A fair number of Canadians were terrified by the gross incompetence that led to Fukushima and similar disasters from us entrusting such dangerous but useful technology to private entities.
Another portion likely have familial ties to the absolutely disastrous uranium mining that was done knowingly unsafely and relied primarily on first nations labor.
There’s also always the portion that thinks anything nuclear is bad because of atom bombs.
I’m not certain what other people’s objections are, but the first two points are extremely valid and we need to work to regain that trust. Personally, I used to live in Vermont and Vermont Yankee irresponsibly leaked tritium into the local water supply, essentially, because proper handling was too expensive… the corporation then proceeded to declare bankruptcy and pay out investors before placing the burden of clean up primarily on tax payers.
We need to do nuclear right, it should be entirely government run - no neoliberal bullshit involving private companies like AirCanada.
I’ve had too many mind numbing conversations and I think many are afraid because it can’t be literally 10,000% safe. That somewhere, somehow, somewhat, anything, possibly, could, maybe, anything built by man may fail. Therefore!1!1
Exactly, with this type of playing into fears NOTHING is safe enough to rely on. Come the fuck on
One thing I’ve found helpful is to shift the conversation to how unsafe coal, oil, and LNG reactors are.
Nuclear tends to be “Go big or go home” fears but regular power generation is also quite dangerous… I.e. oil trains derailing and constant toxic exposure.
Coal plants produce a lot more radiation than nuclear has.
Yes you’re absolutely right, it’s just an uphill battle as you are aware no doubt. Thank you out of control corporate precedence and greed, so much propaganda and corruption
Yea, those people we can convince. Especially if we’re talking fail safe reactor designs like Thorium MSR. Nuclear technology is way beyond what it was in the 70s when most existing reactors were commissioned.
I don’t think you can. You tell them that and it’s always the same “somewhere, somehow, something, …”. That’s why it’s mindnumbing.
Nah, drop a link to the wiki article on MSRs, people are usually receptive.
I’ve yet to see someone who thinks they will meltdown. Most people I’ve spoke too do not think that any agency can be responsible for a toxic material warehousing for the next how ever many centuries. Its not like this stuff generates any profits just sitting there.
Nuclear waste is a problem we’ve got some good headway on. Our current reactors suck, but there are reactor designs to allow fuel reenrichment and some reactor models that consume waste and exhaust it to the point of being essentially safe to handle. In the grand scheme of things consumer reactor waste isn’t a serious problem… most of the awful waste issues come from military reactors like those on aircraft carriers and submarines.
How many of that 55% want the plant to be within 50km’s of them though? I’m guessing that number is a lot lower.
Much rather that than a coal plant within 50 km.
Every single point here is the same issues that go into every industry, especially important ones like energy. And nuclear is a far better option compared to any fossil fuel industry anyways.
Besides, the more electricity we generate, the less excuse we have to rely on natural gas for heating, which is one of the top sources of carbon in Canada. Thankfully because hydro generates like 70% of all of Canada’s electricity, but there’s a serious limit to that considering that most of that hydro is generated on the Eastern half of the country and the prairies have almost no waterfalls.
Some people live near the plants and watch the grift and excess through the fence. The nuclear industry in Canada is a jobs program. “Hide and seek for 2 grand a week”
Personally, I have a fair amount of faith in the CANDU design. The fact that they can operate using unenriched uranium is itself comforting relative to light water designs, and they employ a number of passive safeguards that would have prevented a Fukushima or what have you.
That said, I think we as Canadians tend to forget that most of us live near the border and there are nuclear plants on the other side as well. For example, where I live, the nearest plant is on the other side of Lake Ontario in upstate NY, as opposed to Darlington or Pickering as you might expect. And it might as well be the sister plant of Fukushima in terms of its design.
At any rate, though, I am generally supportive of building more reactors if done right.
CANDU is one of the best reactor designs currently running, in my opinion. The problem is that it’s expensive to build, and requires expensive maintenance, and in a world that loves to cut corners and find efficiencies that is not popular. But it is solid, it is safe, and I support many more of them being refurbished, maintained and built in this country despite the cost.
Advanced CANDU on the other hand, had little in common with CANDU despite the name, and bowed to all of the previously mentioned pressure to cut corners and find efficiencies resulting in a dangerous and ultimately non-viable design that basically killed Canada’s nuclear industry. It was a classic boondoggle, and while I was and am infuriated with the way Harper killed it and put it out of its misery, the real mistake had been pursuing it down that path in the first place which was a decision that came well before his time and was based on global circumstances that made it simply impossible to justify.
I would love to see even more advanced reactors being researched, designed and built here, modular, pebble bed, sodium, thorium, all of it. But sadly I think that is mostly unrealistic given the current state of our nuclear industry. CANDU is however at least one proven technology that we can and should continue to take advantage of. Even if we will probably never be nuclear leaders again thanks to the mismanagement and sabotage of our nuclear industry, at least we can cling to its legacy.
The oldest of the Pickering CANDUs has been running for fifty years, if I’m not mistaken, albeit with some gaps for refurbishment. If that isn’t a safe design, I don’t know what is.
In other words, I agree, let’s build more of those.
I’ll repeat a brief history of Pickering:
At Pickering A plant, two units (A2 &A3) have been decommissioned. Units A1 and A4 were refurbished in the early 2000s. The refurbishments were supposed to cost $670M, but ended up costing over $2B. The 4 units of B plant were commissioned from 1983-1986. They’ve had life extension work to maintain their licensing to continue operations, but they need complete refurbishment or decommissioning. The Ford government has been dragging its feet. If a decision isn’t made soon, the federal regulator will order them shut down.
Gosh I’d love to see some MSRs, that’s the fucking future.
I know that other countries have created knock-off CANDU reactors, but I’m not sure how much different they are.
The initial cost of construction for CANDU reactors is higher because of the heavy water requirements as I understand, and that once built the substantially lower fueling costs do have an eventual ROI. Also, the ability to derive power from raw unrefined Uranium allows heavy water reactors to reuse spent fuel from light water reactors. I think this would alleviate some of the (overblown) nuclear waste problems.
The other 45% can go push a giant dynamo like the mill in Conan.
TBH the Wheel of Pain is low carbon emissions
Same old strawman arguments. If it was just a question of poor reputation or people’s fears, we’d still be building reactors. PR can paper over those questions easily enough.
No, the issue was, and remains cost, more specifically massive cost overruns. Darlington was the last new plant built in Canada. It ran the equivalent of $24B in today’s money, for 3500MWe. Not cheap. Especially in light of how cheap the alternatives are.
SNC (AECL) are out of the new build business, so we’d likely end up looking at Areva EPR (or if we really want to gamble, the EPR2) or Westinhouse AP-1000. Their track records are even worse. The Vogtle-3 & 4 AP-1000s were supposed to cost $12B, but will end up running over $30B by the time they’re both up and running. The similar V.C.Summer units 2 & 3 project was supposed to run $9B, but the project was cancelled while under construction when projections had it running $23B at completion.
Areva’s track record with the EPRs is as bad. Olkiluoto-3 started construction in 2005, was supposed to finish commissioning in 2010, but only completed it in 2022. Costs went from €3B to €11B, though were limited by the contract. Flamanville-3 started construction in 2007, was supposed to complete commissioning in 2012, but it now projected for 2024. Costs have bloated from €3.3B to in excess of €20B.
Hinkley Point C is 2xEPRs . Initial budget was £16b. Currently it’s on track to hit near enough £30B.The French government has had to bail out Areva, and is in the process of re-nationalizing Électricité de France because of the massive liabilities they’ve been accruing. The average age of a French reactor now is 38 years. The GenII plants had a design life of 30 years after which they have to undergo in depth inspections, repair deficiencies and apply for a 10 year license extension. It was during this process that they discovered cracking and erosion in process piping. Between that, low water levels, and concerns about high effluent temperatures on the low water levels, at one point in '22, 35 of 56 operational reactors were offline. The French don’t have the capacity to replace the older reactors fast enough. Their industry is in a tough spot.
The cost argument is as valid as any, in fairness though you have to consider that the delays caused by company bankruptcies, COVID etc. were not really forseeable for any long-term major project, and between 2010 and 2023 inflation was about 41% with commodity prices and lead times being all over the place.
If these projects had taken their originally scheduled 5 years, they would have been long since completed prior to COVID or the spike in inflation of the last three years. But they have been running 5 to, in some cases, 12 years beyond their original schedule. The longer a project takes, the more uncertainty enters the equation.
From 2010 to 2020 the core rate of inflation was averaging 1.7%, and 5.25 from 2020-2023. I’d be hugely surprised if any of these projects had estimated the annual inflation rate at less than 2%.
The bankruptcy of Westinghouse was directly tied to their inability to deliver on time/budget. Likewise the cash infusion to Areva to maintain solvency.
Over the history of North American reactors, budget overages have averaged 207% of their original budgets. The industry has a history of overpromising and underdelivering. Companies backing these projects are aware of the history and it’s why finance rates on these projects tends to be quite high. The initial finance rate of the Hinckley Point C project was 9%, for example. The financiers recognize the risks. Financing for gas/wind/solar, in comparison, would be at or close to prime rates typically.
The industry has a history of overpromising and underdelivering.
All of construction industry, not just nuclear power generation, has a history of overpromising and underdelivering, possibly outside of wartime when money for “national security” purposes is of no object.
Here’s a Practical Engineering video on “Why Construction Projects Always Go Overbudget”.
My working theory is that whether it’s due to the bidding process or inflation or political corruption or anything… Public projects need to be pitched to the public and stuff will never get done if people keep saying “it’s economically unviable!!!”. That’s why we would see a politician try to bring the most favourable numbers possible assuming no delays or mistakes. But you can’t always have no delays or mistakes, and once a project is started it’s way easier for a politician to stick through it than if you use engineer-produced numbers with risk overheads included or inflation adjusted to the time of commissioning.
To your point about financing… The financing rate is inherent to the length of the shelf life of a project. If you were try to buy a 1 yr. vs. a 10 yr. vs. a 30 yr. bond, you would be offered different rates. Risk is inherent over the entire lifespan of a project, and some projects are a major upfront investment that pays off 20-30 years down the line instead of in 5-10 say with a wind or solar project. We see that despite the problems, 50 year old reactors are still running and it would be a problem if we shut it down without a good replacement. Wind and solar tech from 10-15 years ago are already obsolete, but that’s not a bad thing economically because they’d already paid off their value and use. It’s just different natures of projects.
Yeah, I’ve seen that video before. I’ve worked in consulting engineering, primarily in generation for 25 years. The major non-nuclear projects I’ve been involved with have been within a few percentage points of the original budgets. Some of the worst ones were off by 10-15%. Not 150% as in the case of Vogtle.
The last combined cycle gas plant I worked on was the Chinook Generating Station in Swift Current. Fairly small at 353MW, but cost $600M, which was roughly $75M under budget. Those are words you’ll never hear for a nuclear project.
The refurbishment at Point Lepreau was originally expected to run 18 months and cost $1.5B. It ended up being just short of 4 years and cost $2.5B. That’s very expensive for a 660MW unit. CANDU6 have a design life of 30 years, when they need extensive refurbishments, or decommissioning. Lepreau made it to 28 years when reliability was really starting to impact it’s viability. When faced with the same issue at Gentilly on a near identical reactor, Quebec Hydro pulled the plug. Quebec Hydro obviously having other options available to it.
At Pickering A plant, two units (A2 &A3) have been decommissioned. Units A1 and A4 were refurbished in the early 2000s. The refurbishments were supposed to cost $670M, but ended up costing over $2B. The 4 units of B plant were commissioned from 1983-1986. They’ve had life extension work to maintain their licensing to continue operations, but they need complete refurbishment or decommissioning. The Ford government has been dragging its feet. If a decision isn’t made soon, the federal regulator will order them shut down.
The 860MW Combustion Engineering PWR at Maine Yankee only ran from 1972 until 1997, 25 years, when it was powered down for the last time. It was never particularly reliable and only hit a lifetime capacity factor of somewhere around 70%, not nearly enough to be economically viable. The cost to refurbish was estimated to exceed it’s initial construction costs, so it was decommissioned and the site is currently used for storing radioactive waste.
These projects could be getting far better finance rates if they could stick to the 5 year construction schedule. They’re penalized because history is pretty clear that they can’t. With projects like the V.C.Summer plant being cancelled mid-construction due to overruns, financing became even harder to secure.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Here’s a Practical Engineering video on “Why Construction Projects Always Go Overbudget”
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Nuclear fission based reactors should be left for beyond Earth’s orbit; for space exploration, space mining, etc.
On earth, it’s more of a liability with multiple security/safety concerns that engineers, architects, scientists and risk management specialists have to contend with, thus making any project exponentially and unnecessarily more expensive. Theorically, we all know and understand that following all the baseline protocols and maintenance schedules rigorously will keep a nuclear fission power plant working without environmental/health/safety issues for its entire entended life cycle.
However, we live in an imperfect world where important things gets postponed, rescheduled, ignored out of inconvenience, forgotten due to changing priorities or changes in personnel/chain of command, or mismanaged simply due to political interference/apathy/nepotism/ignorance. All this is internal to its regular operation.
Externally, we have to constantly/actively monitor and react to natural disasters, accidents, terrorism, climate change (e.g. input water temperature), etc. So as to ensure operational integrity at all time.
In contrast, nuclear fusion based reactors have the potential to solve alone all our energy needs for the foreseeable future in a carbon neutral (even carbon negative) manner. However, the resources assigned to make a scientific breakthrough in that field is largely insufficient if not scrawny/famished. It is indeed several magnitudes more expensive, supply chain constrained (special custom equipments and parts), rife with delays, constantly over budget all while still trying to understand the fundamental science with experiments and scientists spread throughout the four corners of the planet.
We could accelerate the progress towards nuclear fusion power plants similarly to how we accelerated COVID-19 vaccine research & production, but it will require several times more financing into each potential fusion reactors designs and each of their successive prototypes (tokamak, stellarator, spherical tokamak, inertial confinement, liquid metal mediated magnetized target fusion, magneto-inertial fusion, etc…)
Can’t say I agree with this at all. The thing about fission that people regularly mistaken about is how much actual waste there is, and how little of a deal it is. Not to mention that all the safety processes and security issues that you mentioned had been solved since the 70s or so. I mean, there’s never been an incident in the entire world regarding nuclear fuel or waste being stolen. Only nations have ever produced a nuclear weapon, dirty or atomic.
And in regards to waste, the amount of high level nuclear waste that’s been produced world wide is only a few dozen tons, all of which can be recycled and reused, cutting down the half-life from millions of years down to only a bit above 200 years, and reducing the total quantity of waste to only a fraction of the original amount. I mean, when people throw around all the nuclear waste numbers, they include low level waste as well, which include things like the radiation suits the workers wear while working near the reactor. Waste that become non-nuclear waste after a holding time of two months and are generally tossed with the trash like normal.
In addition, the worry about natural disasters is entirely a red herring for most nations that build nuclear reactors in the first place. The containment building of a nuclear reactor is designed to survive an actual missile strike. You could have a 747 dive bomb the nuclear plant, and it wont’ crack the containment building. Nothing short of something on the level of a US bomber squadron dropping an entire flight of bombs, or a conventional nuclear weapon, directly on the plant will crack that thing. No natural disaster short of a magnitude 10.0 earthquake or a volcano sprouting underneath the plant will cause any decent nuclear plant to leak radiation.
And if you’re going to mention Fukushima as a counter example, then let me remind you, that it took a direct hit from both an earthquake and a tsunami to disable the plant (the containment building didn’t even crack from that), and the backup generator room drowning for a good 2 weeks without a single nuclear technician not being able to enter the entire city for that duration before the critical explosion happening. The damn reactor, a design that was considered flawed due to putting the generator room underneath the plant instead of above it like the original recommendations to lower the risk of terrorists that the US was worried about in the 70s in a nation without a history of terrorism before the 90s, managed to survive without power for its cooling systems nor any technicians to repair anything for 2 weeks. And to make matters worse, the Fukushima plant was actually slated to be retired a decade before it due to being too old, but was pushed to stay online until a newer plant could be built, so it was even way past its decommission date on top of every other factor going against it. And the worst that happened was a slight elevation of radiation for that one year, and the current discharge of tritium that is magnitudes lower than the amount that pretty much any nuclear plant discharges during normal operations. Far lower than the amount that anyone who sources water from Lake Ontario or the St Lawrence drinks on a regular basis, for example.
You may have misunderstood my focus, I agree that current nuclear reactors are designed with utmost safety and redundancy on top of redundancy. However, all those safety measures multiply feasibility, development and operating costs while also increasing the surface area of things that may be mismanaged/ignored/forgotten and not be immediately detected by external auditor/inspector if there is any at all.
As I have written previously:
Theorically, we all know and understand that following all the baseline protocols and maintenance schedules rigorously will keep a nuclear fission power plant working without environmental/health/safety issues for its entire entended life cycle.
Obviously, I absolutly hope and want nuclear technology to develop further. However, I do not think currently available options are cost effective and durably suitable for a world of increasing climate change perturbations. Governments, institutions and organizations will be stretched thin and thinner by multiple factors while increasing demands and sequences of societal and climatic events will test their ever changing priorities.
Nevertheless, one fission technology that may show promise in an increasingly turbulent world are small self-contained reactors. From my understanding, they are deployed in situ and buried providing energy to a nearby facility until its fuel has reached a predetermined end-of-life cycle. The self-contained reactor is then dug out and replaced by a new one while the EOL reactor is returned to be “recycled” and redeployed elsewhere. It seems simpler, hopefully also cost effective and a smaller safety concern overall.
As you have also pointed out with Fukushima having been slated to be decommissioned, political prerogative pushes thing far beyond what was intended. Be it old bridges collapsing way beyond their lifespan, or old submarines killing their crew from a fire onboard, or old fleet of gas guzzling trucks still belching a mix of burnt and unburned fuel particles, the list goes on forever. Even if we built the safest, most redundant, almost completely automated nuclear power plant that could last a hundred or two hundred years, how future governments deals with the decommission is entirety subject to their whims and changing political context.
And we can already witness hiccups of various degrees in every single countries since even before the pandemic, with changing political situation due to several interconnected factors in which climate change is a threat multiplier.
The thing is that people have a terrible level of patience in regards to long term benefits. For example, people constantly advocate for wind and solar, yet both only last ten years before having to be replaced. And as an alternative, natural gas is often proffered and employed, yet they only last about 20 years before being replaced. Nuclear fission plants have a typical lifespan of 60 years, with even existing plants having a theoretical lifespan of over 100 if the will to continuously refurbishing them exists. As things stand, we actually don’t have a single source of energy as cost efficient as nuclear fission as things stand aside from hydro. It’s just that it also has the single greatest initial investment cost as well, and won’t be paid back during the term of any administration that commissions it, as even in the best case scenario, they take 6 years to build, and can often take more than 10.
I do agree that SMRs are a great next step for nuclear as well as power generation in general, but they are also only a stepping stone. They only last 5 years or so before having to be replaced (as they generally cannot be refueled). But at the same time, we can survive using only stepping stones for the next few decades until a better alternative (aside from full scale fission) rounds the corner. I do hope fusion ends up being that power source, but traditional fission (as well as the newer advances in fission) are still one of the most cost effective, efficient, reliable, and safe. They just have a high political hurdle to face, as people fear what they don’t understand and there is no power source right now that people understand less than nuclear.
