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Darlington, Bruce and Pickering are reaching EoL and all three together supply 60% of Ontario’s electricity. How do you propose the province replace that amount

Darlington, Bruce and Pickering are reaching EoL and all three together supply 60% of Ontario’s electricity. How do you propose the province replace that amount of supply? The go with solar or wind would mean colossal investments in high tension transmission infrastructure, given the distributed nature of those power sources. We already have appropriate infrastructure in place for nuclear distribution; and the added benefit is that these SMRs can power northern regions as well when fully developped

ZeroGravitas 4y ago
Wind? The 24% hydro they have will help bridge demand and supply just as it does with nuclear today. What do you see as the problem with that?
- multiplegeorges 4y ago
  Last night, at peak, Ontario was generating ~140MW of wind power. Not bad. Yesterday, all day without variation, Ontario was generating 9300-9600MW of nuclear power. They aren't even in the same universe. Source: https://www.ieso.ca/power-data https://www.ieso.ca/power-data
  - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
    Yeah, well if they shut down the nuclear plants, they'll be generating 0. So they need to either build a lot of nuclear or build a lot of wind. One of these is cheap, easy and fast, one is hard, expensive and slow. 3-4 years of German rollout of onshore wind would probably do the job.
    - ipaddr 4y ago
      The same Germany who can't cut Russian oil supplies or the country falls apart. Not sure I'd go that direction.
      - pydry 4y ago
        Going all in on nuclear wouldnt have fixed that. At least, not without an additional $2-$3 trillion spent. The nuclear plants they shut down were a drop in the bucket compared to gas, solar and wind.
      - freeflight 4y ago
        Not a single country with any manufacturing and/or industry [0] to speak of [1], can just casually cut off their main hydrocarbon supplier without major consequences, nor do nuclear reactors replace such resource dependencies. If Russia stops delivering gas, then ultimately that will translate to a higher German oil demand, as a lot of formerly gas tailored usage will be retooled to oil. As Russia is sitting on the single largest gas supply on the planet, nearly a quarter of the worlds supply [2]. While with oil there are a few somewhat competitive non-Russian alternatives [3] So if Russia's resources will continue to be geopolitically taboo, then a lot of Europe will shift back to oil instead of gas. [0] https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2019/11/f68/Products%20Made%20From%20Oil%20and%20Natural%20Gas%20Infographic.pdf https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2019/11/f68/Products... [1] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NV.IND.MANF.ZS?locations=DE-US-FR-JP https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NV.IND.MANF.ZS?location... [2] https://www.worldometers.info/gas/gas-reserves-by-country/ https://www.worldometers.info/gas/gas-reserves-by-country/ [3] https://www.worldometers.info/gas/oil-reserves-by-country/ https://www.worldometers.info/gas/oil-reserves-by-country/
    - idiotsecant 4y ago
      Not to mention a MW of wind is not equivalent to a MW of nuke. If you want wind you need a substantial overbuild that is geographically diverse and the necessary transmission to support that, which will cost as much as the generation itself, or you need storage which again costs as much as the generation itself. I am all for wind power, but only when we realistically consider the real world engineering constraints involved.
      - ncmncm 4y ago
        Always "mentioned", always irrelevant. Obviously if you will rely on wind or solar for baseline, you will need to build out storage. And, equally obviously, you don't waste money building out storage you don't yet have capacity to charge up. It is a trivial observation that adds no light.
        idiotsecant 4y ago
        You might consider it a trivial observation, but the economic and physical implications are not trivial. They still cost money, and the physics still don't work if you don't consider them. Any discussion of the cost or viability of a generation source must include the cost and viability of augmenting the weaknesses of that source to address these deficiencies. Anything else is wishful thinking at best and magical thinking at worst.
        ncmncm 4y ago
        The physics of practical storage have been fully understood and well internalized in civil engineering for centuries: E = Fx. All that remains unclear is which forms will turn out to be cheapest at the time when they need to be built. What is known now is that costs are falling even faster than did solar and wind, and are already of similar order.
  - bshipp 4y ago
    I live in the hotbed of Ontario wind power, the intersection of Chatham-Kent and Windsor-Essex, and if all those windmills only account for 140MW I am very curious where the space would come from to even reach 1000MW. It already feels like they're everywhere.
    - phonescreen_man 4y ago
      Exactly, wind and solar are massive environmental disrupters, huge amounts of land and habitat destroyed for small unreliable gains. Nuclear on the other hand is turned into the bogey man of clean energy. Where do all the out of commission solar panels end up? Definitely not as carefully stored as the nuclear waste.
      - naasking 4y ago
        Panels are recycled now. Wind and solar don't destroy habitats and don't take up "huge amounts of land". Wind turbines take up negligible land that can be used for other purposes. Agrivoltaics is showing you can even do this with solar and it boosts some crop outputs. I really don't get the renewable hate. It has its place in the energy mix.
      - bp0017 4y ago
        Yes, PV waste isn't being addressed a lot right now, but research is ramping up alongside production on these. Alternatives to Si like perovskites may end up easier to recycle as well. Also, PV does produce waste, but it has the advantage of not being radioactive. That isn't to say it's not harmful, just quite a bit less volatile as nuclear. All in all, I do think nuclear should be reintroduced, but it has it's own issues, especially in the US due to construction difficulties (permits, safety, etc). In comparison, PV benefits greatly from economies of scale, and can be deployed at utility scale or in distributed micro-grids, which gives it more granularity then all-or-nothing nuclear.
      - ncmncm 4y ago
        You can lie, and lie, and lie. You might even get somebody to believe you, but it says more about you than about the topic. Wind and solar are not, in fact, environmental disrupters. Waste panels are not an environmental hazard, and are in fact extremely valuable. Anyone not warehousing their dead panels is an idiot. Nukes are lately the darling of big coal, because they guarantee another ten years of sales that in total exceed the cost of that much solar generation capacity. Spent on solar, it would displace the coal immediately.
  - 8bitsrule 4y ago
    >not in the same universe You're right, they aren't. Yes, thanks to decades of power-lobbying, viable wind and solar energy were both kept as low-key and forgettable as possible - and shut-down whenever possible. Apart from the vast sums of excessive money involved, lurking in the background was the fearful and sure knowledge that everyone, everwhere had potential and certain access to endless power ... without any constraints or arm-twisting politics. Yes ... wind and solar ARE in a different universe ... one where all of humanity can and will survive and be free of the pernicious influence of centralized energy overlords, and their wars.
    - multiplegeorges 4y ago
      Not sure how any of that is relevant in the context of Ontario or the linked article. > pernicious influence of centralized energy overlords, and their wars. My centralized energy overlords are extremely well run and regulated nuclear power operators. Seems great to me! And I can't remember the last war over nuclear fuel...
crypot 4y ago
Ontario’s Long-Term Energy Plan is counting on Bruce Power to provide a reliable and carbon-free source of affordable energy through 2064.
- ttul 4y ago
  It’s okay. If the Progressive Conservatives wave their hands fast enough, they can solve this problem with wind power.
jeromegv 4y ago
Sure renewable energy is not everything, but spending 200 millions to tear down wind farms is also not how you get there https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/doug-ford-green-energy-wind-turbines-cancelled-230-million-1.5364815 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/doug-ford-green-energ...
- bshipp 4y ago
  As far as I understood it, they weren't torn down as much as the contract was cancelled and more weren't built. I live in Windsor-Essex and still see new windmill projects going up all the time.
  - pjc50 4y ago
    That links says that (a) they were torn down, complete or incomplete, and (b) the company was paid a (huge!) contract break fee for this, as you would expect.
    - ipaddr 4y ago
      Huge as in the price of Twitter 44 billion or the 1 billion breakup fee?
    - bshipp 4y ago
      Yes, apparently they tore down 4 turbines, which is a waste of money. But if you've ever been to Chatham-Kent you'd notice that there are places where you can do a 360 degree turn and never see fewer than 10 windmills in your field of vision. Ontario has 2,600 wind turbines. https://www.nationalobserver.com/2020/10/23/news/wind-turbine-database-canada https://www.nationalobserver.com/2020/10/23/news/wind-turbin....
    - ncmncm 4y ago
      Of course the turbines will not have been scrapped, but will be sold on. Probably the blades, too. So, only the towers, really.
g8oz 4y ago
Colossal investment in transmission infrastructure would be a much better bet than investing in nuclear. It would pay off the way that colossal investments in highways, railroads and fiber have. Betting on nuclear is like choosing circuit switching over packet switching for your network. A fear driven anxiety about reliability that prevents people from understanding that a new way of doing things is possible.

ZeroGravitas 4y ago

Wind? The 24% hydro they have will help bridge demand and supply just as it does with nuclear today. What do you see as the problem with that?

multiplegeorges 4y ago
Last night, at peak, Ontario was generating ~140MW of wind power. Not bad. Yesterday, all day without variation, Ontario was generating 9300-9600MW of nuclear power. They aren't even in the same universe. Source: https://www.ieso.ca/power-data https://www.ieso.ca/power-data
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  Yeah, well if they shut down the nuclear plants, they'll be generating 0. So they need to either build a lot of nuclear or build a lot of wind. One of these is cheap, easy and fast, one is hard, expensive and slow. 3-4 years of German rollout of onshore wind would probably do the job.
  - ipaddr 4y ago
    The same Germany who can't cut Russian oil supplies or the country falls apart. Not sure I'd go that direction.
    - pydry 4y ago
      Going all in on nuclear wouldnt have fixed that. At least, not without an additional $2-$3 trillion spent. The nuclear plants they shut down were a drop in the bucket compared to gas, solar and wind.
    - freeflight 4y ago
      Not a single country with any manufacturing and/or industry [0] to speak of [1], can just casually cut off their main hydrocarbon supplier without major consequences, nor do nuclear reactors replace such resource dependencies. If Russia stops delivering gas, then ultimately that will translate to a higher German oil demand, as a lot of formerly gas tailored usage will be retooled to oil. As Russia is sitting on the single largest gas supply on the planet, nearly a quarter of the worlds supply [2]. While with oil there are a few somewhat competitive non-Russian alternatives [3] So if Russia's resources will continue to be geopolitically taboo, then a lot of Europe will shift back to oil instead of gas. [0] https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2019/11/f68/Products%20Made%20From%20Oil%20and%20Natural%20Gas%20Infographic.pdf https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2019/11/f68/Products... [1] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NV.IND.MANF.ZS?locations=DE-US-FR-JP https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NV.IND.MANF.ZS?location... [2] https://www.worldometers.info/gas/gas-reserves-by-country/ https://www.worldometers.info/gas/gas-reserves-by-country/ [3] https://www.worldometers.info/gas/oil-reserves-by-country/ https://www.worldometers.info/gas/oil-reserves-by-country/
  - idiotsecant 4y ago
    Not to mention a MW of wind is not equivalent to a MW of nuke. If you want wind you need a substantial overbuild that is geographically diverse and the necessary transmission to support that, which will cost as much as the generation itself, or you need storage which again costs as much as the generation itself. I am all for wind power, but only when we realistically consider the real world engineering constraints involved.
    - ncmncm 4y ago
      Always "mentioned", always irrelevant. Obviously if you will rely on wind or solar for baseline, you will need to build out storage. And, equally obviously, you don't waste money building out storage you don't yet have capacity to charge up. It is a trivial observation that adds no light.
      - idiotsecant 4y ago
        You might consider it a trivial observation, but the economic and physical implications are not trivial. They still cost money, and the physics still don't work if you don't consider them. Any discussion of the cost or viability of a generation source must include the cost and viability of augmenting the weaknesses of that source to address these deficiencies. Anything else is wishful thinking at best and magical thinking at worst.
        ncmncm 4y ago
        The physics of practical storage have been fully understood and well internalized in civil engineering for centuries: E = Fx. All that remains unclear is which forms will turn out to be cheapest at the time when they need to be built. What is known now is that costs are falling even faster than did solar and wind, and are already of similar order.
- bshipp 4y ago
  I live in the hotbed of Ontario wind power, the intersection of Chatham-Kent and Windsor-Essex, and if all those windmills only account for 140MW I am very curious where the space would come from to even reach 1000MW. It already feels like they're everywhere.
  - phonescreen_man 4y ago
    Exactly, wind and solar are massive environmental disrupters, huge amounts of land and habitat destroyed for small unreliable gains. Nuclear on the other hand is turned into the bogey man of clean energy. Where do all the out of commission solar panels end up? Definitely not as carefully stored as the nuclear waste.
    - naasking 4y ago
      Panels are recycled now. Wind and solar don't destroy habitats and don't take up "huge amounts of land". Wind turbines take up negligible land that can be used for other purposes. Agrivoltaics is showing you can even do this with solar and it boosts some crop outputs. I really don't get the renewable hate. It has its place in the energy mix.
    - bp0017 4y ago
      Yes, PV waste isn't being addressed a lot right now, but research is ramping up alongside production on these. Alternatives to Si like perovskites may end up easier to recycle as well. Also, PV does produce waste, but it has the advantage of not being radioactive. That isn't to say it's not harmful, just quite a bit less volatile as nuclear. All in all, I do think nuclear should be reintroduced, but it has it's own issues, especially in the US due to construction difficulties (permits, safety, etc). In comparison, PV benefits greatly from economies of scale, and can be deployed at utility scale or in distributed micro-grids, which gives it more granularity then all-or-nothing nuclear.
    - ncmncm 4y ago
      You can lie, and lie, and lie. You might even get somebody to believe you, but it says more about you than about the topic. Wind and solar are not, in fact, environmental disrupters. Waste panels are not an environmental hazard, and are in fact extremely valuable. Anyone not warehousing their dead panels is an idiot. Nukes are lately the darling of big coal, because they guarantee another ten years of sales that in total exceed the cost of that much solar generation capacity. Spent on solar, it would displace the coal immediately.
- 8bitsrule 4y ago
  >not in the same universe You're right, they aren't. Yes, thanks to decades of power-lobbying, viable wind and solar energy were both kept as low-key and forgettable as possible - and shut-down whenever possible. Apart from the vast sums of excessive money involved, lurking in the background was the fearful and sure knowledge that everyone, everwhere had potential and certain access to endless power ... without any constraints or arm-twisting politics. Yes ... wind and solar ARE in a different universe ... one where all of humanity can and will survive and be free of the pernicious influence of centralized energy overlords, and their wars.
  - multiplegeorges 4y ago
    Not sure how any of that is relevant in the context of Ontario or the linked article. > pernicious influence of centralized energy overlords, and their wars. My centralized energy overlords are extremely well run and regulated nuclear power operators. Seems great to me! And I can't remember the last war over nuclear fuel...

crypot 4y ago

Ontario’s Long-Term Energy Plan is counting on Bruce Power to provide a reliable and carbon-free source of affordable energy through 2064.

ttul 4y ago
It’s okay. If the Progressive Conservatives wave their hands fast enough, they can solve this problem with wind power.

jeromegv 4y ago

Sure renewable energy is not everything, but spending 200 millions to tear down wind farms is also not how you get there https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/doug-ford-green-energy-wind-turbines-cancelled-230-million-1.5364815 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/doug-ford-green-energ...

bshipp 4y ago
As far as I understood it, they weren't torn down as much as the contract was cancelled and more weren't built. I live in Windsor-Essex and still see new windmill projects going up all the time.
- pjc50 4y ago
  That links says that (a) they were torn down, complete or incomplete, and (b) the company was paid a (huge!) contract break fee for this, as you would expect.
  - ipaddr 4y ago
    Huge as in the price of Twitter 44 billion or the 1 billion breakup fee?
  - bshipp 4y ago
    Yes, apparently they tore down 4 turbines, which is a waste of money. But if you've ever been to Chatham-Kent you'd notice that there are places where you can do a 360 degree turn and never see fewer than 10 windmills in your field of vision. Ontario has 2,600 wind turbines. https://www.nationalobserver.com/2020/10/23/news/wind-turbine-database-canada https://www.nationalobserver.com/2020/10/23/news/wind-turbin....
  - ncmncm 4y ago
    Of course the turbines will not have been scrapped, but will be sold on. Probably the blades, too. So, only the towers, really.

g8oz 4y ago

Colossal investment in transmission infrastructure would be a much better bet than investing in nuclear. It would pay off the way that colossal investments in highways, railroads and fiber have. Betting on nuclear is like choosing circuit switching over packet switching for your network. A fear driven anxiety about reliability that prevents people from understanding that a new way of doing things is possible.