "year" is a statement about an average taken over seasons, during which power consumption might vary. But I fear that the article instead betrays simple ignorance, as is the case in many non-technical discussions of power. I wonder what is it about power that seems so difficult for soft-science writers to comprehend. After all, their readers are paying power bills that are expressed in kilowatt-hours.
- HershheleGibbs 4y agoWell, it's about time. It seems like Canada has only been talking about nuclear power for, what, a decade or two? I mean, how long did the U.S. wait before getting on board with nuclear energy? We were ahead of Canada on that one by at least half a century! Just because nuclear power is more expensive and less safe than the alternatives doesn't mean I think Canada should reconsider its ambitious plan to open a new nuclear plant by 2028.
- lbayes 4y agoNot weighing in on pros or cons of nuclear, I'm genuinely not informed enough on the subject. Just came here to point out what appears to be a significant error in the linked text. "...when an earthquake-triggered tsunami crashed into the nuclear plant and caused three nuclear meltdowns that leaked radioactive materials for several days." It is my understanding that radioactive materials were leaking and being released into the oceans far longer than, "several days." According to Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_nuclear_disaster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_nuclear_disaster), "As of October 2012, radioactivity was still leaking into the ocean." This article from World Nuclear (https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/safety-and-security/safety-of-plants/fukushima-daiichi-accident.aspx#ECSArticleLink8 https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/safety-and-sec...) describes unintentional leaks and planned discharges continuing for years.
- pigtailgirl 4y agoFor those curious - the Canadians have been very successful in nuclear for quite some time- the CANDU reactor is pretty... cool -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YL4FmoTG-iE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YL4FmoTG-iE
- fundad 4y ago2028 just in time
- earthboundkid 4y agoThere had never been a land war in a country with nuclear power until 2022. It just strikes me that safely operating a nuclear plant requires you to make predictions about the distant future that are not possible to make.
- loudthing 4y agoTIL: there are no nuclear reactors in Australia.
- bell-cot 4y agoCynical quick take on how to quickly build safe nuclear power plants: - Power company executives live in on-site "VIP housing", and work from offices within the outer containment structure. In case of a major spill, they're issued mops, buckets, and lead underwear, and deployed as front-line clean-up workers. - NIMBY's shiver in the dark.
- maerF0x0 4y agoThis could be a boon for the Tar sands in Alberta. As I understand it a very large amount of oil there is used to create heat for the purpose of releasing the oil from the tar sands and generating nuclear (ie steam) power there could create a good amount of lower temp heat for use in industry (also heating homes if such a project were undertaken). This could really help the oil sands be less carbon emitting. I do wish it was a thorium based project though. Gordon McDowell was active in Calgary trying to spread awareness of the technology. Sadly it always feels "a decade away" ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9M__yYbsZ4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9M__yYbsZ4
- formerkrogemp 4y agoWorth noting is that Canada has the biggest uranium company and supplier outside of Russian influence, so any development should help that company.