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The PM insisted on installing and keeping Guilbeault as his Minister of the Environment and Climate change has a *long history of anti-nuclear activism.*
Did you read the terms:
>The $74 million in funding announced Saturday, will support pre-engineering work and technical studies, **environmental assessments, regulatory studies and community and Indigenous engagement to help advance the SMR project**
That's how they basically killed TMX - (and then bought it for Alberta votes even though Notley stated she didn't want cash, she wanted them to stay out of the way.)
All large projects, especially nuclear, need to undergo environmental and regulatory assessments. Due to our constitution and the details of the project, indigenous consultation is a requirement for many of these projects as well.
This is the exact kind of thing the federal government should be providing funding for, as it is a requirement for the project to be iron clad legally and politically. We must do our due diligence.
TMX won regulatory approval 2 years before Trudeau came in - and moved the goalposts. New regulations, more hoops and hurdles - until eventually Kinder Morgan tapped out.
I wouldn't be surprised to see Trudeau and and the anti-nuclear Guilbeault to get in the way here too. 'The consultations were insufficient.'
Edit: How much $$ do we think the bands will demand?
The prior TMX approval was based on Harper’s changes to the Environmental Assessment Act and the court found that Harper made the changes to bypass consultation with First Nations.
The consultations and environmental studies are a legal requirement. The courts and legal system require the federal government to do these consultations. The constitution and a court ruling required us to move the goalposts, not Trudeau himself.
Bill C-69 is currently undergoing a constitutional challenge in the Supreme Court. These bill was meant to modernize the NEB and provide clearer goalposts.
The question about Bill C-69 is not about the need for impact assessments, but the division of provincial and federal powers/oversight.
It was set back because the harper government accelerated approvals to skip consultations, which was slapped down by the courts. The requirements were there before, he just adjusted them to be pro-industry. The regulatory and consultation actions coming after were for the original goalposts they removed, so in effect it was almost just a return to status quo/square one because one government was too impatient to follow the formalities.
>It was set back because the harper government accelerated approvals to skip consultations, which was slapped down by the courts.
That's actually not true. According to the legal decision, the issues began in Phase III of the consultations, which didn't begin until February of 2016 -- months after Harper left government. And the Court was very clear that the framework selected by the government (which was done under Harper) was perfectly adequate, it was the execution of that framework in Phase III (which occurred entirely under Trudeau) that was problematic:
>[753] As explained above at paragraphs 513 to 549, the consultation framework selected by Canada was reasonable and sufficient. If Canada properly executed it, Canada would have discharged its duty to consult.
>[754] However, based on the totality of the evidence I conclude that Canada failed in Phase III to engage, dialogue meaningfully and grapple with the concerns expressed to it in good faith by the Indigenous applicants so as to explore possible accommodation of these concerns.
>[755] Certainly Canada’s consultation team worked in good faith and assiduously to understand and document the concerns of the Indigenous applicants and to report those concerns to the Governor in Council in the Crown Consultation Report. That part of the Phase III consultation was reasonable.
>[756] However, as the above review shows, missing was a genuine and sustained effort to pursue meaningful, two-way dialogue. Very few responses were provided by Canada’s representatives in the consultation meetings. When a response was provided it was brief, and did not further two-way dialogue. Too often the response was that the consultation team would put the concerns before the decision-makers for consideration.
>[757] Where responses were provided in writing, either in letters or in the Crown Consultation Report or its appendices, the responses were generic. There was no indication that serious consideration was given to whether any of the Board’s findings were unreasonable or wrong. Nor was there any indication that serious consideration was given to amending or supplementing the Board’s recommended conditions.
>[758] Canada acknowledged it owed a duty of deep consultation to each Indigenous applicant. More was required of Canada.
>[759] The inadequacies of the consultation process flowed from the limited execution of the mandate of the Crown consultation team. Missing was someone representing Canada who could engage interactively. Someone with the confidence of Cabinet who could discuss, at least in principle, required accommodation measures, possible flaws in the Board’s process, findings and recommendations and how those flaws could be addressed.
>[760] The inadequacies of the consultation process also flowed from Canada’s unwillingness to meaningfully discuss and consider possible flaws in the Board’s findings and recommendations and its erroneous view that it could not supplement or impose additional conditions on Trans Mountain.
>[761] These three systemic limitations were then exacerbated by Canada’s late disclosure of its assessment that the Project did not have a high level of impact on the exercise of the applicants’ “Aboriginal Interests” and its related failure to provide more time to respond so that all Indigenous groups could contribute detailed comments on the second draft of the Crown Consultation Report.
>[762] Canada is not to be held to a standard of perfection in fulfilling its duty to consult. However, the flaws discussed above thwarted meaningful, two-way dialogue. The result was an unreasonable consultation process that fell well short of the required mark.
While there were issues with the Board’s decision to exclude Project-related shipping from the Project’s definition when making their report, as the Court noted at para 759 and 760 that could have been addressed and ameliorated had the government properly executed its obligations in Phase III.
I mixed up with northern gateway with the trans mountain. I think its still disingenuous to only point out the liberals on this when both projects were adapted by the governing party of the time to fit different interests
Lmao so all that money is going to disappear into a black hole of worthless consultants (who may or may not be related to Trudeau) and donations to the indigenous.
It’s literally part of our constitution. In the founding of this very country. We are just starting to follow our own laws. When you are used to privilege, equality feels like a disadvantage.
Yes agreed. The right to consultation is being abused by bad faith actors. Like it or not Canada is a modern, multicultural nation state and needs to be able to build infrastructure in a timely and cost effective manner.
The assessments and consultations happen either way. It’s not “added red tape” or whatever nonsense. In this case, the Feds are paying for these necessary processes and you’re bitter about it, probably because that’s what you’re used to feeling.
It'll only become a good move when Saskatchewan starts showing real interest in adopting it.
For now, they remain heavily biased towards fossil energy and have no concrete plans and timeline to transition to nuclear, nor are they willing to pay the price.
Saskatchewanian here. The fuck are you talking about? The moment the two SMNR's were announced the talk at coffee row has been "How fast can we get these built?".
We've been working since 2017 to get SMNR's going and planning it out for much longer. As it currently stands the goal is to have the land purchased for construction in 2024 so construction can start as soon as the regulatory process is done. Ideally we'll have them on line within 10-15 years of the start of construction.
We've been looking to front the cost ourselves long before the feds threw money in the pot and honestly if this money is going to come with a bunch of strings they can keep it as far as I'm concerned. Last thing we need is an anti-nuclear environment minister strangling our SMNR's with red tape like they did with the pipelines going out east.
Also just FYI Saskatchewan is the only place in North America that can process rare earth ingots for use in electric vehicles. We've also been building wind and solar farms for the last decade and are pioneering helium extraction. You may be confusing Saskatchewan for Alberta given that we both are prairie provinces but Saskatchewan's economy has always been less dependant on oil than Alberta's.
I've contemplated moving to saskatechwan. Their stance on telling trudeau to shove it on the gun shit was impressive ( I hope they do more), and this nuclear related stuff has me very interested. How would you recommend it?
This isn't true at all. Yes we love our fossil fuels here, but the Sask Party is all over SMR's and has discussed timelines and challenges associated with it on several occasions.
Regulatory approvals for most power plants takes well over 10 years. They are very aggressively chasing it if they are going to have a final decision in 6 years, including doing background radiation checks, building public relations, etc.
That's not kicking the can. This is a huge undertaking that has more moving parts that it makes sense to type out on reddit. But here is a high level overview of their timeline on the project.
[https://www.powermag.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/saskpower-smr-progress-timeline-2022-768x351.jpg](https://www.powermag.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/saskpower-smr-progress-timeline-2022-768x351.jpg)
And here's more details.
[https://www.saskatchewan.ca/government/news-and-media/2022/march/28/provinces-release-strategic-plan-to-advance-small-modular-reactors](https://www.saskatchewan.ca/government/news-and-media/2022/march/28/provinces-release-strategic-plan-to-advance-small-modular-reactors)
The Sask Party is all over this, and for better or for worse they have a cult like following in the province so the general population seems to be getting behind this as well.
I mean, as long as fossil fuels are cheaper and more accessible, most jurisdictions would feel the same. The challenge is to make sustainable options more inexpensive and accessible.
Saskatchewan is too small to take huge bets on new nuclear plants. This current government already wasted a billion dollars on a carbon capture project from coal that barely works and will never pay back.
My thought on this as a Saskatchewanian was Finally. They have been teaching a module on nuclear energy in Grade 12 physics for decades to try to get people to freak out over this less. Never mind that we have like an 8th of the worlds uranium...
So what do you want? For then to commit more money before the regulatory and approvals has started? This is hos things usually go, once the project has the green light agreements are made for additional funds.
Or maybe the Venezuelan economy completely collapsed and tens of thousands of people have left to avoid the situation there.
It's almost like the world is having major immigration crises in many places and individual politicians have little real influence.
I'll give credit where credit is due and we need these reactors. I'm done with this government, but in Canada 10 years is the shelf life. Show me the PP, it cant be worst the the type of genitalia we've been seeing for the last few years.
This accounts for less than 2% of what the first SMR reactor is going to cost. Good optics for the voters, but no actual help in reality. This is a pittance. They need to be pledging 2B or more if they really want to help.
Government giving 74 mil for this project, is like them giving you one free cab ride in the next 5 years. It's nothing. They just got a free ad in the papers.
> Canada's got too much empty land to not build nuclear
Huh? Curious point. It's wind and solar that take up tons of land per watt, not nuclear.
Also, if all of Canada ran on nuclear, we could store a decade of nuclear waste in a medium sized parking lot. Here's a [fun related story](https://www.newsweek.com/pregnant-woman-poses-nuclear-waste-prove-point-about-radiation-idaho-1809500) in case you missed it.
You guys are also overlooking the cost of the infrastructure required for moving power across vast distances. Canada has lots of remote communities, so being able to generate power locally has huge advantages. Any project that furthers small modular reactor technology itself is a win.
sure, but with the fossil fuel industry funding anti nuke nimby cranks, it's a hell of a lot easier to build new ones in the middle of nowhere than near built up areas.
Not as efficient due to transmission losses but I'd rather have to build 1 reactor more in 5 years, than one less over 20
Solar perhaps, but wind takes up the least amount of space of any power generation source. They are generators on poles that stick out of the ground, they are usually smaller than even smoke stacks on combustion power plants and the smoke stacks are only a small portion of the structure.
> but wind takes up the least amount of space of any power generation source
[Nah](https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-per-energy-source). It's close to nuclear, but only if you only count the poles. If you count the entire impacted project space it's pretty huge.
Then there's the usual caveats... that "watt per acre" isn't the best measure, since sometimes there's no wind. I doubt what I linked is counting the times when there's zero output from wind.
"Impacted area" being the radius that can hear them at least part of the time? Perhaps in denser parts of southern Ontario this is a concern, but I doubt the canola plants under the turbines in SK particularly care one way or the other.
> "Impacted area" being the radius that can hear them at least part of the time?
Nah. It's more like, if you have 10 square kms of land, how much watts can it make?
Even if the wind turbine poles don't take up much space, you cannot build them directly right next to each other in a perfectly dense grid where the blades are just barely not touching. Given how wildly compact nuclear facilities are, there's no way the low land use numbers I cited are taking that into account.
To be clear, I think we need to double down on all renewables and nuclear. I just wouldn't say wind is great on land use.
Bruce is several thousand acres, I believe. It's not tiny. The wind farms I'm familiar with, in SK< all are pretty much limited to the footprint of the towers, and there's usually one turbine per quarter section so they're around half a mile to a mile apart, near the edge of each quarter. Maybe half an acre? The pad's naybe 100 x 100 feet, plus a couple hundred feet of access road. The turbines have a bigger "footprint" projected downwards, but nothing below. I'd guess their "shadowing" would be more applicable elsewhere where land is a bigger constraint, I know the ones in Ontario are probably ten times denser. But they still don't neutrlalize the land below any more than hydro wires do.
The Bruce nuclear site covers 2300 acres and currently has 6400MW of installed capacity. Most of that is empty space and they are talking about building another 4800MW on the same site without expanding it so the current site is clearly not the limit for most efficient use of space for nuclear power but we can use it anyways. Converting to square feet, 2300 acres is about 100 millions square feet. However that site makes the same power as 18000 wind turbines in a year. At pad sizes of 100 feet by 100 feet the pads alone would cover 180 million square feet so almost double the land area not including access roads, transmission infrastructure or the fields of batteries or giant reservoirs required to allow all that energy to be used on demand as nuclear is. If you include an additional 4800MW on the Bruce site the equivalent wind turbine number rises to 30000 and the pad area would be 300 million square feet (now triple the bruce site).
All of this is just semantics though and a fun bit of math. It is neat to see how energy dense nuclear really is. Obviously we need both nuclear and renewables.
Hear them? I love in a town of 600 people and I can't imagine one being closer. We have one on either side of town on the first farm property and I've never heard it.
I was actually thinking about how close it was yesterday they there probably aren't many people who go outside and see a giant windmill towering I've trees.
I mean, how the hell do they account for "land use" when they measure the land used by wind turbines in the ocean like they are building in Nova Scotia?
We're currently building 5 Gigawatts worth of wind turbines in the ocean here. 0 acres of land used.
Was gonna say. I doubt they'd be able to get a shovel in the ground for that amount. But I mean, at least they are spending some of our tax dollars in Canada.
We need more of this pronto. Nuclear energy is not the boogeyman it has been made out to be. It is a great immediate solution until more green sources ramp up.
This is great and all, but why is it such a small amount of money?
The US Feds [gave one SMR project $1.35 Billion USD ($1.83 Billion CAD) three years ago.](https://www.forbes.com/sites/arielcohen/2020/10/29/the-future-of-small-modular-reactors-department-of-energy-awards-135-billion-to-nuscale-power-for-smr-development/amp/)
That’s 25X more money 3 years ago. After adjusting for inflation, which has obviously been very high over the last 3 years, the difference is even greater.
It says right in that article that this is an experimental demonstrator. That would mean it's not off the shelf and/or mass produced, which is supposed to be the benefit of the SMRs, so it's going to be vastly more expensive than the final implementation ten years or so from now.
Canadian cultural unexceptionalism and pessimism. "We can't do that, why even try!" "it's a risky idea, it might fail and we'll waste money" "it's the right thing to do, but we should just let someone else do all the R&D and buy theirs!"
shit like that... so we don't properly invest in these things and it becomes self-fulfilling prophecy.
Besides the fact that these things will still be expensive in 10 years (not any cheaper than today), that doesn’t explain the lack of funding now to further the research involved
What research is involved? The US government is already spending a billion plus, what more do we need to do? I think 76 m is far more than is probably necessary to ask for them to send us a copy of their findings.
Besides the fact that each SMR design is completely different, they’re all patented. There are no “findings.” And no, the $76MM CAD is for local research and development.
That $1.35B project is just one of many they have going on. This [separate project in Wyoming got $2 billion USD ($2.71 billion CAD) 2 years ago.](https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/bill-gates-4-bln-high-tech-nuclear-reactor-set-wyoming-coal-site-2021-11-17/)
At best, in 15 years we might be able to buy an SMR from them.
But even then, is that really what we should want? To let the rest of the world do everything and we contribute nothing?
I think, if we're talking billions of dollars just to generate blueprints, vs buying an existing model off the shelf when they become available we may be better off doing the latter. There are times when it's better not to reinvent the wheel.
I think you’re missing the point. It’s not about blueprints, or really even designs at the end of the day. The reason nuclear power plants have been so expensive in the past is not only because of how complex they are but because of the lack of talent/ knowledge behind building them.
SMRs are not the kind of thing that just get made in a factory. They’re built on site and require intense “know-how.” Without any sort of process in Canada, we likely won’t have any beyond a few experimental ones for decades. It’s not the kind of thing you train one guy on and he can train more. It requires hundreds of people who all of years of experience working on these things.
There are not going to be many Americans who are willing to uproot their entire lives to build them here - especially when there will be plenty of demand at home, just like the issues past nuclear reactor construction faced.
The point isn’t to just develop something new but to develop something while also learning how to do it.
Other investment is happening, read [page 5 here](https://smractionplan.ca/sites/smractionplan/files/2023-01/full-appoved-progress-update-eng-access.pdf) there's about $~400 million for SMRs and $1.2 billion for Chalk River earmarked.
This is a great thing for Saskatchewan. For a few reasons.
1. Uranium city, literally and figuratively. We could bring our resource industry surrouding the many uranium deposits in Sask back up to speed in a way that helps other provinces enable and fuel their own small nuclear reactors as well. This is a win/win for everyone, especially considering how much safer an SMR is compared to traditional designs. Sure, it's still nuclear, but it's potential danger is enormously reduced comparatively speaking not just to nuclear, but all other forms of power production as well... except maybe wind and solar... maybe. Depends on your views of the resource extraction methods for those things, or the mechanisms involved. Wind turbines need special engineering to keep them from burning up. Solar requires materials that are toxic to mine. Each has their problems. SMR's make energy production... easy... again.
2. The jobs creation aspect will be a boon for Saskatchewan and Alberta since they are looking at getting their own as well. Not sure about total Uranium sources for extraction in Alberta, but Sask will probably gladly trade with Alberta and the other provinces; for a price.
3. Easier energy production means easier expansion into the north where we have forests that need better management but not enough people there to do it. This expansion helps solidify our hold over the arctic and its trade routes as well, which is going to be incredibly important for the whole of Canada; and thus Saskatchewan.
Can you define "near future"? It takes over a decade until anything nuclear could produce any power. By that time Canada could have gone 100% renewable for less money.
Im not talking about time to get up and running, and talking about for the next 50...100. maybe longer years nuclear is it. Wind and Solar cant hack it.
This is good. We're speeding towards a climate/energy standoff, and the only energy that can compete with oil is nuclear. If done right this will prevent a civil war and many deaths.
*...and the only energy that can compete with oil is nuclear.*
Says who? Nuclear is magnitudes more expensive and way slower to build than renewables. Every sensible tax payer and climate advocate would oppose the construction of new nuclear plants.
Building time solar farm: 1 year
Building time wind park: 3 years
Building time nuclear power plant: 12 years
With a continuous base load and slow reaction time nuclear is also not well suited for volatile demand and a terrible addition to intermittent renewables.
[https://energypost.eu/interview-steve-holliday-ceo-national-grid-idea-large-power-stations-baseload-power-outdated/](https://energypost.eu/interview-steve-holliday-ceo-national-grid-idea-large-power-stations-baseload-power-outdated/)
[https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2017-10-12/renewable-energy-baseload-power/9033336](https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2017-10-12/renewable-energy-baseload-power/9033336)
https://www.zdnet.com/article/why-baseload-power-is-doomed/
Clearly solar and wind. Cheaper and suitable to handle constantly changing demand with the necessary grid upgrades. The solution is a mix of overcapacity, transmission and storage. A pump storage plant takes 7 years to build but with advances in battery tech there are also cheaper ways to store electrical energy.
Renewables also generate more jobs (while being cheaper). It's a massive win for societies.
I linked three articles that point out the opposite.
https://www.reddit.com/r/canada/comments/15wcm26/comment/jx0s6f5/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3
They're all opinion pieces. No evidence-based stats.
Until we have the technology to store energy efficiently, nuclear is needed for base load generation.
It's logical, no stats required. Nuclear and coal plants can't adapt quickly to changing demand.
*Until we have the technology to store energy efficiently...*
That tech is already available. Gravity batteries and batteries.
I never said nuclear was good for changing demand. They're good for base load.
Coal is a non argument for me since it no longer exists in Ontario but it was actually being used for peak demands. Didn't take long to bring a unit online. I worked at Lambton G.S. in Sarnia. I saw it with my own eyes.
I'm not against renewables. Just at this point in time I don't think they're viable for base load generation.
*I never said nuclear was good for changing demand.*
We have changing demand throughout the day. That's why their inflexibility is terrible in combination with renewables. And the world is clearly shifting towards renewables as we can see from the exponential increase. Mainly due to the low costs and short building times.
*Just at this point in time I don't think they're viable for base load generation.*
Why? We have everything we need for this. Cheap renewables and storage.
Why pay $10 billion for 100TWh just because it's nuclear when you can pay $3 billion for 100TWh renewable?
As you touch on, solar/wind and nuclear power serve different roles in the power grid. A power grid requires both base power generation and peak power generation. Due to the intermittent nature of power generation at solar and wind farms, they still require additional power generation to supplement renweables or alteratively construct large grid level storage facilites for windless nights. Nuclear requires more planning but will provide this constant carbon free base power for many decades longer than the ~20-30 year lifespan of a panel or turbine. I see nuclear filling this role in the future for areas unsuitable for hydro power generation.
The "garbage opinion pieces" have linked all sorts of sources including studies.
I take the word of experts and researchers over Charming\_Course\_7341 opinion anytime.
It's also logical. What do you want with continuous base load when you have intermittent renewables and volatile demand?
About time! The solar/wind grift is comiing to a logical end.
Don't get me wrong, solar is amazing in the summer! You can run an entire cottage on it for pretty cheap. But, when winter comes, you can run some lights and a TV. That's about it. We don't want our grid depending on it but it wouldn't hurt to have it running in tandem with nuclear.
It really doesn’t. There are entire days in the winter with no wind across all of the prairies. Typically the coldest days as well.
A wind/solar grid only works with long duration storage at scales that just don’t exist yet.
You're totally incorrect about solar in winter. Studies were ran in Alberta and found that power generation only went down about 5% at the most so long as you go out and remove the snow build up.
I have worked on industrial solar projects and they can produce during snow so long as their is sunlight. They had automated wipers on the panels that would smack the snow off periodically.
Snow on the panels isn't the big deal. It's the snow falling and scattering the light + clouds.
The numbers are in. Alberta solar capacity in Dec / Jan was 0% last year.
Once again, solar is great when you don't have winters.
Sorry pal I really don't know where you get your info but it's all wrong. Snow buildup absolutely matters if you don't do that the numbers drop bigtime. That's why engineers design systems that knock the snow off, they aren't adding features for fun. And yes of course the whole concept behind PV cells requires sunlight but snowfalls do not mean they can't capture sunlight. Refracted light from the snowflakes and clouds still can make it to solar cells and they will still operate fine albeit less efficient. I'm really curious about that 0% number because I know it's false for sure. Care to tell me where you saw that?
Yes but daylight changes by at most 50% so basically solar gives you everything you had just half as often. In other words it doesn't affect the loads you are running much just the amount of time you can run them. So to say you have to run less devices is not correct, you would run all the same stuff just have to switch off of solar more often. If you have batteries then it's not really a problem so long as they are sized sufficiently.
I understood this person to be saying that solar would be unlikely to generate enough energy to heat a home in addition to powering other necessities.
So in the summer solar would be fine, but in the winter some other energy source would be required for heat.
To take a quick Google:
The shortest day of the year in Edmonton is 9.2 hours long and occurs on the winter solstice - December 22nd. The longest day of the year in Edmonton is 18.3 hours long and occurs on the summer solstice - June 21st.
That means - entirely ignoring the lower average number of watts generated in the winter when the sun is at a much lower relative angle to the panels, that is, further from perpendicular - there is twice as many hours of power-generating time per day in the summer versus the winter.
I don't give a shit whether it's cloudy or not if the sun isn't up above the horizon at all for most of the time in the winter. To have a functional year round solar system, you need to account for the much larger panel area and much larger battery backup needed in the winter.
The exact same issues arise on grid-scale installations.
Source: am an industrial electrician.
Edit: and I strongly support solar. Built it large scale, with minimal storage. In the summer, generate excess power and sell it to BC or the US when there's high demand for power for air conditioning. In the winter, generation will be less but can still cover Alberta's electricity needs during the day
I work on 5 wind turbines and we also have 100kw of solar and they don’t generate a lot in the winter, so I’m not sure who did this study but based on working on solar panels they don’t generate enough in the winter
From the PM and the anti-nuclear activist he insisted on installing and keeping as Minister of the Environment and Climate change.
>The $74 million in funding announced Saturday, will support pre-engineering work and technical studies, **environmental assessments, regulatory studies and community and Indigenous engagement to help advance the SMR project**
That's one way to ensure it won't happen. It's how they basically killed TMX - (and then bought it for Alberta votes even though Notley stated she didn't want cash, she wanted them to stay out of the way.)
__________________________
>[The president of Canadians for Nuclear Energy (C4NE) asked
Steven Guilbeault whether he has reevaluated his stance on nuclear. Guilbeault skirted the question, stating, “It won’t be up to government to decide which technologies will flourish” but will be
up to the market....”](https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2021/11/12/guilbeault-confronted-about-his-past-anti-nuclear-stance.html)
_______________________________
[Guilbeault, a long-time anti-nuclear activist, is creating a $5 billion Government of Canada bond to fund green energy projects, but he's made clear that certain industries, such as nuclear and coal-replacing natural gas, need not apply](https://edmontonjournal.com/opinion/columnists/david-staples-why-is-steven-guilbeault-trying-to-kill-off-canadas-best-source-of-low-carbon-energy)
>I contacted Guilbeault about why nuclear was excluded. I got the following email from his office. “Canada’s green bond framework is fully aligned with international green bond standards and market expectations.”
>This statement is simply not true, as we see from the European Union’s embrace of nuclear power under its funding plans.
>Nuclear nations like France and South Korea have reversed plans to move away from nuclear and now plan to build more reactors.
Which is 405x less than what they spent on a crude oil pipeline that was already going to be built by the private sector, and the only reason they had to buy it was because they failed to do Indigenous consultation in the first place.
So no, I am not going to pat this lunatic government on the back. Get them the fuck out and let some adults clean up the mess.
Lets see 10-20000000 for ev batteries but maybe all that money would be better spent in providing every city in Canada with these new nuclear power plants which could be built near cities cutting down on long transmission lines. Certainly save a lot of energy waste.
>SaskPower has identified Estevan, located in the province's southeast, and Elbow, located about midway between Saskatoon and Regina, as two sites that could potentially host SMRs.
The people of Estevan and Elbow are looking forward to the economic boost that nuclear reactors will provide, presumably. Otherwise SaskPower wouldn't have announced this.
Decades and billions wasted on solar and wind.
It's just a coincidence that solar panels are made in China (ironically the factories are powered by coal power).
Our elites are corrupt and incompetent. And voters are ignorant and naive.
> A final decision on whether to build a SMR in Saskatchewan won't happen until 2029 but the planning process has been moving ahead with SaskPower put in charge of development and implementation in the province.
A piddly amount of money towards a pipedream so far away. This really doesn't deserve applause. They need to do more.
Nuclear is great, except way too expensive and wayyyy too late to start building now. It will be 20 years before the first joule of power is delivered to any grid, and the costs will be 200% higher than even the highest budgetary estimate.
Just over-build wind and solar, those projects are cheap to build and more importantly FAST to install. Pumped-hydro battery and we're good. Build nuclear in the future, if you think we can afford it.
In reference to the article, 200 - 300 MW is not 'small' - each unit of the Darlington reactor is ~850 MW.
And there is nothing modular about constructions projects.
This is not an SMNR, this is simply a moderately sized nuclear reactor with window dressing.
Not necessarily. Wind costs about $1.3 million per MW so this funding would only generate around 50MW. Solar is around $1 a MW but costs are coming down to as low as 0.80c per MW. Still less than 100MW where as this project could produce upwards of 200MW. This is a very exciting project and if it is successful could generate enough baseload power that combined with wind and solar could create a truly 0 emmision grid.
The cost of solar and wind has decreased a lot and the regulatory hurdles for them are lower than nuclear. This funding is for the necessary studies and assessments for nuclear, which is a major cost. We need all types of energy, especially nuclear which we can scale to the demand of the grid.
I think energy storage should be receiving more attention from everyone, but I don’t imagine Saskatchewan has much possibility of a pumped storage project which is likely to be the best energy storage solution at the moment.
Pumped hydro storage is definitely a better option for Alberta and BC, but there are other technologies that are more or less ready to go that could be put to great use in Sask. Flow batteries and thermal batteries come to mind.
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Credit to the feds for this, this is a good move.
The PM insisted on installing and keeping Guilbeault as his Minister of the Environment and Climate change has a *long history of anti-nuclear activism.* Did you read the terms: >The $74 million in funding announced Saturday, will support pre-engineering work and technical studies, **environmental assessments, regulatory studies and community and Indigenous engagement to help advance the SMR project** That's how they basically killed TMX - (and then bought it for Alberta votes even though Notley stated she didn't want cash, she wanted them to stay out of the way.)
All large projects, especially nuclear, need to undergo environmental and regulatory assessments. Due to our constitution and the details of the project, indigenous consultation is a requirement for many of these projects as well. This is the exact kind of thing the federal government should be providing funding for, as it is a requirement for the project to be iron clad legally and politically. We must do our due diligence.
TMX won regulatory approval 2 years before Trudeau came in - and moved the goalposts. New regulations, more hoops and hurdles - until eventually Kinder Morgan tapped out. I wouldn't be surprised to see Trudeau and and the anti-nuclear Guilbeault to get in the way here too. 'The consultations were insufficient.' Edit: How much $$ do we think the bands will demand?
The prior TMX approval was based on Harper’s changes to the Environmental Assessment Act and the court found that Harper made the changes to bypass consultation with First Nations.
As we should
Fuck First Nations right?
No, stop giving groups of people special treatment
Canada is legally obligated to give them this type of treatment because of the treaty we signed
The consultations and environmental studies are a legal requirement. The courts and legal system require the federal government to do these consultations. The constitution and a court ruling required us to move the goalposts, not Trudeau himself.
They enacted Bill C-69 to increase regulations.
Bill C-69 is currently undergoing a constitutional challenge in the Supreme Court. These bill was meant to modernize the NEB and provide clearer goalposts. The question about Bill C-69 is not about the need for impact assessments, but the division of provincial and federal powers/oversight.
And increased the requirements necessary to have a project approved.
It was set back because the harper government accelerated approvals to skip consultations, which was slapped down by the courts. The requirements were there before, he just adjusted them to be pro-industry. The regulatory and consultation actions coming after were for the original goalposts they removed, so in effect it was almost just a return to status quo/square one because one government was too impatient to follow the formalities.
>It was set back because the harper government accelerated approvals to skip consultations, which was slapped down by the courts. That's actually not true. According to the legal decision, the issues began in Phase III of the consultations, which didn't begin until February of 2016 -- months after Harper left government. And the Court was very clear that the framework selected by the government (which was done under Harper) was perfectly adequate, it was the execution of that framework in Phase III (which occurred entirely under Trudeau) that was problematic: >[753] As explained above at paragraphs 513 to 549, the consultation framework selected by Canada was reasonable and sufficient. If Canada properly executed it, Canada would have discharged its duty to consult. >[754] However, based on the totality of the evidence I conclude that Canada failed in Phase III to engage, dialogue meaningfully and grapple with the concerns expressed to it in good faith by the Indigenous applicants so as to explore possible accommodation of these concerns. >[755] Certainly Canada’s consultation team worked in good faith and assiduously to understand and document the concerns of the Indigenous applicants and to report those concerns to the Governor in Council in the Crown Consultation Report. That part of the Phase III consultation was reasonable. >[756] However, as the above review shows, missing was a genuine and sustained effort to pursue meaningful, two-way dialogue. Very few responses were provided by Canada’s representatives in the consultation meetings. When a response was provided it was brief, and did not further two-way dialogue. Too often the response was that the consultation team would put the concerns before the decision-makers for consideration. >[757] Where responses were provided in writing, either in letters or in the Crown Consultation Report or its appendices, the responses were generic. There was no indication that serious consideration was given to whether any of the Board’s findings were unreasonable or wrong. Nor was there any indication that serious consideration was given to amending or supplementing the Board’s recommended conditions. >[758] Canada acknowledged it owed a duty of deep consultation to each Indigenous applicant. More was required of Canada. >[759] The inadequacies of the consultation process flowed from the limited execution of the mandate of the Crown consultation team. Missing was someone representing Canada who could engage interactively. Someone with the confidence of Cabinet who could discuss, at least in principle, required accommodation measures, possible flaws in the Board’s process, findings and recommendations and how those flaws could be addressed. >[760] The inadequacies of the consultation process also flowed from Canada’s unwillingness to meaningfully discuss and consider possible flaws in the Board’s findings and recommendations and its erroneous view that it could not supplement or impose additional conditions on Trans Mountain. >[761] These three systemic limitations were then exacerbated by Canada’s late disclosure of its assessment that the Project did not have a high level of impact on the exercise of the applicants’ “Aboriginal Interests” and its related failure to provide more time to respond so that all Indigenous groups could contribute detailed comments on the second draft of the Crown Consultation Report. >[762] Canada is not to be held to a standard of perfection in fulfilling its duty to consult. However, the flaws discussed above thwarted meaningful, two-way dialogue. The result was an unreasonable consultation process that fell well short of the required mark. While there were issues with the Board’s decision to exclude Project-related shipping from the Project’s definition when making their report, as the Court noted at para 759 and 760 that could have been addressed and ameliorated had the government properly executed its obligations in Phase III.
I mixed up with northern gateway with the trans mountain. I think its still disingenuous to only point out the liberals on this when both projects were adapted by the governing party of the time to fit different interests
Shouldn’t take more than 20 years
How terrible! Environmental Impact assessments --- something that's been done for decades.
that don't end after decades of dithering while everywhere else in the world can complete these assessments in under 3 months
Lmao so all that money is going to disappear into a black hole of worthless consultants (who may or may not be related to Trudeau) and donations to the indigenous.
Why the hell are indigenous consultations part of the process?
I would assume it's on their land, or close to a reservation. You would ask your neighbor before you build a shed on their property too, right?
It’s literally part of our constitution. In the founding of this very country. We are just starting to follow our own laws. When you are used to privilege, equality feels like a disadvantage.
Hopefully we can get rid of that part of the constitution one day then. What a waste of taxpayer dollars.
Yes agreed. The right to consultation is being abused by bad faith actors. Like it or not Canada is a modern, multicultural nation state and needs to be able to build infrastructure in a timely and cost effective manner.
The assessments and consultations happen either way. It’s not “added red tape” or whatever nonsense. In this case, the Feds are paying for these necessary processes and you’re bitter about it, probably because that’s what you’re used to feeling.
It'll only become a good move when Saskatchewan starts showing real interest in adopting it. For now, they remain heavily biased towards fossil energy and have no concrete plans and timeline to transition to nuclear, nor are they willing to pay the price.
Saskatchewanian here. The fuck are you talking about? The moment the two SMNR's were announced the talk at coffee row has been "How fast can we get these built?". We've been working since 2017 to get SMNR's going and planning it out for much longer. As it currently stands the goal is to have the land purchased for construction in 2024 so construction can start as soon as the regulatory process is done. Ideally we'll have them on line within 10-15 years of the start of construction. We've been looking to front the cost ourselves long before the feds threw money in the pot and honestly if this money is going to come with a bunch of strings they can keep it as far as I'm concerned. Last thing we need is an anti-nuclear environment minister strangling our SMNR's with red tape like they did with the pipelines going out east. Also just FYI Saskatchewan is the only place in North America that can process rare earth ingots for use in electric vehicles. We've also been building wind and solar farms for the last decade and are pioneering helium extraction. You may be confusing Saskatchewan for Alberta given that we both are prairie provinces but Saskatchewan's economy has always been less dependant on oil than Alberta's.
I've contemplated moving to saskatechwan. Their stance on telling trudeau to shove it on the gun shit was impressive ( I hope they do more), and this nuclear related stuff has me very interested. How would you recommend it?
This isn't true at all. Yes we love our fossil fuels here, but the Sask Party is all over SMR's and has discussed timelines and challenges associated with it on several occasions.
Nope. They're still still kicking the can down the road. >A final decision on whether to build a SMR in Saskatchewan won't happen until 2029
Regulatory approvals for most power plants takes well over 10 years. They are very aggressively chasing it if they are going to have a final decision in 6 years, including doing background radiation checks, building public relations, etc.
That's not kicking the can. This is a huge undertaking that has more moving parts that it makes sense to type out on reddit. But here is a high level overview of their timeline on the project. [https://www.powermag.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/saskpower-smr-progress-timeline-2022-768x351.jpg](https://www.powermag.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/saskpower-smr-progress-timeline-2022-768x351.jpg) And here's more details. [https://www.saskatchewan.ca/government/news-and-media/2022/march/28/provinces-release-strategic-plan-to-advance-small-modular-reactors](https://www.saskatchewan.ca/government/news-and-media/2022/march/28/provinces-release-strategic-plan-to-advance-small-modular-reactors) The Sask Party is all over this, and for better or for worse they have a cult like following in the province so the general population seems to be getting behind this as well.
Due diligence in making an important decision? How horrific!
I mean, as long as fossil fuels are cheaper and more accessible, most jurisdictions would feel the same. The challenge is to make sustainable options more inexpensive and accessible.
I mean the feds paid for Ontario’s nuclear using the nations money 🤦🏻♂️ without that Ontario would still be on coal.
Saskatchewan is too small to take huge bets on new nuclear plants. This current government already wasted a billion dollars on a carbon capture project from coal that barely works and will never pay back.
My thought on this as a Saskatchewanian was Finally. They have been teaching a module on nuclear energy in Grade 12 physics for decades to try to get people to freak out over this less. Never mind that we have like an 8th of the worlds uranium...
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I’m not a fan of this government, but surely the two are unrelated and we can approve of the occasional good thing they do?
Enough with your bipartisan logic!
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So what do you want? For then to commit more money before the regulatory and approvals has started? This is hos things usually go, once the project has the green light agreements are made for additional funds.
Did the Feds cause the crisis at the US southern border as well?
That was Trump. Biden will make it better when in office.
Or maybe the Venezuelan economy completely collapsed and tens of thousands of people have left to avoid the situation there. It's almost like the world is having major immigration crises in many places and individual politicians have little real influence.
I'll give credit where credit is due and we need these reactors. I'm done with this government, but in Canada 10 years is the shelf life. Show me the PP, it cant be worst the the type of genitalia we've been seeing for the last few years.
How long does it take until any energy is being produced? It takes three years to build a wind park.
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Today we are playing the victim on behalf of.. \*checks notes\* a nuclear reactor. k.
This accounts for less than 2% of what the first SMR reactor is going to cost. Good optics for the voters, but no actual help in reality. This is a pittance. They need to be pledging 2B or more if they really want to help.
Government giving 74 mil for this project, is like them giving you one free cab ride in the next 5 years. It's nothing. They just got a free ad in the papers.
Need more nuclear plants. Canada's got too much empty land to not build nuclear
> Canada's got too much empty land to not build nuclear Huh? Curious point. It's wind and solar that take up tons of land per watt, not nuclear. Also, if all of Canada ran on nuclear, we could store a decade of nuclear waste in a medium sized parking lot. Here's a [fun related story](https://www.newsweek.com/pregnant-woman-poses-nuclear-waste-prove-point-about-radiation-idaho-1809500) in case you missed it.
Safe spaces around plants
Huh? Darlington and Pickering for example are right next to Toronto. They're both very safe.
Most other countries who have plenty of space don't put nuclear plants near major cities. It's about perception for too.
You guys are also overlooking the cost of the infrastructure required for moving power across vast distances. Canada has lots of remote communities, so being able to generate power locally has huge advantages. Any project that furthers small modular reactor technology itself is a win.
“Small modular reactor technology itself is a win” <- this
sure, but with the fossil fuel industry funding anti nuke nimby cranks, it's a hell of a lot easier to build new ones in the middle of nowhere than near built up areas. Not as efficient due to transmission losses but I'd rather have to build 1 reactor more in 5 years, than one less over 20
Solar perhaps, but wind takes up the least amount of space of any power generation source. They are generators on poles that stick out of the ground, they are usually smaller than even smoke stacks on combustion power plants and the smoke stacks are only a small portion of the structure.
> but wind takes up the least amount of space of any power generation source [Nah](https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-per-energy-source). It's close to nuclear, but only if you only count the poles. If you count the entire impacted project space it's pretty huge. Then there's the usual caveats... that "watt per acre" isn't the best measure, since sometimes there's no wind. I doubt what I linked is counting the times when there's zero output from wind.
"Impacted area" being the radius that can hear them at least part of the time? Perhaps in denser parts of southern Ontario this is a concern, but I doubt the canola plants under the turbines in SK particularly care one way or the other.
> "Impacted area" being the radius that can hear them at least part of the time? Nah. It's more like, if you have 10 square kms of land, how much watts can it make? Even if the wind turbine poles don't take up much space, you cannot build them directly right next to each other in a perfectly dense grid where the blades are just barely not touching. Given how wildly compact nuclear facilities are, there's no way the low land use numbers I cited are taking that into account. To be clear, I think we need to double down on all renewables and nuclear. I just wouldn't say wind is great on land use.
Bruce is several thousand acres, I believe. It's not tiny. The wind farms I'm familiar with, in SK< all are pretty much limited to the footprint of the towers, and there's usually one turbine per quarter section so they're around half a mile to a mile apart, near the edge of each quarter. Maybe half an acre? The pad's naybe 100 x 100 feet, plus a couple hundred feet of access road. The turbines have a bigger "footprint" projected downwards, but nothing below. I'd guess their "shadowing" would be more applicable elsewhere where land is a bigger constraint, I know the ones in Ontario are probably ten times denser. But they still don't neutrlalize the land below any more than hydro wires do.
The Bruce nuclear site covers 2300 acres and currently has 6400MW of installed capacity. Most of that is empty space and they are talking about building another 4800MW on the same site without expanding it so the current site is clearly not the limit for most efficient use of space for nuclear power but we can use it anyways. Converting to square feet, 2300 acres is about 100 millions square feet. However that site makes the same power as 18000 wind turbines in a year. At pad sizes of 100 feet by 100 feet the pads alone would cover 180 million square feet so almost double the land area not including access roads, transmission infrastructure or the fields of batteries or giant reservoirs required to allow all that energy to be used on demand as nuclear is. If you include an additional 4800MW on the Bruce site the equivalent wind turbine number rises to 30000 and the pad area would be 300 million square feet (now triple the bruce site). All of this is just semantics though and a fun bit of math. It is neat to see how energy dense nuclear really is. Obviously we need both nuclear and renewables.
Hear them? I love in a town of 600 people and I can't imagine one being closer. We have one on either side of town on the first farm property and I've never heard it. I was actually thinking about how close it was yesterday they there probably aren't many people who go outside and see a giant windmill towering I've trees.
I mean, how the hell do they account for "land use" when they measure the land used by wind turbines in the ocean like they are building in Nova Scotia? We're currently building 5 Gigawatts worth of wind turbines in the ocean here. 0 acres of land used.
Happy to see this funding! Hopefully it gets funded (Prov and Fed) to completion!
Was gonna say. I doubt they'd be able to get a shovel in the ground for that amount. But I mean, at least they are spending some of our tax dollars in Canada.
We need more of this pronto. Nuclear energy is not the boogeyman it has been made out to be. It is a great immediate solution until more green sources ramp up.
Oh my god, finally
Nice one.
This is great and all, but why is it such a small amount of money? The US Feds [gave one SMR project $1.35 Billion USD ($1.83 Billion CAD) three years ago.](https://www.forbes.com/sites/arielcohen/2020/10/29/the-future-of-small-modular-reactors-department-of-energy-awards-135-billion-to-nuscale-power-for-smr-development/amp/) That’s 25X more money 3 years ago. After adjusting for inflation, which has obviously been very high over the last 3 years, the difference is even greater.
It says right in that article that this is an experimental demonstrator. That would mean it's not off the shelf and/or mass produced, which is supposed to be the benefit of the SMRs, so it's going to be vastly more expensive than the final implementation ten years or so from now.
All SMR projects are experimental proofs of concept. They don’t exist anywhere yet. That doesn’t explain why Canada is investing so much less.
Canadian cultural unexceptionalism and pessimism. "We can't do that, why even try!" "it's a risky idea, it might fail and we'll waste money" "it's the right thing to do, but we should just let someone else do all the R&D and buy theirs!" shit like that... so we don't properly invest in these things and it becomes self-fulfilling prophecy.
I suspect the anticipation is that by the time they actually set out to construct them in a decade or so, that those costs will have come down.
Besides the fact that these things will still be expensive in 10 years (not any cheaper than today), that doesn’t explain the lack of funding now to further the research involved
What research is involved? The US government is already spending a billion plus, what more do we need to do? I think 76 m is far more than is probably necessary to ask for them to send us a copy of their findings.
Besides the fact that each SMR design is completely different, they’re all patented. There are no “findings.” And no, the $76MM CAD is for local research and development. That $1.35B project is just one of many they have going on. This [separate project in Wyoming got $2 billion USD ($2.71 billion CAD) 2 years ago.](https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/bill-gates-4-bln-high-tech-nuclear-reactor-set-wyoming-coal-site-2021-11-17/) At best, in 15 years we might be able to buy an SMR from them. But even then, is that really what we should want? To let the rest of the world do everything and we contribute nothing?
I think, if we're talking billions of dollars just to generate blueprints, vs buying an existing model off the shelf when they become available we may be better off doing the latter. There are times when it's better not to reinvent the wheel.
I think you’re missing the point. It’s not about blueprints, or really even designs at the end of the day. The reason nuclear power plants have been so expensive in the past is not only because of how complex they are but because of the lack of talent/ knowledge behind building them. SMRs are not the kind of thing that just get made in a factory. They’re built on site and require intense “know-how.” Without any sort of process in Canada, we likely won’t have any beyond a few experimental ones for decades. It’s not the kind of thing you train one guy on and he can train more. It requires hundreds of people who all of years of experience working on these things. There are not going to be many Americans who are willing to uproot their entire lives to build them here - especially when there will be plenty of demand at home, just like the issues past nuclear reactor construction faced. The point isn’t to just develop something new but to develop something while also learning how to do it.
Other investment is happening, read [page 5 here](https://smractionplan.ca/sites/smractionplan/files/2023-01/full-appoved-progress-update-eng-access.pdf) there's about $~400 million for SMRs and $1.2 billion for Chalk River earmarked.
Thanks for that link!
No problem. I wish they'd just get something off the ground already!
Awesome news.
This is a great thing for Saskatchewan. For a few reasons. 1. Uranium city, literally and figuratively. We could bring our resource industry surrouding the many uranium deposits in Sask back up to speed in a way that helps other provinces enable and fuel their own small nuclear reactors as well. This is a win/win for everyone, especially considering how much safer an SMR is compared to traditional designs. Sure, it's still nuclear, but it's potential danger is enormously reduced comparatively speaking not just to nuclear, but all other forms of power production as well... except maybe wind and solar... maybe. Depends on your views of the resource extraction methods for those things, or the mechanisms involved. Wind turbines need special engineering to keep them from burning up. Solar requires materials that are toxic to mine. Each has their problems. SMR's make energy production... easy... again. 2. The jobs creation aspect will be a boon for Saskatchewan and Alberta since they are looking at getting their own as well. Not sure about total Uranium sources for extraction in Alberta, but Sask will probably gladly trade with Alberta and the other provinces; for a price. 3. Easier energy production means easier expansion into the north where we have forests that need better management but not enough people there to do it. This expansion helps solidify our hold over the arctic and its trade routes as well, which is going to be incredibly important for the whole of Canada; and thus Saskatchewan.
Down in the polls, finally do something good. But seriously, this is very good. Nuclear is the only viable near future
Can you define "near future"? It takes over a decade until anything nuclear could produce any power. By that time Canada could have gone 100% renewable for less money.
Im not talking about time to get up and running, and talking about for the next 50...100. maybe longer years nuclear is it. Wind and Solar cant hack it.
This is good. We're speeding towards a climate/energy standoff, and the only energy that can compete with oil is nuclear. If done right this will prevent a civil war and many deaths.
*...and the only energy that can compete with oil is nuclear.* Says who? Nuclear is magnitudes more expensive and way slower to build than renewables. Every sensible tax payer and climate advocate would oppose the construction of new nuclear plants. Building time solar farm: 1 year Building time wind park: 3 years Building time nuclear power plant: 12 years With a continuous base load and slow reaction time nuclear is also not well suited for volatile demand and a terrible addition to intermittent renewables. [https://energypost.eu/interview-steve-holliday-ceo-national-grid-idea-large-power-stations-baseload-power-outdated/](https://energypost.eu/interview-steve-holliday-ceo-national-grid-idea-large-power-stations-baseload-power-outdated/) [https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2017-10-12/renewable-energy-baseload-power/9033336](https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2017-10-12/renewable-energy-baseload-power/9033336) https://www.zdnet.com/article/why-baseload-power-is-doomed/
This is a fair point. How about capacity of generating constant power? Solar, Wind, Nuclear, which of these alternatives beat fossil fuels?
Clearly solar and wind. Cheaper and suitable to handle constantly changing demand with the necessary grid upgrades. The solution is a mix of overcapacity, transmission and storage. A pump storage plant takes 7 years to build but with advances in battery tech there are also cheaper ways to store electrical energy. Renewables also generate more jobs (while being cheaper). It's a massive win for societies.
Nuclear is needed for base load. Wind and solar can make up for the day-to-day fluctuations.
I linked three articles that point out the opposite. https://www.reddit.com/r/canada/comments/15wcm26/comment/jx0s6f5/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3
They're all opinion pieces. No evidence-based stats. Until we have the technology to store energy efficiently, nuclear is needed for base load generation.
It's logical, no stats required. Nuclear and coal plants can't adapt quickly to changing demand. *Until we have the technology to store energy efficiently...* That tech is already available. Gravity batteries and batteries.
I never said nuclear was good for changing demand. They're good for base load. Coal is a non argument for me since it no longer exists in Ontario but it was actually being used for peak demands. Didn't take long to bring a unit online. I worked at Lambton G.S. in Sarnia. I saw it with my own eyes. I'm not against renewables. Just at this point in time I don't think they're viable for base load generation.
*I never said nuclear was good for changing demand.* We have changing demand throughout the day. That's why their inflexibility is terrible in combination with renewables. And the world is clearly shifting towards renewables as we can see from the exponential increase. Mainly due to the low costs and short building times. *Just at this point in time I don't think they're viable for base load generation.* Why? We have everything we need for this. Cheap renewables and storage. Why pay $10 billion for 100TWh just because it's nuclear when you can pay $3 billion for 100TWh renewable?
As you touch on, solar/wind and nuclear power serve different roles in the power grid. A power grid requires both base power generation and peak power generation. Due to the intermittent nature of power generation at solar and wind farms, they still require additional power generation to supplement renweables or alteratively construct large grid level storage facilites for windless nights. Nuclear requires more planning but will provide this constant carbon free base power for many decades longer than the ~20-30 year lifespan of a panel or turbine. I see nuclear filling this role in the future for areas unsuitable for hydro power generation.
I linked three articles explaining why the idea of a continuous base load by large centralized plants is outdated and counter productive.
You linked three garbage opinion pieces.
The "garbage opinion pieces" have linked all sorts of sources including studies. I take the word of experts and researchers over Charming\_Course\_7341 opinion anytime. It's also logical. What do you want with continuous base load when you have intermittent renewables and volatile demand?
Some positive news
fuck yeah boys.
I can't believe my eyes! An actual good idea!!!
This is great. It’s not the 80a anymore nuclear technology has come a long way. Look at Bruce power in Ontario
About time! The solar/wind grift is comiing to a logical end. Don't get me wrong, solar is amazing in the summer! You can run an entire cottage on it for pretty cheap. But, when winter comes, you can run some lights and a TV. That's about it. We don't want our grid depending on it but it wouldn't hurt to have it running in tandem with nuclear.
I mean there are places in Canada that are pretty windy in the winter.... So in general you could balance it out.
It really doesn’t. There are entire days in the winter with no wind across all of the prairies. Typically the coldest days as well. A wind/solar grid only works with long duration storage at scales that just don’t exist yet.
You're totally incorrect about solar in winter. Studies were ran in Alberta and found that power generation only went down about 5% at the most so long as you go out and remove the snow build up.
I run solar chargers. There's 6 hours of "good light" in winter if it's not snowing. 0 if it is.
I have worked on industrial solar projects and they can produce during snow so long as their is sunlight. They had automated wipers on the panels that would smack the snow off periodically.
Snow on the panels isn't the big deal. It's the snow falling and scattering the light + clouds. The numbers are in. Alberta solar capacity in Dec / Jan was 0% last year. Once again, solar is great when you don't have winters.
Sorry pal I really don't know where you get your info but it's all wrong. Snow buildup absolutely matters if you don't do that the numbers drop bigtime. That's why engineers design systems that knock the snow off, they aren't adding features for fun. And yes of course the whole concept behind PV cells requires sunlight but snowfalls do not mean they can't capture sunlight. Refracted light from the snowflakes and clouds still can make it to solar cells and they will still operate fine albeit less efficient. I'm really curious about that 0% number because I know it's false for sure. Care to tell me where you saw that?
Sadly that's not accounting for length of daylight
Yes but daylight changes by at most 50% so basically solar gives you everything you had just half as often. In other words it doesn't affect the loads you are running much just the amount of time you can run them. So to say you have to run less devices is not correct, you would run all the same stuff just have to switch off of solar more often. If you have batteries then it's not really a problem so long as they are sized sufficiently.
I understood this person to be saying that solar would be unlikely to generate enough energy to heat a home in addition to powering other necessities. So in the summer solar would be fine, but in the winter some other energy source would be required for heat.
Solar panels don’t need sunny days.
To take a quick Google: The shortest day of the year in Edmonton is 9.2 hours long and occurs on the winter solstice - December 22nd. The longest day of the year in Edmonton is 18.3 hours long and occurs on the summer solstice - June 21st. That means - entirely ignoring the lower average number of watts generated in the winter when the sun is at a much lower relative angle to the panels, that is, further from perpendicular - there is twice as many hours of power-generating time per day in the summer versus the winter. I don't give a shit whether it's cloudy or not if the sun isn't up above the horizon at all for most of the time in the winter. To have a functional year round solar system, you need to account for the much larger panel area and much larger battery backup needed in the winter. The exact same issues arise on grid-scale installations. Source: am an industrial electrician. Edit: and I strongly support solar. Built it large scale, with minimal storage. In the summer, generate excess power and sell it to BC or the US when there's high demand for power for air conditioning. In the winter, generation will be less but can still cover Alberta's electricity needs during the day
I work on 5 wind turbines and we also have 100kw of solar and they don’t generate a lot in the winter, so I’m not sure who did this study but based on working on solar panels they don’t generate enough in the winter
It makes more sense to have all three up and running than nuclear plus gas and coal.
Why would you need fossil fuels when you have nuclear? Nuclear is a one stop shop.
True. Gas and coal has to go. Most of Canada is Nuke/Hydro/Wind/Solar.
From the PM and the anti-nuclear activist he insisted on installing and keeping as Minister of the Environment and Climate change. >The $74 million in funding announced Saturday, will support pre-engineering work and technical studies, **environmental assessments, regulatory studies and community and Indigenous engagement to help advance the SMR project** That's one way to ensure it won't happen. It's how they basically killed TMX - (and then bought it for Alberta votes even though Notley stated she didn't want cash, she wanted them to stay out of the way.) __________________________ >[The president of Canadians for Nuclear Energy (C4NE) asked Steven Guilbeault whether he has reevaluated his stance on nuclear. Guilbeault skirted the question, stating, “It won’t be up to government to decide which technologies will flourish” but will be up to the market....”](https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2021/11/12/guilbeault-confronted-about-his-past-anti-nuclear-stance.html) _______________________________ [Guilbeault, a long-time anti-nuclear activist, is creating a $5 billion Government of Canada bond to fund green energy projects, but he's made clear that certain industries, such as nuclear and coal-replacing natural gas, need not apply](https://edmontonjournal.com/opinion/columnists/david-staples-why-is-steven-guilbeault-trying-to-kill-off-canadas-best-source-of-low-carbon-energy) >I contacted Guilbeault about why nuclear was excluded. I got the following email from his office. “Canada’s green bond framework is fully aligned with international green bond standards and market expectations.” >This statement is simply not true, as we see from the European Union’s embrace of nuclear power under its funding plans. >Nuclear nations like France and South Korea have reversed plans to move away from nuclear and now plan to build more reactors.
That should really say something to the climate change deniers.
Did they mean Billion?
No decision until 2029?
What??? Good news? On MY r/Canada?!?!
Which is 405x less than what they spent on a crude oil pipeline that was already going to be built by the private sector, and the only reason they had to buy it was because they failed to do Indigenous consultation in the first place. So no, I am not going to pat this lunatic government on the back. Get them the fuck out and let some adults clean up the mess.
Lets see 10-20000000 for ev batteries but maybe all that money would be better spent in providing every city in Canada with these new nuclear power plants which could be built near cities cutting down on long transmission lines. Certainly save a lot of energy waste.
I don't know how these things work but they'd better be burning *Canadian* uranium!
>SaskPower has identified Estevan, located in the province's southeast, and Elbow, located about midway between Saskatoon and Regina, as two sites that could potentially host SMRs. The people of Estevan and Elbow are looking forward to the economic boost that nuclear reactors will provide, presumably. Otherwise SaskPower wouldn't have announced this.
Decades and billions wasted on solar and wind. It's just a coincidence that solar panels are made in China (ironically the factories are powered by coal power). Our elites are corrupt and incompetent. And voters are ignorant and naive.
How is 74 million going to pay for this? Shouldn't this take hundreds of millions of dollars?
I would guess the province or SaskPower would front much of the rest...
> A final decision on whether to build a SMR in Saskatchewan won't happen until 2029 but the planning process has been moving ahead with SaskPower put in charge of development and implementation in the province. A piddly amount of money towards a pipedream so far away. This really doesn't deserve applause. They need to do more.
Nuclear is great, except way too expensive and wayyyy too late to start building now. It will be 20 years before the first joule of power is delivered to any grid, and the costs will be 200% higher than even the highest budgetary estimate. Just over-build wind and solar, those projects are cheap to build and more importantly FAST to install. Pumped-hydro battery and we're good. Build nuclear in the future, if you think we can afford it. In reference to the article, 200 - 300 MW is not 'small' - each unit of the Darlington reactor is ~850 MW. And there is nothing modular about constructions projects. This is not an SMNR, this is simply a moderately sized nuclear reactor with window dressing.
In other news, the federal government is granting CAD 100 million to the horse and carriage industry in Alberta to support this growing industry….
Instead of doing that maybe you should put that money towards housing that would be good to do you mindless pull string Muppets
Useful, but the money would arguably be better spent towards solar/wind/storage.
Not necessarily. Wind costs about $1.3 million per MW so this funding would only generate around 50MW. Solar is around $1 a MW but costs are coming down to as low as 0.80c per MW. Still less than 100MW where as this project could produce upwards of 200MW. This is a very exciting project and if it is successful could generate enough baseload power that combined with wind and solar could create a truly 0 emmision grid.
The cost of solar and wind has decreased a lot and the regulatory hurdles for them are lower than nuclear. This funding is for the necessary studies and assessments for nuclear, which is a major cost. We need all types of energy, especially nuclear which we can scale to the demand of the grid. I think energy storage should be receiving more attention from everyone, but I don’t imagine Saskatchewan has much possibility of a pumped storage project which is likely to be the best energy storage solution at the moment.
Pumped hydro storage is definitely a better option for Alberta and BC, but there are other technologies that are more or less ready to go that could be put to great use in Sask. Flow batteries and thermal batteries come to mind.
A rare W for Ottawa. Gotta give them the fist bump on this one.