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Nuclear power supplies about 50 - 60% of electric energy in Ontario, with 18 reactors currently operating, built 1970s - 1990s. Activated water with tritium in

by retrac 4y ago

Nuclear power supplies about 50 - 60% of electric energy in Ontario, with 18 reactors currently operating, built 1970s - 1990s. Activated water with tritium in it has been released accidentally a number of times, and small amounts of tritium and other gasses are released by any reactor, but no unapproved leaking besides that has ever been made public. There are of course ecological problems with the heat, but all the reactors use one of the Great Lakes as a heat sink and water supply itself isn't a problem. The CANDU design can be fuelled online and most of the reactors have been online over 80% of the time, including refuelling, maintenance and refurbishment projects. The later designs hover around 90%. They were expensive to build, and the last plant was really expensive. This was due to various reasons, including post-Chernobyl reviews, and pausing construction for over a year due to a labour dispute, and high interest rates. Still, amortized over more than half a century they've ended up being the second-cheapest source of power in the province, after hydroelectric. Government is casting around for replacement options as the reactors are retired over the coming decades, but nothing concrete in the short term.

Retric 4y ago
That’s an accurate but misleading description of what’s going on because Ontario is part of a much larger grid. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_power_transmission_grid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_power_transmiss... It’s like saying a town next to a nuclear power plant is 90% nuclear, that’s “true” but only works because other areas don’t rely on 90% nuclear. Just like the town, Ontario exports power to other areas and imports non nuclear power. If everyone used 50-60% nuclear there wouldn’t be anyone to export that power to on low demand weekends etc which would drive up prices. The area also has a great deal of hydroelectric power which reduces the need for peaking power plants. Nuclear has already played a significant role in reducing climate change, but it just can’t economically scale to supply nearly as much power as wind and solar. And much worse when you have a high percentage of Wind and Solar adding Nuclear to the mix just doesn’t work very well because base load power becomes less valuable.
- retrac 4y ago
  It's not just about the cost. The mix of nuclear and locally-available gas and hydroelectric makes for a self-sufficient energy strategy, and that has always been a major concern. Yes, Ontario is synchronized with the US grid but it could disconnect if necessary. Electricity is a valuable but not critical export economically. As with France, a substantial influence on historic policy was to build surplus generation for economic security reasons. Could have just imported coal and oil. But Ontario does not have much coal or oil. Same with Quebec and hydroelectric. Renewables provide the same sort of decentralized benefit, of course.
  - Retric 4y ago
    At the scale of the worldwide electricity grid cost is a major concern. If the difference was a few billion globally then that’s trivial compared to the issues from climate change, but you can’t hand wave things once the difference starts crossing into the trillions. France was able to heavily subsidize Nuclear and while their economy took a real hit it wasn’t such a big deal. Bangladesh and other developing countries simply aren’t capable of making those kinds of trade offs and nobody is going to subsidize nuclear power in the 3rd world on the scale they would need.
throw0101b 4y ago
> Nuclear power supplies about 50 - 60% of electric energy in Ontario, with 18 reactors currently operating, built 1970s - 1990s. Cf, "Supply" tab: * https://www.ieso.ca/en/Power-Data https://www.ieso.ca/en/Power-Data
- Retric 4y ago
  Yep, and that looks great wind, hydro, and nuclear providing 100% of power at 3pm on a Friday at 2.5c/kWh. But what happens on the weekend when demand for power drops even more? Unfortunately the nuclear power plant operator losses money even faster than they are right now.
  - evilos 4y ago
    Based on the graphs from that site, demand never drops low enough to need to lower the output of the nuclear plants.
    - Retric 4y ago
      Nuclear isn’t the only type of power that has low marginal costs. Curtailing wind for nuclear is just as much an economic loss as curtailing nuclear for wind.
  - k8wk1 4y ago
    Low electricity costs are a problem for all electricity plans, not only nuclear. Renewables are even more susceptible to this because the weather affects all renewable plants of the same type similarly across wide geographic areas, so there will be times when they all generate more than is needed and nothing can be done about it. What's worse, the output is unpredictable, so there's little opportunity for some business to base its operation on renewable electricity generation patterns. At least the weekend demand drop is predictable, so businesses can use this predictable opportunity to reduce their costs and thus reduce the impact the weekends have on the profitability of nuclear and similar dispatchable plants.
    - 4y ago
Kon5ole 4y ago
>Still, amortized over more than half a century they've ended up being the second-cheapest source of power in the province Even after 50 years you have accumulated only a small percentage of the total costs related to the plant. They will most likely cost more money after they have been decommissioned than they did during operation.
- evilos 4y ago
  What are you basing these statements on?
  - Reason077 4y ago
    Take the UK as an example. It’s estimated that to decommission our former nuclear sites (built between the 1950s and 1980s) will cost around £260 billion[1] and take 120 years to complete. This includes the cost of decommissioning closed nuclear plants, disposing of waste, and cleaning up contaminated sites. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/sep/23/uk-nuclear-waste-cleanup-decommissioning-power-stations https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/sep/23/uk-nucle...
    - evilos 4y ago
      The UK is very much an outlier in the nuclear sector as they went with impossible to refurbish gas cooled reactors. Their experience is unlikely to resemble other countries. In the US at least, the cost for all decommissioning and fuel handling are built into the cost of electricity sold by law.
      - Kon5ole 4y ago
        >In the US at least, the cost for all decommissioning and fuel handling are built into the cost of electricity sold by law. That was the plan, but it has failed. The mechanism varies but the end result is the same - the operator doesn't pay the actual costs, so they don't charge the actual costs from the customers. The actual costs are paid by taxpayers from some anonymized bucket of money, like a government entity. As an example, the DOE has so far paid over 100 million USD to SMUD for the decommissioned Rancho Seco plant and will continue to pay for decades more. The operator doesn't pay - the government does. This has been proven to be true in best-case scenarios like the US, France, Germany and Sweden, and of course once anything deviates from best-case the costs become astronomical almost immediately (Japan).

by retrac 4y ago

Retric 4y ago

That’s an accurate but misleading description of what’s going on because Ontario is part of a much larger grid. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_power_transmission_grid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_power_transmiss... It’s like saying a town next to a nuclear power plant is 90% nuclear, that’s “true” but only works because other areas don’t rely on 90% nuclear. Just like the town, Ontario exports power to other areas and imports non nuclear power. If everyone used 50-60% nuclear there wouldn’t be anyone to export that power to on low demand weekends etc which would drive up prices. The area also has a great deal of hydroelectric power which reduces the need for peaking power plants. Nuclear has already played a significant role in reducing climate change, but it just can’t economically scale to supply nearly as much power as wind and solar. And much worse when you have a high percentage of Wind and Solar adding Nuclear to the mix just doesn’t work very well because base load power becomes less valuable.

retrac 4y ago
It's not just about the cost. The mix of nuclear and locally-available gas and hydroelectric makes for a self-sufficient energy strategy, and that has always been a major concern. Yes, Ontario is synchronized with the US grid but it could disconnect if necessary. Electricity is a valuable but not critical export economically. As with France, a substantial influence on historic policy was to build surplus generation for economic security reasons. Could have just imported coal and oil. But Ontario does not have much coal or oil. Same with Quebec and hydroelectric. Renewables provide the same sort of decentralized benefit, of course.
- Retric 4y ago
  At the scale of the worldwide electricity grid cost is a major concern. If the difference was a few billion globally then that’s trivial compared to the issues from climate change, but you can’t hand wave things once the difference starts crossing into the trillions. France was able to heavily subsidize Nuclear and while their economy took a real hit it wasn’t such a big deal. Bangladesh and other developing countries simply aren’t capable of making those kinds of trade offs and nobody is going to subsidize nuclear power in the 3rd world on the scale they would need.

throw0101b 4y ago

> Nuclear power supplies about 50 - 60% of electric energy in Ontario, with 18 reactors currently operating, built 1970s - 1990s. Cf, "Supply" tab: * https://www.ieso.ca/en/Power-Data https://www.ieso.ca/en/Power-Data

Retric 4y ago
Yep, and that looks great wind, hydro, and nuclear providing 100% of power at 3pm on a Friday at 2.5c/kWh. But what happens on the weekend when demand for power drops even more? Unfortunately the nuclear power plant operator losses money even faster than they are right now.
- evilos 4y ago
  Based on the graphs from that site, demand never drops low enough to need to lower the output of the nuclear plants.
  - Retric 4y ago
    Nuclear isn’t the only type of power that has low marginal costs. Curtailing wind for nuclear is just as much an economic loss as curtailing nuclear for wind.
- k8wk1 4y ago
  Low electricity costs are a problem for all electricity plans, not only nuclear. Renewables are even more susceptible to this because the weather affects all renewable plants of the same type similarly across wide geographic areas, so there will be times when they all generate more than is needed and nothing can be done about it. What's worse, the output is unpredictable, so there's little opportunity for some business to base its operation on renewable electricity generation patterns. At least the weekend demand drop is predictable, so businesses can use this predictable opportunity to reduce their costs and thus reduce the impact the weekends have on the profitability of nuclear and similar dispatchable plants.
  - 4y ago

Kon5ole 4y ago

>Still, amortized over more than half a century they've ended up being the second-cheapest source of power in the province Even after 50 years you have accumulated only a small percentage of the total costs related to the plant. They will most likely cost more money after they have been decommissioned than they did during operation.

evilos 4y ago
What are you basing these statements on?
- Reason077 4y ago
  Take the UK as an example. It’s estimated that to decommission our former nuclear sites (built between the 1950s and 1980s) will cost around £260 billion[1] and take 120 years to complete. This includes the cost of decommissioning closed nuclear plants, disposing of waste, and cleaning up contaminated sites. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/sep/23/uk-nuclear-waste-cleanup-decommissioning-power-stations https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/sep/23/uk-nucle...
  - evilos 4y ago
    The UK is very much an outlier in the nuclear sector as they went with impossible to refurbish gas cooled reactors. Their experience is unlikely to resemble other countries. In the US at least, the cost for all decommissioning and fuel handling are built into the cost of electricity sold by law.
    - Kon5ole 4y ago
      >In the US at least, the cost for all decommissioning and fuel handling are built into the cost of electricity sold by law. That was the plan, but it has failed. The mechanism varies but the end result is the same - the operator doesn't pay the actual costs, so they don't charge the actual costs from the customers. The actual costs are paid by taxpayers from some anonymized bucket of money, like a government entity. As an example, the DOE has so far paid over 100 million USD to SMUD for the decommissioned Rancho Seco plant and will continue to pay for decades more. The operator doesn't pay - the government does. This has been proven to be true in best-case scenarios like the US, France, Germany and Sweden, and of course once anything deviates from best-case the costs become astronomical almost immediately (Japan).