I’m not sure if we’re allowed to ask questions on this sub. It seems mostly news articles but I figured I’d give it a go.
So Bruce Power in Ontario is planning to build the world’s biggest nuclear plant in the world (by expanding on an existing plant).
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/london/ontario-new-nuclear-build-1.6897701
BC is more well known for hydroelectric, but that particular source hasn’t really been greatly expanded on in decades and site-C is pretty controversial.
This got be thinking:
How do we in BC feel about nuclear power? Would you support one near where you live? Why or why not, and what other power options would you prefer?
We’d locate it where earthquakes - those not caused by fracking - have been historically very rare.
That’s just room-temperature-IQ smart.
Also, Nuke plants are pretty resilient, as long as they aren’t hit with a massive quake and then a massive tsunami.
Also, Nuke plants historically release LESS radioactive material over their lifetime than a coal plant; and it’s not even close. Go look.
I’m pro nuclear and pro renewable. Maybe there’d be appetite for one in the interior but I live in the lower mainland and don’t see how it could be done here (politics, unceded territory etc).
It’s not a choice between nuclear and coal. Both suck. Nuclear “green” power besides the risk also leaves behind radio active waste for centuries that nobody wants to deal with. Go look.
saying nuclear and coal both suck is kind of like saying both a plate of shit and a plate of overcooked brussels spouts would suck to eat for dinner. In theory I don’t like either but one is significantly worse.
At least with nuclear waste it’s not loosely scattered in the atmosphere, doesn’t have a harmful effect as long as it’s properly stored, and in the future we will likely have better ways to deal with it.
It’s never properly stored, never. Nobody wants that stuff stored nearby them. There is not even any good experienced knowledge how to store that stuff stable long term. So far it’s all been temporary storages and quite a few of them have gone real bad. And we are doing nuclear for how many years now? This problem won’t go away. In fact it will multiply and become much bigger if we were to increase the number of nuclear plants.
This is complete bullshit. The storage is fine, to the point that there isn’t a problem. Even as temporary as it is, there is so little of the high-level nuclear waste that we can use our “temporary” storage for thousands of years before it gets to the point where we have to mark off, say, a football stadium to keep it.
You’re fear-mongering out of your own ignorance.
My lunchbox has Spider Man on it. Go look.
I looked, nothing unusual, it’s just the usual corporate trash you guys love.
also leaves behind radio active waste for centuries
97% of the waste produced from non-breeder reactors is what’s classified as low-level or intermediate-level waste. The low-level waste in particular is only dangerous for a few decades to a century on the outside. The containers for anything more hazardous (the ‘Type B’ casks) have never seen an accident which have breached it, and are designed to exist in pristine condition for over a thousand years without maintenance.
Modern disposal techniques of the Intermediate-level and high-level waste also includes vitrification. This involves embedding the waste within molten glass, which is incredibly resilient to environmental conditions over several millennia.
They’re working on new reactors that eat that waste. You missed that?
That’s future talk. None of it is available for the energy problems we’re facing now. And we still need to deal with all the waste from the currently running plants, that will continue to run a long time.
I’m on board. Good luck with the general population…
I would. Hell yeah! I honest-to-god want an SMR in my actual neighborhood just to have direct heat from a radiator water loop during the winter.
Me. Give me that plutonium green power please.
Not super into the plutonium kind. Would prefer one of those modular liquid salt deals the conservatives were pushing last election… but less moronic. See now that I think on how these clowns can’t care for a cat maybe we shouldn’t get a nuclear plant. Not because nuclear is bad.
Which type of reactor is that?
I know there one that will have a salt melt and encapsulate the nuclear rods in case of an overload event, but that’s a containment measure and would still need a radioactive element such as plutonium for the process to work.
They were barge built, towed thorium salt nuclear reactors that would be build in a shipyard and towed to site. Most designs for thorium reactor use uranium doping to kick off the reactor after wich its self feeding. It comes with a salt plug in the botton of the reactor that will allow the fuel to drain out of the reactor core if there is a case of overheating. The safety bonus to these things is they have many passive means of self-moderation and self-snuffing if something isnt right. Im not a fan of on the water with a reactor. The chances that maintenance will get ignored is not insignificant. The terms of the deal with the company also both sucked and introduced extra risk.
I mean, I live in Vancouver which expects a large earthquake at some point. Earthquakes are bad but seriously awful with a nuclear power plant nearby.
In general though, nuclear is probably one of the best options to help transition towards a renewable economy. (Not itself renewable but to my understanding, significantly less carbon intensive than gas, coal or oil, even including the mining and refining. But I could be wrong.)
Looking at Japan, earthquakes aren’t that big of a problem.
Tsunamis that take out the backup energy system and destroy all the surrounding infrastructure… that was the problem.
In my opinion, nuclear power plants should give away 5% of their energy to surrounding residents and provide district heating. That’s only fair to compensate for the reduction in property values.
To each their own! My takeaways from that were that serious accidents generally introduce unexpected complications, we got really lucky with Fukushima and taking chances with one of the most devastating natural phenomena might not be the most best gameplan.
We got lucky? Dude… Sure it can always be worse. Chernobyl could have been worse too.
But actually both of them are really bad in any case. Nothing you want to see repeated, ever.
Fukishima and Chernobyl are nothing alike. Drawing a likeness between them is is incredibly dishonest (or abysmally-informed). There really isn’t much in the way of how Chernobyl could have been worse, and a meltdown like Chernoby isn’t even possible anymore.
Oh no, Chernobyl could have been a LOT worse. It’s really worth learning about.
“If the three courageous men were not successful in their mission the Chernobyl death toll was likely to reach the millions. Nuclear physicist Vassili Nesterenko declared that the blast would have had a force of 3-5 megatons leaving much of Europe uninhabitable for hundreds of thousands of years.”
3-5 megatons? You don’t get blasts like that from a ruptured steam vessel. That takes a nuclear explosion. You are aware that not only was Chernobyl not a nuclear explosion, there is nothing in any nuclear power plant anywhere even capable of creating a nuclear explosion of any magnitude, right?
You are welcome to provide a source that backs up your claim, like I did!
Nothing alike? You can look up the differences in relocated population etc yourself here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_the_Chernobyl_and_Fukushima_nuclear_accidents
Look, they are not the same. But the world would be better off if none of the two had happened and we ought to be very fucking sure it never happens again. And I got just the idea how to make sure of that. No, the answer is not coal plants, neither “new and safe” nuclear.
The history of nuclear power could have had 10 Chernobyls and no improvements in reactor design, and it would still be a better, safer source of power than the mix we’re using now. The amount of death from nuclear power is unbelievably low. It’s infinitessimal compared to other sources, on a per-joule basis. It’s even lower than solar power, somehow.
And why in the world would NPPs becoming safer (which, relative to Chernobyl, they already are) not make it an obvious solution? And what solution do you have that’s better than NPPs, coal, and gas that would be suitable for base load power? And don’t you dare say “wind” or “solar,” because those are not dispatchable sources of power.
Ontario is already like 40% nuclear. BC has regulations against nuclear technology in all forms as a non-nuclear province. They disallow hosting of missiles (not that we have any) and building of any power plants.
That being said, it’s probably time to take a good look at those regulations because they were probably designed in the 50s and we’ve built several generations of impeccably safe reactors since then.
Post-Fukushima improvements incorporate a lot of proofing against natural disasters in addition to even more passive nuclear safety. The Americans used the opportunity of the overhaul to ask for reactors to be designed to withstand artillery strikes and high levels of damage (read: deliberate plane crashes) without melting down.
Post-Fukushima improvements incorporate a lot of proofing against natural disasters in addition to even more passive nuclear safety.
The reactors we use in Canada are also already ridiculously safe compared to most
The worst thing a CANDU reactor has done was accidentally produce enough tritium for the Indians to build a proper Teller-Ulam nuke. No meltdowns.
m not sure if we’re allowed to ask questions on this sub. It seems mostly news articles but I figured I’d give it a go.
I think we could use more text posts :)
Not from BC, but I’ve long thought that existing hydroelectric dam sites are perfect locations for nuclear plants.
- Lots of cooling water, if that’s still required for the newest designs.
- Not just a ready connection to the grid, but one designed as a power source.
- Geologically stable (at least I hope nobody is building dams in earthquake zones!).
- Normally pretty nice places to live with plenty of outdoorsy stuff to do that also typically have room for at least small communities to develop.
I’m retired now, but I’d have jumped at the chance to work in a nuclear plant or supporting industry at Gardiner or E.B. Campbell Dam and live on the shores of the associated lakes or in a nearby community. Saskatchewan is already a major source of uranium and could stand to add refinement, use, and storage (put the waste right back into the geologically stable mines it came from).
On that last note, done right, the waste storage could be right on-site. That’s what’s happening in many cases anyway, and most hydroelectric dams are located away from major population centres and are geologically stable.
I would gladly see those shipping container sized mini nuclear plants scattered around my entire region. Super-safe, impossible to melt down, can be installed into an underground bunker completely out of sight, and good for close to two decades of power. Have them all feed into the same grid with 50% overprovisioning, and such a network could be almost blackout-proof. Even if a major transmission pole goes down, there would be enough units installed within the affected area to keep it energized, even if it browns out. Install smart electrical panels that can communicate with the closest unit, and any brownout can have nonessential circuits in homes get temporarily shut off to lighten the load.
Pebble bed reactors? Yeah those things look awesome. They could have one for each major neighborhood of a decent sized city for independent power
It’s widely known that there is less radiation near a nuclear plant. The reason is that it is heavily regulated and also the walls back random radiation from other sources.
I’m not concerned about the plant safety measures, but I am concerned that at some point down the line budget cuts will happen and upkeep or replacement will be postponed. Politicians don’t listen to scientists enough.
Ontario has proven that they don’t really fuck around with nuclear safety. We’ve had tons of different governments over the life spans of our reactors and not a single one of them would think twice about fucking with the safety or overall funding of our nuclear infrastructure.
The main issue with reactors is not their running over time, but generally the amount of money and engineering required to build the plant initially is a huge upfront cost with a massive cost over time to pay for the skilled labor. A lot of European reactors fell massively behind schedule because the labor would take shortcuts, causing structural issues, requiring more money to be put into the project to rectify problems like that. The most precarious time for a nuclear plant is during construction.
To hell with the power it generates how about those sweet long term high skilled jobs? Granted I could do without the yearly influx of outage workers but if that ends up being CANDU then not so much of a problem.
I guess I wouldn’t mind it
Kind of off topic but I wonder what’s going to happen to the nuclear plant in Ukraine now that Russia has rigged it with explosives. Seems like nuclear plants are great until there is instability from natural disasters, climate, war or mismanagement. Then they become a threat to everyone around them.
You have to understand that nuclear plant is quite old and not built with current specs in mind. Post-Fukushima improvements were mostly about dealing with external damage. They beefed up reactors against natural disasters, and the Americans took the chance to also ask for more protections against deliberate actions - modern reactors are designed to withstand a direct artillery strike without causing a meltdown or accident.
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