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It's strange to me that nuclear isn't a bigger mix in Sask with the Uranium industry so big there. Related, it seems like the only pull that nuclear is getting

It's strange to me that nuclear isn't a bigger mix in Sask with the Uranium industry so big there. Related, it seems like the only pull that nuclear is getting in AB as an adjunct support for the fossil fuel industry, to help with oil sands extraction. Which just shows how distorted the political-economic system is at this point.

red-iron-pine 5mo ago
big oil has been calling the shots in n america since oil was discovered. new boss is same as the old boss, etc.
tonyarkles 5mo ago
> It's strange to me that nuclear isn't a bigger mix in Sask with the Uranium industry so big there. There's two factors to this: - Before SMRs, we wouldn't have been able to build conventional Big Reactors without violating grid redundancy requirements. Currently we have about 5,300 MW of installed capacity. With a conventional 1GW+ reactor, hitting the N-1 redundancy requirements would've been challenging. Losing ~20% of your capacity because one facility goes offline isn't acceptable unless you've got tons of extra generation capacity (either sitting idle or nominally running for export) - The Sask NDP has traditionally been very staunchly opposed to nuclear. The SaskParty won their first election in 2007 and that was a pretty tenuous situation. They certainly didn't have much of an appetite to make any bold/potentially unpopular moves early on in their tenure. There's a large contingent of swing voters who in the early days likely would've rebelled against the SaskParty proposing nuclear. Even now it's moving very slowly; I appreciate that we're letting Darlington build the first BWRX-300 before we start building our own (Darlington is already sited for it and is honestly a better place for FOAK). Edit: I missed this line from your comment: > to help with oil sands extraction That was a joke I used to tell in the early 2000s to upset my further-left anti-nuclear college friends: we should build nuclear reactors in the oil sands so that we can use the waste heat to process the bitumen. I'm honestly pretty amazed that no one had an aneurism.

red-iron-pine 5mo ago

big oil has been calling the shots in n america since oil was discovered. new boss is same as the old boss, etc.

tonyarkles 5mo ago

> It's strange to me that nuclear isn't a bigger mix in Sask with the Uranium industry so big there. There's two factors to this: - Before SMRs, we wouldn't have been able to build conventional Big Reactors without violating grid redundancy requirements. Currently we have about 5,300 MW of installed capacity. With a conventional 1GW+ reactor, hitting the N-1 redundancy requirements would've been challenging. Losing ~20% of your capacity because one facility goes offline isn't acceptable unless you've got tons of extra generation capacity (either sitting idle or nominally running for export) - The Sask NDP has traditionally been very staunchly opposed to nuclear. The SaskParty won their first election in 2007 and that was a pretty tenuous situation. They certainly didn't have much of an appetite to make any bold/potentially unpopular moves early on in their tenure. There's a large contingent of swing voters who in the early days likely would've rebelled against the SaskParty proposing nuclear. Even now it's moving very slowly; I appreciate that we're letting Darlington build the first BWRX-300 before we start building our own (Darlington is already sited for it and is honestly a better place for FOAK). Edit: I missed this line from your comment: > to help with oil sands extraction That was a joke I used to tell in the early 2000s to upset my further-left anti-nuclear college friends: we should build nuclear reactors in the oil sands so that we can use the waste heat to process the bitumen. I'm honestly pretty amazed that no one had an aneurism.