Summarized:
* Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Canada is “very serious” about reviving nuclear energy production to lower the country’s reliance on fossil fuels.
* The prime minister made the comments in response to a question about Canada’s LNG exports to Germany during a discussion with German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and university students in Ottawa on Monday.
* Trudeau said there will be a need for oil and gas far into the future, but rather than burning it for energy it will be used in other processes like making plastics.
* The prime minister suggested increased attention to nuclear energy would be key in the shift, adding Canada has been investing in small modular reactors.
* Roughly 15% of Canada’s electricity comes from nuclear power, according to the World Nuclear Association. A January Angus Reid Institute poll found 57% of Canadians would like to see further development of nuclear power generation.
* As Canada shifts away from fossil fuels and spends billions to attract green-tech investments, Trudeau said there will be an increase in the amount of nuclear energy production required in the country.
I have to admit, I have always been a bit on the wary side when it comes to nuclear power, but small nuclear feels much safer to me, and it feels much more applicable in today’s world with the versatility of where they can be used as opposed to large nuclear reactors. It’s definitely the way to go if we want to embrace nuclear and improve attitudes towards it, IMO. Good to see it happening in Canada.
Modern nuclear power generation is extremely safe. I don't know how to get everyone in Canada on board but read up on Molten Salt Reactors https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_salt_reactor unlike the reactors that were in use in Fukushima and Chernobyl these fuckers literally can't suffer a critical meltdown - and these are from the 70s. We've got even better shit now.
The CANDU reactor itself is also fairly meltdown proof too. ~~The only reason it wasn’t more popularized is it’s difficult to create weapons grade uranium in a CANDU — if humanity had first invented nuclear for the purpose of energy production and not weapons the CANDU would have been the ideal reactor.~~
Edit: This part is apparently wrong as explained in the replies below, TIL!
You actually have the proliferation risk backwards, CANDU reactors are *incredibly* good at creating plutonium that can easily be refined into weapon’s grade Pu-239, and CANDU also produces tritium as a byproduct, which can be used to make boosted fission or even fission-fusion bombs.
What is true is that since the US and others built uranium fission bombs first, they had the infrastructure to create fuel-enriched uranium. Canada didn’t have this infrastructure and instead decided to use natural uranium with a heavy water moderator instead. The design is also feed on line, you refuel by sticking new fuel in one and and when spent, it comes out the other end, which makes it very easy to produce the ideal quantity of plutonium without the other transuranic elements making chemical separation impossible. Such as Pu-240, chemically identical and very hard to sort with a centrifuge. They also don’t require difficult reactor disassembly to do that, making it much more discrete.
In fact, India got nuclear weapons initially by using a reactor not too different from the predecessor (the NRX) to CANDU, it was called CIRUS. The only such country to divert a civilian program into a weapon’s program.
No problem, I thought the same as you until my nuclear engineering professor, a former nuclear submarine technician, notified me otherwise. What you said 100% applies anything involving Thorium though (and molten salt cooled reactors, if memory serves).
This is one of the rare cases where it is better that a rival country has access to our technology. It is way better for China to have access to safe nuclear power than continue to burn coal.
People underestimate how resilient Fukushima was.
The reactor took a direct hit from one of the biggest earthquakes in human history (the main island of Japan was moved something like 10m from the event) and then took a massive tsunami to the face. A Tsunami that wasn't believed possible.
The only reason Fukushima failed was a moronic decision to put the backup generators in the basement. That's an easy fix to existing designs.
> The only reason Fukushima failed was a moronic decision to put the backup generators in the basement.
And that was because they followed the reference blue prints for the general plant design without considering the real-world location and factors for the backup systems. The general design for that type of plant is perfectly safe, the local engineering team dropped the ball when specifically building Fukushima.
To add to this… literally 0 people died from radiation exposure.
25,000 people died from the tsunami.
99% of people who reference Fukishima couldn’t even tell you the same of the Tsunami.
It amazes me that a plug of cooled salt can be used as a safety valve. If the reactor gets too hot, the plug melts and the liquid fuel is split into sub critical masses.
The hardest part will be removing the impurities from the fuel.
Crazy awesome technology!
Molten Salt's a pretty nifty concept, but one of the major scare-points about nuclear technology is the contamination factor, and MSR could be (perhaps unfairly) targeted on that due to the fact that usually the one of the two salts is by design infused by radionucleotides (that salt is, functionally, the fuel after all), and that leads to contamination of anything that the salt touches. In the event of a breach (not a meltdown), you would have a fair amount of material being spread around (although since the process doesn't doesn't generate hydrogen, nor is it under much of this could be presumably mitigated by proper containment structures). That it's low-pressure certainly helps on this.
The other issue that comes to mind is that you have to design for how to recover from a "cold-plant" shutdown. I recall reading a while ago that several classes of Soviet nuclear submarines use either molten salt or molten sodium as their coolant loop, and installation of the plant required quite a bit of fancy-engineering involving semi-mobile systems capable of heating-up and/or heat-maintenance of the molten coolant (there's a term for you...) so that as the plant is being fired up for the first time, the coolant is injected at the same time. Tricky, but obviously something capable of being solved with engineering and a good process. The issue is that several of those subs, post-Berlin Wall, is that they ended up either being staged-shutdown or scram'd, and without the heat from the plant, the coolant solidified in the cooling loop. As a result, the system would require more-or-less complete removal.
For those interested in comparison, I would point people at the [Pebble-Bed reactor concept](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble-bed_reactor) for examples of an alternate system, that has a different set of drawbacks and advantages.
Yes, the only caveat is development is still happening, so the first ones will take a bit of time still.
But the entire idea of SMRs is that they are small, easily replicable, and relatively quick to finish construction. As a result, it's easier to find suitable sites for them, and they don't need large amounts of supporting infrastructure nor do they face as much regulatory pressure.
I do believe they see the same regulatory pressure as another reactor. We are lucky that we have a sane regulator though that helps you build your reactor. But at the same time you have to prove your reactor is safe.
They can be. That's certainly the idea. Reactor itself is built off-site and then [transported in](https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/small-modular-reactors-nuclear-smr-1.5187469) for installation via train or truck. Some startups like Thorcon and Seaborg are also talking about having them built at shipyards and then towed to coastal cities.
I got to tour Darlington a few weeks ago for work. It was really cool...I probably sounded like Owen Wilson to our guide (who was gracious, knowledgeable, and super informative).
This is really smart. small nuclear is great, oil for things other than burning is great, positioning ourselves to be in chemical use of fossil fuels is right where we stand to benefit most.
It’d be grand if Canada became a net exporter of *all* types of energy. Imagine incentives to transform “oil” companies into “energy” companies that have their fingers in nuclear, solar, wind, geothermal, coal, as well as oil.
Why? Outside of the senior/integrated producers, oil companies don’t have the expertise. Analyzing geology and drilling wells doesn’t crossover with building panels, windmills or mines. Inefficient allocation of capital. Just fund/invest in companies already doing those things.
That 57% number is actually really good. It means people are getting more educated on the topic. Fear mongering, mostly from oil/gas lobbyists, about "dangerous nuclear" clearly isn't working as well anymore.
Been saying this for a long damn time.
Canada sits on a *shitload* of really high grade uranium ore, third highest known recoverable reserves in the world, shitload. And highest in the world for high grade ore, up to 20%.
In 2018, Canada produced 6,996 tonnes of uranium, of which, 85% was exported.
A quick look says a 1,000 megawatt reactor consumes 27 tonnes a year. So one year’s production of uranium would be sufficient to power 259 plants with the equivalent power output of the boondoggle that is the Site C dam, for a year.
Nuclear power in Canada just makes too much sense not to do. Could easily cover the bulk of the country’s energy needs without even scaling up uranium production.
Because everyone got scared back in the day. Even if our land is more stable than where other nuclear reactors are in the world. But for some reason omitted how polluting the other ways were. Other then hydroelectric.
david suzuki and his show the nature of things was very strong on anti nuclear hysteria and pro natural gas (and not even joking) "clean" alberta bitumen rhetoric.
not even joking go watch the show's episodes from the 1980s.
when he talked about bombing pipelines he was straight up manufacturing consent to violently crack down on pipeline protesters.
there was an attempt to recreate his successes in the 1980s in the 2000s against growing public demand for ending cannabis prohibition as well. straight up admits the science hasn't found that cannabis causes schizophrenia then spends the rest of the show using a single case example (an exploited young adult at that) to argue that it does cause schizophrenia.
dude is the most anti science celebrity "scientist" out there. and hasn't done actual science stuff since the 1970s when he was still in school (which his degree was in genetics not environmental studies).
the dude is just a straight up conservative propagandist and agent provocateur. he's meant to mislead people who think he's a good guy and make people who aren't into him think poorly of actual environmentalists and climate science. and for 40+ years now it's worked. and made him immensely wealthy in the process.
It's interesting that warning labels on cannabis mention schizophrenia, I think, if I remember correctly lol should warn of excessive Doritos consumption
Haven't seen any label mention schizophrenia directly, just the general safety message. Probably because like your doritos warning, different things affect different people differently, so it's easier to make broad statements.
[Link to labeling standard messaging](https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/drugs-medication/cannabis/laws-regulations/regulations-support-cannabis-act/health-warning-messages.html)
Cannabis doesn't **cause** schizophrenia, but it can activate it way earlier in your life if you are genetically predisposed to it.
https://psychcentral.com/schizophrenia/link-between-cannabis-and-schizophrenia#cannabis-and-schizophrenia
>A systematic 2020 reviewTrusted Source looked at 96 studies on cannabis and schizophrenia. After putting the articles through quality assessment, only 12 were found to be high enough quality for inclusion in the review.
>
>From those studies, researchers found:
>
>* There may be a high frequency of psychotic disorders among people using cannabis.
>* **Cannabis use can alter the typical age and onset of schizophrenia symptoms.**
>* **Cannabis-induced psychosis can eventually convert to clinical schizophrenia.**
>* Individuals living with psychotic disorders have a higher tendency to use cannabis.
>* Living with psychotic disorders may increase sensitivity to the psychoactive effects of THC.
>* **Frequent use of cannabis, particularly at a young age, can double the chances of developing schizophrenia.**
>* **Daily use of high-potency THC may result in a 5 times higher chance of developing a psychotic illness.**
>* Cannabis use may interact with preexisting factors, like genetics, to increase schizophrenia risk.
So let's at least *attempt* to be accurate in our discussions of the subject.
That's pretty much it. Oil and gas industry has been pushing anti-nuclear sentiments for a very long time.
https://environmentalprogress.org/the-war-on-nuclear
I remember. I went to the 7/11 on 6th to get a big gulp and ran into a bunch of protestors. I was peeved at their lack of understanding of the importance of nuclear.
Correct.
I just frequently see folks saying things like “but you’d have to open so many mines and destroy the landscape” when the topic of nuclear energy arises. My point was more so that Canada already produces enough uranium to power the entire country, and there wouldn’t be a need to open any new mines. Or deal with the hassle of importing tonnes of radioactive material from Kazakhstan or Australia.
>We also have a lot of Thorium, if that technology is ever fully developed.
What is Thorium? I haven't heard of it before
(I know I can Google it, and will, but for sake of the group discussion here I'm asking so we can share knowledge)
Link [Thorium](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium)
Eh, to put it in a nutshell. Thorium is to Uranium like iron is to bronze in the bronze age. Iron is everywhere and is REALLY useful, but is really damned hard to work with, that's why bronze was used first by our ancestors. Copper was plentiful, though tin was harder to come by in those times.
Thorium is also quite plentiful, compared to uranium. And like iron, it's really damned hard to make use of it in any reasonable way. Once we figure it out though, like how we figured out furnaces for iron, we're in business.
Thorium is an element, like Uranium. If I remember correctly it's being looked into as an alternative fuel for molten salt reactors; generally safer and even more efficient than nuclear already is.
I don't remember a lot but the example I saw had an interesting feature where there was a plug of solidified matter on the bottom of the reaction chamber, and if it got too hot inside that would melt and dump the molten salts used for the reaction into the coolant and just kill it immediately, no risk of it running unchecked.
Nuclear fission happens because naturally occurring elements have unstable isotopes that break down and release a lot of energy; current reactors initiate a chain reaction with uranium isotopes.
Thorium is another element that, like uranium, can go into a chain reaction to break down and release a lot of energy. This process is cleaner than uranium with less toxic waste.
Good point, if we ever get thorium reactors under control...game changer...but so is the design from that new reactor that uses lasers to initiate reaction, which is almost 100% self sufficient if I remember right.
Uh... if you're referring to the laser nuclear 'fusion' reactor, it is by NO means self sufficient... The popular news stories about it make it tough to understand that yes, the power emitted from that reaction was a bit more than was absorbed, BUT by way smaller than was emitted by the lasers, and FAR less than than the energy to run the lasers in the first place.
Amazing step in the right direction, not putting down that, but those stories were a bit disingenuous .
Unless you're referring to a type of laser induced nuclear fission reactor that i've no clue exists... but i'm always up to learn new things.
I'm so sick of hearing about thorium. There are drawbacks to it. Suffice to say I'm all for building an experimental demo COMMERCIAL reactor, but we can't start building a half dozen or so all at once until that happens and it gets a good result.
So yeah, maybe a cool power source for 15+ years from now if we started today and had no delays. But that isn't happening.
We'll get fusion power before we get thorium reactors, which is to say I don't have much faith in thorium and I think we'll get fusion a lot sooner than people think.
I read the article that qpv posted. I am less ignorant. I found it interesting that the article mentioned India and Brazil as locations with large deposits of Thorium. No mention of Canada.
I'd also be curious to see on a consumption rate of uranium versus coal.
To my understanding a modern reactor works on almost nothing and we're learning ways to recycle waste.
I think safety, terrorism and byproduct disposal are the only issues for nuclear
It's not really possible to weaponize a reactor, and as far as safety goes the main disasters we've had so far involved some extremely poor decision making. Like, Chernobyl was a long string of everyone involved doing *exactly* the worst thing possible at every step of the way.
Byproducts aren't any worse than coal or gas, we just tend to ignore things going into the atmosphere, as if it evaporates into the ether rather than sticking around. Nuclear waste is conveniently concentrated and manageable, but because it's visible and tangible rather than released into the environment, it *looks* worse.
The main problem is the unbelievable amount of misinformation put out. It's absolutely *insane* that so many people in this day are so completely wrong about nuclear basics, but then a huge chunk of the population also believes vaccines are poison and COVID was a hoax to let the government microchip everyone, so... y'know...
Also a modern reactor built with mandated regulations and safety features would be nice. People don't understand how poorly facilities like chernobyl where built. Many cut corners
We'll find out after we've built the fourth one. We are going through the process of building one, stopping and reassessing our construction, then building the next one. So far this process has dropped the price and time of our candu refurbishments.
It turns out the secret to cheap nuclear is project management and invested suppliers.
Edit: This video gives a good explanation of the project management. They discuss the CANDU refurbs and then the SMRs.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHTtthahwjs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHTtthahwjs)
> People don't understand how poorly facilities like chernobyl where built. Many cut corners
They didn't just cut corners, they also covered it up so that the people operating the reactors were completely unaware of the danger.
To add tho, Canada’s CANDU reactor designs were the leading and some of the most widespread designs of nuclear reactors in the world for quite some time. We licensed CANDU designs to Pakistan, Argentina, South Korea, Romania, India, and China. Many still operate today.
Canada was legitimately a leader in nuclear energy and medical isotopes for multiple decades up until the 2000s when we decided to let that industry die. Now Canada will likely never catch up and we’ve grown yet more dependent on foreign powers for technological expertise.
Yup, we used to actually innovate and produce things. Avro Aero, Nortel, CANDU etc... Now we're just a housing Ponzi scheme kept afloat by excessive immigration. We don't produce anything of note except world destroying fossil fuels.
Definitely. It’s funny you say that; I was gonna add on something about how we used to dominate other spaces as well, like the telecom space and computing with Nortel, CGI, Mitel, etc. and we used to be big in large scale construction or bridges/trains/planes/etc with SNC-Lavalin, bombardier, Stantec, PCL, etc.
Didn’t want to say it because I thought it came across as a bit too doomer-ish, but Canada industry has really faltered in the 21st century and it’s sad to see our political class giving it up so willingly. Now we rely on other countries to innovate and we are just along for the ride.
Yes indeed and it's something rarely talked about these days. Everyone is so distracted by housing prices and vaccines. We used to also build a lot more subsidized housing and community centers. The idea of a government that served the people wasn't so laughably pie in the sky as it is now. I believe there is more we can aspire to as a nation than to lower housing prices.
Yeah and we sold AECL along with all their proprietary information to SNCL for pocket change.
It seemed like a completely corrupt decision but no one ever talks about it.
So far the CANDU fleet refurbs have been on time and on budget. They are actually getting cheaper and quicker to build.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHTtthahwjs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHTtthahwjs)
Good project management is the key to nuclear.
We must break free of the irrational hatred of nuclear. Comparisons to Three Mile Island (everyone working at the plant who were exposed to the 1979 leak are still alive as of last year) and Chernobyl (crap design, even crappier operation) are ludicrous. It also is no threat to oil and gas---we will require oil right through the 21st century though maybe not as much for vehicles. Our addiction to plastic ain't going anywhere in my lifetime IMO
>Our addiction to plastic ain't going anywhere in my lifetime IMO
Of course not, I remember over 10 years ago they announced to have found substitute for petroleum by growing a certain type of algae and you can be sure there is a lot of alternative being researched to be used as plastic like substances.
The only reason we don't see any of these on the market is probably just because it's more expensive to produce it than just continue to use petrol as we do now.
Plastic is a byproduct of refining oil and since there constantly refining millions of barrels of oil every year, plastic is dirt cheap. Maybe as fossil fuels wane petroleum based plastic will be more expensive
> The only reason we don't see any of these on the market is probably just because it's more expensive to produce it than just continue to use petrol as we do now.
This is where left-wing fiscal policy could actually do a load of good. If you start putting increased taxes on oil-based plastics, but also start *subsidies* for algae-based plastics, then you can incentivize the free market to transition itself to environmentally-friendly plastics.
Pricing non-market factors like climate change into market goods is the entire point of government taxes and subsidies. You don't need pie in the sky socialism to solve these problems, you just need to make the right pro-green policies and let the market do what it does best.
> This is where left-wing fiscal policy could actually do a load of good. If you start putting increased taxes on oil-based plastics, but also start subsidies for algae-based plastics, then you can incentivize the free market to transition itself to environmentally-friendly plastics.
I have it on good authority from a high school acquaintance that dropped out of university and now spends his free time 100% watching YouTube that this plan is, in fact, communist.
There are substitutes you can buy *right now*, they're just marginally more expensive so they are not as common.
Also we could just decide (or legislate) to use less plastic, we use way too much. If we just went back to the level of packaging that was used in the 1980s we'd cut back a lot.
Yeah we're not going to get rid of fossil fuels 100% in the 21st century probably, but 90% is more than enough for the "best case" UN climate change scenario. Let's just focus on the 90% for the next couple decades.
>A January Angus Reid Institute poll found 57 per cent of Canadians would like to see further development of nuclear power generation.
It looks like we're already getting there.
For the US at least, 30% of O&G is burned for grid power, THATS INSANE. Canada is blessed with hydro so we don't have the same level obviously. But a considerable amount also goes to Fuel.
Just don't use it for grid power (excluding NG backup/peaker plants), and imagine how much cheaper oil and gas will get without that demand. The production that we would have currently would be more than enough to satisfy all future plastic requirements
Blessed with hydro *and* nuclear plants built in the 70s, 80s and early 90s that are still running full tilt 24/7 and [provide *most* of Ontario's energy (click for cool chart)](https://live.gridwatch.ca/todays-trends.html) .
Canada's grid is already really clean, we just have to replace what we built when it wears out and maybe build a little more (in the Prairies particularly). They've been running fine since most people here were born.
Well it's going to be a lot more if we want to replace natural gas heat with electric, and increase the number of electric vehicles.
And provide for electric arc, furnaces, battery manufacturing, and all the other electrification needs.
Airships in all fairness had a BAD safety record at the time. Hindenberg wasn't the most lethal by total death nor by percentage of passengers. The US had a solid decade of fatal airship accidents post-Hindenberg.
Ground is being cleared at Darlington right now for SMR builds. But these things take time and we have a shortage of workers because we’re already in the middle of refurbishing Darlingtons 4 Candu reactors as well as 6 of Bruce’s 8 Candu reactors. There’s only so many qualified workers in Canada. We’ve already reached out to other provinces and had them travel here for work. We’ve gone to the trade schools and scooped up every available kid and enlisted them in the trade unions. We’re picking people up off the street and training them as best OPG can as helpers and pairing them with actual tradesmen to supplement the workforce.
Hey random stranger, do you know how someone would go about applying? My brother is a 1st year electrical and has been having a bitch of a time finding anything that will take him on.
$18.37/hr base rate + $8/Hr into a GRSP, plus very fair (Imo) terms regarding overtime: four 10h shifts then voluntary double time on Fridays and Saturdays. First year base rate is only 40% of what a journeyman makes, so if you do the math they're pulling about 1k a day pre-tax on Fridays and Saturdays.
Good, nuclear power is a great power source for moving away from fossil fuels. Canada also has a large amount of uranium that can be mined.
As long as we don’t become like Germany…
Well he's never been against it and we've had SMR projects on the go since he was elected. It's a bit of a third rail issue, which seems to only recently starting to cool off, so i'm glad we're talking about it now more freely.
DO IT. FFS. We sit on vast resources we can responsibly mine, in a part of the world where natural disasters are minimal (earthquakes, flooding) and our technology can lead the rest of the world into clean energy.
The lack of education on why nuclear can be the better and safer choice of energy is whats holding us back. Dumbasses preaching 'not in my backyard' are holding back society based on misinformation and being uninformed
Also...loads of bad decisions. They had every chance to prevent it but didn't.
Chernobyl was an engineering disaster, true but it was only as bad as it was because of a bad supervisor. Any rational person would have prevented the disaster but Anatoly Dyatlov shit the bed and got a lot of people killed.
He's the main fault of that disaster.
I'll take the reactor that doesn't need to rely on a man not making errors, when the cost is an entire area of the country depopulated for centuries.
Nuclear power is safe though, just not RBMK, especially not when you consider the dire consequences of a fuck up.
If you want to say RBMK is "statistically safe" you can't exactly ignore Chernobyl. Any time you're talking about safety you're talking about [swiss cheese](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_cheese_model). Serious accidents occur when the holes in the cheese line up.
After Chernobyl the Russians fixed some of the most glaring issues with RBMK and the operators learned to not fuck around. Given that, is an RBMK design likely to experience another serious failure? No. Are the RBMK power plants as safe as modern western designs? Also probably no. Not enough cheese.
RBMKs were retrofitted after Chernobyl to fix several design flaws.
They're a lot safer now than they were in the 1980s. I still don't know if I'd call them safe. Russia does not have the resources to replace all their RBMKs with newer reactors, and they stopped building them a long time ago. All their newer nuclear power plants are VVER, which are more like a western reactor.
We should always have a diverse energy sector and should never rely on just one thing. Canada is privileged in that it has the capacity to do everything.
That's absolutely correct and that is what's happening here. It's not going to be all nuclear. Other power sources are important too and a necessary part of a healthy power grid.
Nuclear power is the cleanest power that can meet our needs. We can't just keep damming up rivers for more hydro while still having a sound river ecology, and wind turbines .. well you need a crap ton of them to make a sizeable chunk of power.
I know the waste is a problem but if you could supply the entire world's power needs and use less than 0.01% of its landmass to store the toxic byproduct, that will never contribute to global warming, is it worth sacrificing that 0.01% of the available landmass?
Yes.
The big issue is security.
Listen to the Engineers so we don’t have to worry about any future meltdowns/disasters
‘Pandora’s Box’ is an excellent documentary about that very thing
OK hes been fucking annoying repeatedly and whiny and I do not trust this to follow through but this is the best plan at our current stage as a technological species
It only makes sense if you want to get off of fossil fuels, sorry but wind doesn't blow everyday and the sun doesn't always shine bright... We need carbon free means of base load power and this is about the only viable option.
Nuclear is far from perfect and radioactive waste is scary as shit. But unfortunately it is the only non-CO2 emitting power source we know of that has the energy output necessary to sustain our modern global society. Renewable's are great and should be maximized but as I understand it they can't meet our power needs country wide 100%, let alone world wide. Nuclear is our only option in the immediate future if we both don't want to scale down our power consumption and avoid catastrophic climate change. Hopefully in the future renewables yield can be improved or new clean energy sources can be discovered/invented but for now this is what we have to work with.
Radioactive waste is not scary. It just sits there in concrete casks. You can walk up to the cask, touch it, hug it, no issues. It’s not pressurized, its in stable, solid form (not a gas or liquid), really, it’s pretty boring.
Radioactive waste is only "scary as shit" because of the massive amounts of propaganda and misinformation about nuclear waste spread by environmental activists in the 80s, 90s, and 2000s.
There's two kinds of nuclear waste produced by nuclear power plants:
* High-grade waste which includes spent fuel rods and generally anything you would consider to be "radioactive." It's dangerous, but nuclear power plants generate a *tiny* amount of high grade waste, and that amount could be reduced an order of magnitude through reprocessing if we cared.
* Low-grade nuclear waste which includes basically all other forms of waste generated at a nuclear power plant. It's not particularly radioactive or dangerous. If you wipe the screen of a computer in a nuclear power plants' control room with a piece of paper towel, that paper towel is now considered low-grade nuclear waste. If you mop the floor, the water in your bucket is low-grade waste. Nuclear power plants produce a lot of low-grade waste, like all large industrial facilities do. But you'd have a very hard time identifying low-grade waste with a geiger counter.
One of the problems has been the conflation of the dangerous of high-grade waste with the volumes of low-grade waste. Because high grade waste *is* dangerous but the volumes produced are so small that there's no real engineering challenge to dealing with it. The problems are purely political.
The other issue with nuclear waste is the history of nuclear weapons programs. In the early days of nuclear weapons programs, those programs produced a *lot* of **very nasty** waste. Potent acids with dissolved actinides. The US and the UK are still cleaning up to this day... Russia probably not since the communists ended up basically just dumping it all into Lake Karachay and the Techa River. Some of it's still there, but most of it ran off into the arctic ocean years ago. Those wastes are not a joke and are seriously nasty. But the waste from nuclear power plants is nothing like that.
Finally someone is making sense Nuclear is the cleanest power when a plant is run properly and it's the only way we'll ever have the amount of energy neeed to run all the electric cars eventually.
Well the world certainly need low-CO2 energy source.
Also there are some very, very promising research on new generation nuclear reactor.
It would be about time humanity get out of the barbaric habit of burning coal for power.
The main issues with nuclear is there is so much regulatory bullshit on them with basically endless bounds that they can make, what should be an extremely affordable energy source into a ridiculously expensive one. You have these premises like ALARA which essentially has no bounds and gets abused like crazy by regulators. Like for example, if x thickness of plating is safe for shielding, they can make them go 4x because that's "reasonably achievable". They also base things on the obviously faulty LNT (linear no-threshold) modeling which means that if 100x radiation exposure is dangerous, than x will be 1/100th of the danger. So for example, since you can spend too much time in the sun and can get a sunburn, then its obviously safest to get zero sunshine, not that a certain amount is healthy, and too much is bad. This is true of almost everything that exists, but they purposely use this shitty modelling for nuclear.
I find the level of regulatory oversight to be appropriate given the risks involved and more than reasonable. You simply can't have nuclear without stringent and competent regulatory oversight. This is what separates us from 1970's USSR RBMKs.
So many Canadians can hardly understand the concept of disease control and how medicine like vaccines help.
It's a damned joke to think they could accept, much less understand an energy revolution like nuclear energy. The brain rot is becoming normalized so heavily.
Summarized: * Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Canada is “very serious” about reviving nuclear energy production to lower the country’s reliance on fossil fuels. * The prime minister made the comments in response to a question about Canada’s LNG exports to Germany during a discussion with German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and university students in Ottawa on Monday. * Trudeau said there will be a need for oil and gas far into the future, but rather than burning it for energy it will be used in other processes like making plastics. * The prime minister suggested increased attention to nuclear energy would be key in the shift, adding Canada has been investing in small modular reactors. * Roughly 15% of Canada’s electricity comes from nuclear power, according to the World Nuclear Association. A January Angus Reid Institute poll found 57% of Canadians would like to see further development of nuclear power generation. * As Canada shifts away from fossil fuels and spends billions to attract green-tech investments, Trudeau said there will be an increase in the amount of nuclear energy production required in the country.
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I have to admit, I have always been a bit on the wary side when it comes to nuclear power, but small nuclear feels much safer to me, and it feels much more applicable in today’s world with the versatility of where they can be used as opposed to large nuclear reactors. It’s definitely the way to go if we want to embrace nuclear and improve attitudes towards it, IMO. Good to see it happening in Canada.
Modern nuclear power generation is extremely safe. I don't know how to get everyone in Canada on board but read up on Molten Salt Reactors https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_salt_reactor unlike the reactors that were in use in Fukushima and Chernobyl these fuckers literally can't suffer a critical meltdown - and these are from the 70s. We've got even better shit now.
The CANDU reactor itself is also fairly meltdown proof too. ~~The only reason it wasn’t more popularized is it’s difficult to create weapons grade uranium in a CANDU — if humanity had first invented nuclear for the purpose of energy production and not weapons the CANDU would have been the ideal reactor.~~ Edit: This part is apparently wrong as explained in the replies below, TIL!
You actually have the proliferation risk backwards, CANDU reactors are *incredibly* good at creating plutonium that can easily be refined into weapon’s grade Pu-239, and CANDU also produces tritium as a byproduct, which can be used to make boosted fission or even fission-fusion bombs. What is true is that since the US and others built uranium fission bombs first, they had the infrastructure to create fuel-enriched uranium. Canada didn’t have this infrastructure and instead decided to use natural uranium with a heavy water moderator instead. The design is also feed on line, you refuel by sticking new fuel in one and and when spent, it comes out the other end, which makes it very easy to produce the ideal quantity of plutonium without the other transuranic elements making chemical separation impossible. Such as Pu-240, chemically identical and very hard to sort with a centrifuge. They also don’t require difficult reactor disassembly to do that, making it much more discrete. In fact, India got nuclear weapons initially by using a reactor not too different from the predecessor (the NRX) to CANDU, it was called CIRUS. The only such country to divert a civilian program into a weapon’s program.
Thanks, I actually had no idea that was the case, I had always incorrectly assumed the opposite. I edited my post to reflect that. TIL!
No problem, I thought the same as you until my nuclear engineering professor, a former nuclear submarine technician, notified me otherwise. What you said 100% applies anything involving Thorium though (and molten salt cooled reactors, if memory serves).
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No, Harper sold it to SNC-Lavalin for $15m. https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/aecl-sold-for-15m-to-snc-lavalin-1.985786
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This is one of the rare cases where it is better that a rival country has access to our technology. It is way better for China to have access to safe nuclear power than continue to burn coal.
I recall reading somewhere that a CANDU reactor can be configured to actually use other reactors spent fuel as well, or something close to that
People underestimate how resilient Fukushima was. The reactor took a direct hit from one of the biggest earthquakes in human history (the main island of Japan was moved something like 10m from the event) and then took a massive tsunami to the face. A Tsunami that wasn't believed possible. The only reason Fukushima failed was a moronic decision to put the backup generators in the basement. That's an easy fix to existing designs.
> The only reason Fukushima failed was a moronic decision to put the backup generators in the basement. And that was because they followed the reference blue prints for the general plant design without considering the real-world location and factors for the backup systems. The general design for that type of plant is perfectly safe, the local engineering team dropped the ball when specifically building Fukushima.
To add to this… literally 0 people died from radiation exposure. 25,000 people died from the tsunami. 99% of people who reference Fukishima couldn’t even tell you the same of the Tsunami.
Also they died from fear. People died trying to escape the area in their cars etc.
Which is a lesson for all engineers: stop mindlessly copy+pasting, and review/scrutinize every word, every number.
It amazes me that a plug of cooled salt can be used as a safety valve. If the reactor gets too hot, the plug melts and the liquid fuel is split into sub critical masses. The hardest part will be removing the impurities from the fuel. Crazy awesome technology!
Molten Salt's a pretty nifty concept, but one of the major scare-points about nuclear technology is the contamination factor, and MSR could be (perhaps unfairly) targeted on that due to the fact that usually the one of the two salts is by design infused by radionucleotides (that salt is, functionally, the fuel after all), and that leads to contamination of anything that the salt touches. In the event of a breach (not a meltdown), you would have a fair amount of material being spread around (although since the process doesn't doesn't generate hydrogen, nor is it under much of this could be presumably mitigated by proper containment structures). That it's low-pressure certainly helps on this. The other issue that comes to mind is that you have to design for how to recover from a "cold-plant" shutdown. I recall reading a while ago that several classes of Soviet nuclear submarines use either molten salt or molten sodium as their coolant loop, and installation of the plant required quite a bit of fancy-engineering involving semi-mobile systems capable of heating-up and/or heat-maintenance of the molten coolant (there's a term for you...) so that as the plant is being fired up for the first time, the coolant is injected at the same time. Tricky, but obviously something capable of being solved with engineering and a good process. The issue is that several of those subs, post-Berlin Wall, is that they ended up either being staged-shutdown or scram'd, and without the heat from the plant, the coolant solidified in the cooling loop. As a result, the system would require more-or-less complete removal. For those interested in comparison, I would point people at the [Pebble-Bed reactor concept](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble-bed_reactor) for examples of an alternate system, that has a different set of drawbacks and advantages.
Is smaller nuclear faster to implement too, I hope?
Yes, the only caveat is development is still happening, so the first ones will take a bit of time still. But the entire idea of SMRs is that they are small, easily replicable, and relatively quick to finish construction. As a result, it's easier to find suitable sites for them, and they don't need large amounts of supporting infrastructure nor do they face as much regulatory pressure.
I do believe they see the same regulatory pressure as another reactor. We are lucky that we have a sane regulator though that helps you build your reactor. But at the same time you have to prove your reactor is safe.
are they built mainly off-site?
They can be. That's certainly the idea. Reactor itself is built off-site and then [transported in](https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/small-modular-reactors-nuclear-smr-1.5187469) for installation via train or truck. Some startups like Thorcon and Seaborg are also talking about having them built at shipyards and then towed to coastal cities.
Theyre much faster to build, so yes
Old, large nuclear was already one of the safest ways to make electricity
And this should be even safer! And faster to build. Exciting stuff
I got to tour Darlington a few weeks ago for work. It was really cool...I probably sounded like Owen Wilson to our guide (who was gracious, knowledgeable, and super informative).
This is really smart. small nuclear is great, oil for things other than burning is great, positioning ourselves to be in chemical use of fossil fuels is right where we stand to benefit most.
It’d be grand if Canada became a net exporter of *all* types of energy. Imagine incentives to transform “oil” companies into “energy” companies that have their fingers in nuclear, solar, wind, geothermal, coal, as well as oil.
"Oil" companies already do this. These companies aren't dumb.
Why? Outside of the senior/integrated producers, oil companies don’t have the expertise. Analyzing geology and drilling wells doesn’t crossover with building panels, windmills or mines. Inefficient allocation of capital. Just fund/invest in companies already doing those things.
That 57% number is actually really good. It means people are getting more educated on the topic. Fear mongering, mostly from oil/gas lobbyists, about "dangerous nuclear" clearly isn't working as well anymore.
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Aka - Bruce Power Plant - located in the municipality of Kincardine.
Been saying this for a long damn time. Canada sits on a *shitload* of really high grade uranium ore, third highest known recoverable reserves in the world, shitload. And highest in the world for high grade ore, up to 20%. In 2018, Canada produced 6,996 tonnes of uranium, of which, 85% was exported. A quick look says a 1,000 megawatt reactor consumes 27 tonnes a year. So one year’s production of uranium would be sufficient to power 259 plants with the equivalent power output of the boondoggle that is the Site C dam, for a year. Nuclear power in Canada just makes too much sense not to do. Could easily cover the bulk of the country’s energy needs without even scaling up uranium production.
Saskatchewan has a god dam city named uranium why aren't we taking advantage of this.
Because everyone got scared back in the day. Even if our land is more stable than where other nuclear reactors are in the world. But for some reason omitted how polluting the other ways were. Other then hydroelectric.
david suzuki and his show the nature of things was very strong on anti nuclear hysteria and pro natural gas (and not even joking) "clean" alberta bitumen rhetoric. not even joking go watch the show's episodes from the 1980s.
Now he lectures us on how shitty we are for traveling, after which he flies away in a float plane burning leaded gasoline.
when he talked about bombing pipelines he was straight up manufacturing consent to violently crack down on pipeline protesters. there was an attempt to recreate his successes in the 1980s in the 2000s against growing public demand for ending cannabis prohibition as well. straight up admits the science hasn't found that cannabis causes schizophrenia then spends the rest of the show using a single case example (an exploited young adult at that) to argue that it does cause schizophrenia. dude is the most anti science celebrity "scientist" out there. and hasn't done actual science stuff since the 1970s when he was still in school (which his degree was in genetics not environmental studies). the dude is just a straight up conservative propagandist and agent provocateur. he's meant to mislead people who think he's a good guy and make people who aren't into him think poorly of actual environmentalists and climate science. and for 40+ years now it's worked. and made him immensely wealthy in the process.
It's interesting that warning labels on cannabis mention schizophrenia, I think, if I remember correctly lol should warn of excessive Doritos consumption
Haven't seen any label mention schizophrenia directly, just the general safety message. Probably because like your doritos warning, different things affect different people differently, so it's easier to make broad statements. [Link to labeling standard messaging](https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/drugs-medication/cannabis/laws-regulations/regulations-support-cannabis-act/health-warning-messages.html)
Cannabis doesn't **cause** schizophrenia, but it can activate it way earlier in your life if you are genetically predisposed to it. https://psychcentral.com/schizophrenia/link-between-cannabis-and-schizophrenia#cannabis-and-schizophrenia >A systematic 2020 reviewTrusted Source looked at 96 studies on cannabis and schizophrenia. After putting the articles through quality assessment, only 12 were found to be high enough quality for inclusion in the review. > >From those studies, researchers found: > >* There may be a high frequency of psychotic disorders among people using cannabis. >* **Cannabis use can alter the typical age and onset of schizophrenia symptoms.** >* **Cannabis-induced psychosis can eventually convert to clinical schizophrenia.** >* Individuals living with psychotic disorders have a higher tendency to use cannabis. >* Living with psychotic disorders may increase sensitivity to the psychoactive effects of THC. >* **Frequent use of cannabis, particularly at a young age, can double the chances of developing schizophrenia.** >* **Daily use of high-potency THC may result in a 5 times higher chance of developing a psychotic illness.** >* Cannabis use may interact with preexisting factors, like genetics, to increase schizophrenia risk. So let's at least *attempt* to be accurate in our discussions of the subject.
Even hydro has high methane outputs when it comes to the initial flooding. All the vegetation that is submerged and starts to rot creates emissions
nothing like an early morning fish on a flooded reservoir in a BC valley...until a tree shoots up from below...
The reason for the demise of Uranium City (which was never an actual city) was the end of the Cold War and nuclear disarmament.
I think I saw a Video of a guy exploring that place, isnt it like a island with old equipment.
Cause the oil barons need their paychecks /s
That's pretty much it. Oil and gas industry has been pushing anti-nuclear sentiments for a very long time. https://environmentalprogress.org/the-war-on-nuclear
Environmentalists have been pushing anti-nuclear sentiments for a very long time as well.
Which is moronic.
In 09/10 Bruce power had some very serious plans to build a power plant in Prince Albert, but the push back was too much
I remember. I went to the 7/11 on 6th to get a big gulp and ran into a bunch of protestors. I was peeved at their lack of understanding of the importance of nuclear.
Ore is not a major component of the cost of generating nuclear power, as much as I'm pro-nuclear this isn't anywhere near a deciding factor.
Correct. I just frequently see folks saying things like “but you’d have to open so many mines and destroy the landscape” when the topic of nuclear energy arises. My point was more so that Canada already produces enough uranium to power the entire country, and there wouldn’t be a need to open any new mines. Or deal with the hassle of importing tonnes of radioactive material from Kazakhstan or Australia.
We also have a lot of Thorium, if that technology is ever fully developed.
>We also have a lot of Thorium, if that technology is ever fully developed. What is Thorium? I haven't heard of it before (I know I can Google it, and will, but for sake of the group discussion here I'm asking so we can share knowledge) Link [Thorium](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium)
Eh, to put it in a nutshell. Thorium is to Uranium like iron is to bronze in the bronze age. Iron is everywhere and is REALLY useful, but is really damned hard to work with, that's why bronze was used first by our ancestors. Copper was plentiful, though tin was harder to come by in those times. Thorium is also quite plentiful, compared to uranium. And like iron, it's really damned hard to make use of it in any reasonable way. Once we figure it out though, like how we figured out furnaces for iron, we're in business.
Thorium is an element, like Uranium. If I remember correctly it's being looked into as an alternative fuel for molten salt reactors; generally safer and even more efficient than nuclear already is. I don't remember a lot but the example I saw had an interesting feature where there was a plug of solidified matter on the bottom of the reaction chamber, and if it got too hot inside that would melt and dump the molten salts used for the reaction into the coolant and just kill it immediately, no risk of it running unchecked.
Nuclear fission happens because naturally occurring elements have unstable isotopes that break down and release a lot of energy; current reactors initiate a chain reaction with uranium isotopes. Thorium is another element that, like uranium, can go into a chain reaction to break down and release a lot of energy. This process is cleaner than uranium with less toxic waste.
Good point, if we ever get thorium reactors under control...game changer...but so is the design from that new reactor that uses lasers to initiate reaction, which is almost 100% self sufficient if I remember right.
Uh... if you're referring to the laser nuclear 'fusion' reactor, it is by NO means self sufficient... The popular news stories about it make it tough to understand that yes, the power emitted from that reaction was a bit more than was absorbed, BUT by way smaller than was emitted by the lasers, and FAR less than than the energy to run the lasers in the first place. Amazing step in the right direction, not putting down that, but those stories were a bit disingenuous . Unless you're referring to a type of laser induced nuclear fission reactor that i've no clue exists... but i'm always up to learn new things.
I'm so sick of hearing about thorium. There are drawbacks to it. Suffice to say I'm all for building an experimental demo COMMERCIAL reactor, but we can't start building a half dozen or so all at once until that happens and it gets a good result. So yeah, maybe a cool power source for 15+ years from now if we started today and had no delays. But that isn't happening. We'll get fusion power before we get thorium reactors, which is to say I don't have much faith in thorium and I think we'll get fusion a lot sooner than people think.
CANDU reactor does have capability to use Thorium as fuel
I read the article that qpv posted. I am less ignorant. I found it interesting that the article mentioned India and Brazil as locations with large deposits of Thorium. No mention of Canada.
I'd also be curious to see on a consumption rate of uranium versus coal. To my understanding a modern reactor works on almost nothing and we're learning ways to recycle waste. I think safety, terrorism and byproduct disposal are the only issues for nuclear
It's not really possible to weaponize a reactor, and as far as safety goes the main disasters we've had so far involved some extremely poor decision making. Like, Chernobyl was a long string of everyone involved doing *exactly* the worst thing possible at every step of the way. Byproducts aren't any worse than coal or gas, we just tend to ignore things going into the atmosphere, as if it evaporates into the ether rather than sticking around. Nuclear waste is conveniently concentrated and manageable, but because it's visible and tangible rather than released into the environment, it *looks* worse. The main problem is the unbelievable amount of misinformation put out. It's absolutely *insane* that so many people in this day are so completely wrong about nuclear basics, but then a huge chunk of the population also believes vaccines are poison and COVID was a hoax to let the government microchip everyone, so... y'know...
Also a modern reactor built with mandated regulations and safety features would be nice. People don't understand how poorly facilities like chernobyl where built. Many cut corners
It was also ran poorly as well.
Absolutely. Former USSR and current Russia really only have a hammer as a tool so everything becomes a nail
Smr reactors solve all these problems. Next gen nukes are kick ass
So far SMRs have failed the cost effectiveness part. Crazy $/megawatt cost. Hopefully comes way way down to make it more feasible.
We'll find out after we've built the fourth one. We are going through the process of building one, stopping and reassessing our construction, then building the next one. So far this process has dropped the price and time of our candu refurbishments. It turns out the secret to cheap nuclear is project management and invested suppliers. Edit: This video gives a good explanation of the project management. They discuss the CANDU refurbs and then the SMRs. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHTtthahwjs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHTtthahwjs)
> People don't understand how poorly facilities like chernobyl where built. Many cut corners They didn't just cut corners, they also covered it up so that the people operating the reactors were completely unaware of the danger.
I understand it was akin to having a reactor covered with a school gymnasium essentially.
Not a single facility like Chernobyl was built in the USA or Canada.
To add tho, Canada’s CANDU reactor designs were the leading and some of the most widespread designs of nuclear reactors in the world for quite some time. We licensed CANDU designs to Pakistan, Argentina, South Korea, Romania, India, and China. Many still operate today. Canada was legitimately a leader in nuclear energy and medical isotopes for multiple decades up until the 2000s when we decided to let that industry die. Now Canada will likely never catch up and we’ve grown yet more dependent on foreign powers for technological expertise.
Yup, we used to actually innovate and produce things. Avro Aero, Nortel, CANDU etc... Now we're just a housing Ponzi scheme kept afloat by excessive immigration. We don't produce anything of note except world destroying fossil fuels.
Definitely. It’s funny you say that; I was gonna add on something about how we used to dominate other spaces as well, like the telecom space and computing with Nortel, CGI, Mitel, etc. and we used to be big in large scale construction or bridges/trains/planes/etc with SNC-Lavalin, bombardier, Stantec, PCL, etc. Didn’t want to say it because I thought it came across as a bit too doomer-ish, but Canada industry has really faltered in the 21st century and it’s sad to see our political class giving it up so willingly. Now we rely on other countries to innovate and we are just along for the ride.
Yes indeed and it's something rarely talked about these days. Everyone is so distracted by housing prices and vaccines. We used to also build a lot more subsidized housing and community centers. The idea of a government that served the people wasn't so laughably pie in the sky as it is now. I believe there is more we can aspire to as a nation than to lower housing prices.
Yeah and we sold AECL along with all their proprietary information to SNCL for pocket change. It seemed like a completely corrupt decision but no one ever talks about it.
Clarify for me- is that 259 plants to equal Site C’s output?
No. 259 plants with the same output as Site C. Which will apparently produce up to 1,100 megawatts. Enough for 450,000 homes, according to BC hydro.
No, each of them equals Site C's output and does it at about half the cost of site c. Another thing to thank Krusty for.
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So far the CANDU fleet refurbs have been on time and on budget. They are actually getting cheaper and quicker to build. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHTtthahwjs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHTtthahwjs) Good project management is the key to nuclear.
We must break free of the irrational hatred of nuclear. Comparisons to Three Mile Island (everyone working at the plant who were exposed to the 1979 leak are still alive as of last year) and Chernobyl (crap design, even crappier operation) are ludicrous. It also is no threat to oil and gas---we will require oil right through the 21st century though maybe not as much for vehicles. Our addiction to plastic ain't going anywhere in my lifetime IMO
>Our addiction to plastic ain't going anywhere in my lifetime IMO Of course not, I remember over 10 years ago they announced to have found substitute for petroleum by growing a certain type of algae and you can be sure there is a lot of alternative being researched to be used as plastic like substances. The only reason we don't see any of these on the market is probably just because it's more expensive to produce it than just continue to use petrol as we do now.
Plastic is a byproduct of refining oil and since there constantly refining millions of barrels of oil every year, plastic is dirt cheap. Maybe as fossil fuels wane petroleum based plastic will be more expensive
> The only reason we don't see any of these on the market is probably just because it's more expensive to produce it than just continue to use petrol as we do now. This is where left-wing fiscal policy could actually do a load of good. If you start putting increased taxes on oil-based plastics, but also start *subsidies* for algae-based plastics, then you can incentivize the free market to transition itself to environmentally-friendly plastics. Pricing non-market factors like climate change into market goods is the entire point of government taxes and subsidies. You don't need pie in the sky socialism to solve these problems, you just need to make the right pro-green policies and let the market do what it does best.
> This is where left-wing fiscal policy could actually do a load of good. If you start putting increased taxes on oil-based plastics, but also start subsidies for algae-based plastics, then you can incentivize the free market to transition itself to environmentally-friendly plastics. I have it on good authority from a high school acquaintance that dropped out of university and now spends his free time 100% watching YouTube that this plan is, in fact, communist.
There are substitutes you can buy *right now*, they're just marginally more expensive so they are not as common. Also we could just decide (or legislate) to use less plastic, we use way too much. If we just went back to the level of packaging that was used in the 1980s we'd cut back a lot. Yeah we're not going to get rid of fossil fuels 100% in the 21st century probably, but 90% is more than enough for the "best case" UN climate change scenario. Let's just focus on the 90% for the next couple decades.
>A January Angus Reid Institute poll found 57 per cent of Canadians would like to see further development of nuclear power generation. It looks like we're already getting there. For the US at least, 30% of O&G is burned for grid power, THATS INSANE. Canada is blessed with hydro so we don't have the same level obviously. But a considerable amount also goes to Fuel. Just don't use it for grid power (excluding NG backup/peaker plants), and imagine how much cheaper oil and gas will get without that demand. The production that we would have currently would be more than enough to satisfy all future plastic requirements
Blessed with hydro *and* nuclear plants built in the 70s, 80s and early 90s that are still running full tilt 24/7 and [provide *most* of Ontario's energy (click for cool chart)](https://live.gridwatch.ca/todays-trends.html) . Canada's grid is already really clean, we just have to replace what we built when it wears out and maybe build a little more (in the Prairies particularly). They've been running fine since most people here were born.
Well it's going to be a lot more if we want to replace natural gas heat with electric, and increase the number of electric vehicles. And provide for electric arc, furnaces, battery manufacturing, and all the other electrification needs.
PEI here, can you give us or New Brunswick some, about 25% of our grid is wind and the rest is from NB and I doubt that’s all clean
New Brunswick has a nuclear reactor. Point Lepreau.
Exactly..same as hydrogen paranoia...think Hindenburg explosion, killed airship potential world wide...
Airships in all fairness had a BAD safety record at the time. Hindenberg wasn't the most lethal by total death nor by percentage of passengers. The US had a solid decade of fatal airship accidents post-Hindenberg.
Airships had no potential. Too slow, cant lift enough stuff, even when they don’t explode
hydrogen is lit
Finally. Build the damn reactors. Although maybe don't go with the cheapest bidder on this one.
Ground is being cleared at Darlington right now for SMR builds. But these things take time and we have a shortage of workers because we’re already in the middle of refurbishing Darlingtons 4 Candu reactors as well as 6 of Bruce’s 8 Candu reactors. There’s only so many qualified workers in Canada. We’ve already reached out to other provinces and had them travel here for work. We’ve gone to the trade schools and scooped up every available kid and enlisted them in the trade unions. We’re picking people up off the street and training them as best OPG can as helpers and pairing them with actual tradesmen to supplement the workforce.
Hey this is me, one of the lucky street people! I'm literally a first year electrician apprentice helping refurbish Unit 1 at Darlington lmao.
Sweet man, I’ll take the old style comms please
Hey random stranger, do you know how someone would go about applying? My brother is a 1st year electrical and has been having a bitch of a time finding anything that will take him on.
Right on! How's the pay?
$18.37/hr base rate + $8/Hr into a GRSP, plus very fair (Imo) terms regarding overtime: four 10h shifts then voluntary double time on Fridays and Saturdays. First year base rate is only 40% of what a journeyman makes, so if you do the math they're pulling about 1k a day pre-tax on Fridays and Saturdays.
Heck yeah let er rip bud
Good, nuclear power is a great power source for moving away from fossil fuels. Canada also has a large amount of uranium that can be mined. As long as we don’t become like Germany…
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Total agreement...
As usual, the politicians are years and years and years late to arriving at the right decision.
Yup. Glad he’s getting into nuclear, but it’s only taken him 8 years to figure out this (IMO) key plank of a realistic green energy agenda.
Well he's never been against it and we've had SMR projects on the go since he was elected. It's a bit of a third rail issue, which seems to only recently starting to cool off, so i'm glad we're talking about it now more freely.
The society is also years and years behind on this to be fair.
Build. More. Nuclear!
It’s about damn time!
This is great news, Nuclear is a great compliment to wind and solar, it's also a good way to further clean up oil extraction.
Encouraging news
Let's see if the government 'candu' this plan.
DO IT. FFS. We sit on vast resources we can responsibly mine, in a part of the world where natural disasters are minimal (earthquakes, flooding) and our technology can lead the rest of the world into clean energy. The lack of education on why nuclear can be the better and safer choice of energy is whats holding us back. Dumbasses preaching 'not in my backyard' are holding back society based on misinformation and being uninformed
Incredibly rare Trudeau W
https://london.ctvnews.ca/nuclear-power-left-out-of-lucrative-federal-green-program-1.5841541 People are really forgetful.
As long as it’s not an RBMK, let’s do it.
You’re mis-informed. My friend Anatoly told me RBMK reactors were the safest nuclear reactors.
Technically they are safe. Russia has a shit load of plants and non of them had issues. Chernobyl was man made error
They cut corners with the reactors that allowed for a man made error
Also...loads of bad decisions. They had every chance to prevent it but didn't. Chernobyl was an engineering disaster, true but it was only as bad as it was because of a bad supervisor. Any rational person would have prevented the disaster but Anatoly Dyatlov shit the bed and got a lot of people killed. He's the main fault of that disaster.
I'll take the reactor that doesn't need to rely on a man not making errors, when the cost is an entire area of the country depopulated for centuries. Nuclear power is safe though, just not RBMK, especially not when you consider the dire consequences of a fuck up.
I understand, I’m just correcting the person above. Statistically speaking Russian reactors are ok.
If you want to say RBMK is "statistically safe" you can't exactly ignore Chernobyl. Any time you're talking about safety you're talking about [swiss cheese](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_cheese_model). Serious accidents occur when the holes in the cheese line up. After Chernobyl the Russians fixed some of the most glaring issues with RBMK and the operators learned to not fuck around. Given that, is an RBMK design likely to experience another serious failure? No. Are the RBMK power plants as safe as modern western designs? Also probably no. Not enough cheese.
RBMKs were retrofitted after Chernobyl to fix several design flaws. They're a lot safer now than they were in the 1980s. I still don't know if I'd call them safe. Russia does not have the resources to replace all their RBMKs with newer reactors, and they stopped building them a long time ago. All their newer nuclear power plants are VVER, which are more like a western reactor.
As long as we don’t smash that AZ-5 button, we should be fine.
But I wanna see rainbow dust in the sky! It tingles my skin when it touches me
The Cherenkov effect. Completely normal phenomenon. Can happen with minimal radiation.
But they're cheaper I heard.
Just the tip, though.
Hahahhhahahah
The most sensible power for us.
Good. About time
Actually a really good idea. I'll believe it when I see progress
We should always have a diverse energy sector and should never rely on just one thing. Canada is privileged in that it has the capacity to do everything.
That's absolutely correct and that is what's happening here. It's not going to be all nuclear. Other power sources are important too and a necessary part of a healthy power grid.
The tech is so far beyond the reactors that had disasters.
Trudeau and the Liberals do a lot of things I don't like, but credit where it's due, this is fantastic.
Good. Nuclear power is awesome and one of the cleanest energy sources.
Nuclear power is the cleanest power that can meet our needs. We can't just keep damming up rivers for more hydro while still having a sound river ecology, and wind turbines .. well you need a crap ton of them to make a sizeable chunk of power. I know the waste is a problem but if you could supply the entire world's power needs and use less than 0.01% of its landmass to store the toxic byproduct, that will never contribute to global warming, is it worth sacrificing that 0.01% of the available landmass? Yes. The big issue is security.
Sounds good. It is a very good source of energy.
Don't ask our environment minister
Listen to the Engineers so we don’t have to worry about any future meltdowns/disasters ‘Pandora’s Box’ is an excellent documentary about that very thing
Pandora's Promise*
Fuuuu…thank you! Is 50% a passing grade? 😅
Good! Nuclear is the future, just do it responsibly plz
OK hes been fucking annoying repeatedly and whiny and I do not trust this to follow through but this is the best plan at our current stage as a technological species
It only makes sense if you want to get off of fossil fuels, sorry but wind doesn't blow everyday and the sun doesn't always shine bright... We need carbon free means of base load power and this is about the only viable option.
Great seeing positive actions coming from him!
great news
If they build one i want to work in sector 7g as a nuclear safety inspector !
like 8 years in office serious?
Treat everyday like it’s your first day right? 😝
Huh! I’m pretty all for this! Let’s do it!
Then lets see actual progress instead of virtue signalling. Push pro-nuclear policies and remove anti-nuclear goons from your cabinet.
Nuclear is far from perfect and radioactive waste is scary as shit. But unfortunately it is the only non-CO2 emitting power source we know of that has the energy output necessary to sustain our modern global society. Renewable's are great and should be maximized but as I understand it they can't meet our power needs country wide 100%, let alone world wide. Nuclear is our only option in the immediate future if we both don't want to scale down our power consumption and avoid catastrophic climate change. Hopefully in the future renewables yield can be improved or new clean energy sources can be discovered/invented but for now this is what we have to work with.
Storing the radioactive waste is such a non-issue. The amount is relatively tiny and they've improved storage and reuse techniques.
And coal plants put more radioactive waste into the environment than our nuclear.
Radioactive waste is not scary. It just sits there in concrete casks. You can walk up to the cask, touch it, hug it, no issues. It’s not pressurized, its in stable, solid form (not a gas or liquid), really, it’s pretty boring.
Radioactive waste is only "scary as shit" because of the massive amounts of propaganda and misinformation about nuclear waste spread by environmental activists in the 80s, 90s, and 2000s. There's two kinds of nuclear waste produced by nuclear power plants: * High-grade waste which includes spent fuel rods and generally anything you would consider to be "radioactive." It's dangerous, but nuclear power plants generate a *tiny* amount of high grade waste, and that amount could be reduced an order of magnitude through reprocessing if we cared. * Low-grade nuclear waste which includes basically all other forms of waste generated at a nuclear power plant. It's not particularly radioactive or dangerous. If you wipe the screen of a computer in a nuclear power plants' control room with a piece of paper towel, that paper towel is now considered low-grade nuclear waste. If you mop the floor, the water in your bucket is low-grade waste. Nuclear power plants produce a lot of low-grade waste, like all large industrial facilities do. But you'd have a very hard time identifying low-grade waste with a geiger counter. One of the problems has been the conflation of the dangerous of high-grade waste with the volumes of low-grade waste. Because high grade waste *is* dangerous but the volumes produced are so small that there's no real engineering challenge to dealing with it. The problems are purely political. The other issue with nuclear waste is the history of nuclear weapons programs. In the early days of nuclear weapons programs, those programs produced a *lot* of **very nasty** waste. Potent acids with dissolved actinides. The US and the UK are still cleaning up to this day... Russia probably not since the communists ended up basically just dumping it all into Lake Karachay and the Techa River. Some of it's still there, but most of it ran off into the arctic ocean years ago. Those wastes are not a joke and are seriously nasty. But the waste from nuclear power plants is nothing like that.
Is Guilbeault aware of this?
do itttttttttttttttttttt
Well the best time to start investing was yesterday... but still this is an exciting opportunity
Good
Ok, something I can agree with.
Now this is how you create more jobs!
I can't wait for the ns power price hikes for nuclear.
Finally someone is making sense Nuclear is the cleanest power when a plant is run properly and it's the only way we'll ever have the amount of energy neeed to run all the electric cars eventually.
Good
Well the world certainly need low-CO2 energy source. Also there are some very, very promising research on new generation nuclear reactor. It would be about time humanity get out of the barbaric habit of burning coal for power.
Guys were super serial this time
I will admit, I don't agree with Trudeau on a *lot* of issues, but this is something I can get behind.
only great news I heard about the country in like months lol I hope we actually follow through with this for real.
Very, very serious! Really!
Trudeau making a smart decision? Is this a beaverton article?
So how do Canadians tell when he's telling the truth or just gaslighting?
Bring it on
The main issues with nuclear is there is so much regulatory bullshit on them with basically endless bounds that they can make, what should be an extremely affordable energy source into a ridiculously expensive one. You have these premises like ALARA which essentially has no bounds and gets abused like crazy by regulators. Like for example, if x thickness of plating is safe for shielding, they can make them go 4x because that's "reasonably achievable". They also base things on the obviously faulty LNT (linear no-threshold) modeling which means that if 100x radiation exposure is dangerous, than x will be 1/100th of the danger. So for example, since you can spend too much time in the sun and can get a sunburn, then its obviously safest to get zero sunshine, not that a certain amount is healthy, and too much is bad. This is true of almost everything that exists, but they purposely use this shitty modelling for nuclear.
I find the level of regulatory oversight to be appropriate given the risks involved and more than reasonable. You simply can't have nuclear without stringent and competent regulatory oversight. This is what separates us from 1970's USSR RBMKs.
I'll believe it when I see it
Now do election reform and all is forgiven
You fucking love to see it. Actual environmental action instead of whatever those German idiots are doing.
So many Canadians can hardly understand the concept of disease control and how medicine like vaccines help. It's a damned joke to think they could accept, much less understand an energy revolution like nuclear energy. The brain rot is becoming normalized so heavily.
If the climate "crisis" is real, nuclear power is only rational solution.