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Canada Plans World's Biggest Nuclear Plant In Ontario - Slashdot

 1 year ago
source link: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/23/07/05/2311223/canada-plans-worlds-biggest-nuclear-plant-in-ontario
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Canada Plans World's Biggest Nuclear Plant In Ontario

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Bruce Power, a Canadian utility company, is planning to build the world's biggest nuclear plant as growing demand for clean energy spurs interest in atomic energy. The Financial Post reports: The Ontario government said Wednesday Bruce Power will conduct an environmental assessment of adding as much as 4.8 gigawatts of capacity to its plant in Canada's most-populous province. The plant's eight reactors currently have about 6.2 gigawatts of capacity and supply 30 per cent of the province's power. The expansion would make the site larger than Japan's Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant, the biggest in the world with seven reactors and more than eight gigawatts of capacity.
    • Re:

      Robert the Bruce would like a word with you.

    • at least it's not homer!

      • Re:

        Bruce Power? Long-lost Australian cousin of Max? That you?
    • Re:

      It's Canada. They almost renamed the Northwest Territories to Bob [wikipedia.org].

    • Re:

      I don't want to be the pedant pi*sing on a joke, but it's named after the county it was built in. My pops worked there for years (retired a good handful or two ago).
      • Re:

        And the county was named for James Bruce, 8th Earl of Elgin and 12th Earl of Kincardine, the sixth Governor General of the Province of Canada.

        • Re:

          Everyone knows James Bruce was the first drunk teenager crashing at boat at Sauble Beach, that's how he got his fame - nothing to with GG
    • It is on the Bruce Peninsula on Lake Huron.
  • The fault line runs under the Pickering plant, not the Bruce plant.

    And why isn't anyone looking into grabbing tidal power from the Bay of Fundy? We have enough potential tidal energy waiting to be captured to cover over 60% of our current use. I'd really like to see that tapped before we expand our nuclear power generation.

    Also... sorry, NF, but we oughta screw the tourists and divert more water for hydro generation too.

    • Re:

      Because theoretical total amounts of power of natural phenomenon are useless. Look at it this way, you have to generate X amount of power. That means you need Y * X amount of generators which require rare earths which are very environmentally costly. So you want Y to be as close to 1 as possible. If you use tidal, Y is going to be twice what it is for nuclear at least. So this way you create fewer lakes of acid in Asia.
      • Power plant generators do not use rare earth anything. They have no size constraints and use normal electromagnets.

    • by DavenH ( 1065780 ) on Wednesday July 05, 2023 @11:04PM (#63660604)

      They have looked into it. As you'd expect, it's not reliable or economical. "There's enough potential energy" is a starting point, but not close to a convincing argument for it. Real answers would only be sufficient if they provide a realistic analysis of it's levelized cost of electricity (LCoE), and its full lifecycle carbon emissions including those of producing its fuel. Once you've got those numbers, you begin to understand just how good we have it with nuclear.
      • Re:

        If they did a realistic analysis of the levelized cost of electricity, they wouldn't be building nuclear.

    • Re:

      bah why did I comment on this thread, I'd mod ya up. That's a damn good point.
    • Because no one lives nearby. No major 1 million+ city. The existing hydro is far easier and cheaper to utilize.
    • They did have a tidal plant in Fundy. Thereâ(TM)s a bridge over it you can drive across. Been there, done that.

      Lost money continually, and was shut down.

  • This is needed for expansion in Ontario, which isn't all hydro, unlike so much of Canada. Ontario is still 80% non-carbon (50% nuke, 25% hydro, some wind and solar).

    Where Canada really needs it, are the prairie provinces, that always scorned it because they were coal and gas producers. Manitoba is 97% hydro, but Alberta and Saskatchewan, got nothin'. Last Dec 22, Alberta was -40F, wind was dead, longest night of the year. 96% gas. Alberta and Saskatchewan can't lose the gas with batteries alone. They need about 5GW of nuclear apiece, some better ties east and west, and Canada could be pure green power.

    But, no, it's not even being discussed.

    • Re:

      Manitoba has hydro? I was only through it once,but what I remember is flat, as in Lake Agassiz bottom flat. Is there an elevation drop in the north down to Hudson Bay?

    • Re:

      I don't know about Alberta, but in Saskatchewan it is definitely being discussed. A SMR design has been chosen by SaskPower and potential sites are being evaluated:

      https://www.saskpower.com/Our-... [saskpower.com]

    • Re:

      Multiple power plants with say 2-3 GW would be better.
      Concentrating it in one place means that you must depend on that grid connection, which is an easy place to bring it down.
      Far better to keep it a bit more distributed.
      • Re:

        Perhaps that is true but there's something to be said for economy of scale.

        Each nuclear power plant site has to have some given amount of staff for security and maintenance regardless of how many reactors are on the site. Put more reactors there and this cost can be spread out over more energy sold. There's going to be a point of diminishing returns so we should not plan on all eggs in one basket. Japan routinely had a half dozen reactors on any given site, likely a reasonable choice given their high pop

      • AECON estimates there are 25 GW of untapped conventional hydro in northern Alberta and Saskatchewan.

        It will never be built, but itâ(TM)s there.

    • Re:

      It was actually discussed in Alberta and part of the plan was actually to use the heat to extract oil from the oil sands [wikipedia.org].

      Either way, the project eventually got nimby'd into oblivion (though it might have just be economics as well).

      • The project, led by the same Bruce Power, was nixed when AECL sent out the new price estimate for ACR-1000, which was three times the initial estimate. That made it economically impossible. This is all well recorded and easily gogelgleable.

        But sure, blame those nimbies if it makes you feel better.

    • Alberta gets 10% of its power from renewables [cer-rec.gc.ca] which is not "nothin'" but definitely could be a lot better.

      Here in Alberta, we call it -40C, the longest night of the year was 21st December, and our power is only 54% gas with 36% being coal and our generating capacity is ~16GW, 90% of which is fossil fuel-based, so 5GW is not going to cut it. But yes, the one thing you got right is that we can't replace gas power stations with batteries alone but that's not really unique to Alberta since you can never repla

      • Re:

        And that 10% is only if you don't include the absolutely insane amounts of energy it takes to extract the bitumen from the sand up in the tar sands. I once saw an estimate that to replace all the natural gas used would take something along the lines of 27 generation 4 CANDU reactors, just producing process heat.

    • Re:

      It's the cost. Can they afford to build it?

      And can they afford to wait for it to be built? Let's see how long it takes to build the Ontario one, but smaller plants in Europe are around 20 years from start to finish these days.

      Climate change needs addressing today. Chances are, for the money involved, there are much better options. First start by saving energy, i.e. insulation and more efficient appliances. It's kind of crazy that tax money can be used to fund for-profit generation projects, but not energy s

      • Re:

        While the planned unit is probably a Candu design, the two ABWR's at Kashiwazaki-Kariwa went from Construction to commissioning in around 4 years, as did the first 6 BWRs, so it can be done. A lot depends on the licensing regimen and how well the the process is managed.

        • Itâ(TM)s not CANDU, that is literally dead. The design team was sold off for negative 150 million to SNC-Lavin and development ended. Like 15 years ago.

          Only two real options for it, Westinghouse or Areva. Neither is particularly attractive given the massive cost overruns seen in both. Areva wouldnâ(TM)t even bid on Darlington.

        • Re:

          Kashiwazaki-Kariwa might not be the best example. It was shut down due to an earthquake that went beyond its design limits, and required major changes to make it safe. In other word, they skimped on the geological survey, the design, and construction.

          Then it shut down again due to the same earthquake that damaged Fukushima Daiichi. It hasn't restarted since, because now that there is increased scrutiny and some new geological data, it seems like it was a bad idea to build it there in the first place.

          • Re:

            Using it as an example of how things can be done "better" is entirely in line with the usual lying of the nuclear fanatics though.

      • Re:

        In the real world, Canada after going deeply in debt during the "pandemic" and giving vast amounts to Ukraine that they can't afford needs that oil in Alberta to generate cash. As in real jobs and a real economy. Because right now, in case you haven't noiced or haven't been paying attention, there's not really any big projects today or on the books in the near future. Canada seems to be treading water. While the rest of the world leaves it behind. Without money you can't develop any industries. Canada has
    • Re:

      Canada is supposed to be going hard on wind to hydrogen to serve a deal they made with Germany to provide them energy.

      If they are doing that, there is absolutely no need for nuclear, because they are going to have to go hard on hydrogen storage.

      • Re:

        Yep. But this is a "plan". It can be stopped any time in the 10-15 years before building this thing actually starts.

  • They aren't planning on building the world's biggest plant. They're planning on enlarging an existing plant to make it what would be the world's largest.

    To me that's an important distinction - to use their numbers, it isn't 11 gigawatts of new capacity, it's a 50% enlargement of an already existing plant - still a lot of power, but a lot less new power than the headline makes it seem.

    • Re:

      Plant is a bit of a misnomer - the Bruce plant consists of 8 reactors and would add a ninth to the plant. You are correct in that it's not a new 11 GW unit, but a new 4.8 GW unit. 4.8GW is likely an addition of several CANDU reactors.

    • Re:

      If you're going to be pedantic, then a 4.8 GW expansion of a 6.2 GW plant isn't a 50% enlargement, it's more than 75%.
    • And by the time it would be completed the older reactors would be EOLed, so it would end up being a 4.8G plant and nowhere near the largest.

      • Re:

        If they complete it, that is.

  • Ontario lacks power on demand and this won't help. Wind in Ontario blows the hardest in the evenings in the winter when demand is the lowest (the price will frequently go negative). Our hydro is almost all river run not dammed so we either use it or let it just fall over the cliff like at Niagara. Ideally our neigbours to the east, Quebec and Newfoundland, would start selling electricity at market rates. We could use this new nuclear as baseload for all of the Eastern grid and use the dammed hydro for p
  • No costs listed?? I wanted to bet the cost at 2 to 5 times the original estimates. What's the over under?
  • They are "starting early work", and maybe in 15-20 years they could generate some electricity, good luck.

    Meanwhile loads of other power sources including storage will have already been built and generating it much cheaper.

    • Re:

      They can do more than one thing at a time. We can safely assume that they will still need power in 15 to 20 years so building new nuclear reactors isn't going to be a wasted effort.

      What other options could they take for producing this electricity? Wind? Solar? Natural gas? Likely one of those. What is the expected build time for those? I'd guess 18 months, maybe a bit more. Then the question is, how long will they last before needing replacement? Perhaps 15 to 20 years? There's your answer on why

      • âoe What is the expected build time for those? I'd guess 18 months, maybe a bit more. Then the question is, how long will they last before needing replacement? Perhaps 15 to 20 years? There's your answerâ

        Indeed.

        Think about wind and solar 15 to 20 years ago. It cost five to ten times as much as it did now, took much longer to install, and had lower density and was less reliable.

        Now consider nuclear 15 to 20 years ago. The exact same designs we have today, all experiencing cost and time overruns dur

      • Re:

        "The global weighted average LCOE of newly commissioned utilityscale solar PV projects declined by 88% between 2010 and 2021, whilst that of onshore wind fell by 68%"

        "The global weighted average levelised cost of electricity (LCOE) of new onshore wind projects added in 2021 fell by 15%, yearonyear, to USD 0.033/kWh, while that of new utility-scale solar PV fell by 13% year-on-year to USD 0.048/kWh and that of offshore wind declined 13% to USD 0.075/kWh."

        https://www.irena.org/publicat... [irena.org]

        You've got to be able

  • it's one of those 'the best time to plant a tree is 100 years ago' things when you build a mega scale power plant. it's not like they're throwing billions into something that they know will give them a return tomorrow.

    as a pragmatic and logically minded canadian i'm really proud of our nuclear capability and safety record, even though we definitely have accidently discharged some tritium into a lake or two, the incidents over the past century have been handled very well and i do feel like canadian nuclear

    • What part of that pragmatism and logic is ok with the massive cost overruns on our last build that led to us all paying an extra rider on our power bills for years before they sold off the debt?

      Perhaps you have a different definition of pragmatism. And logic.

  • It's great that he's on their team. Is he blue like Dr. Manhattan or green like Captain Planet?

    Does he hold up a big lightning rod and call out " !" ?

    Does he live on PEI?

    I assume he's givin' it all he's got...

    • Re:

      "Tha an cumhachd agam"

      Which roughly translates as either "damnit Slashdot UNICODE" or "that's what you get for not actually looking at the Preview before hitting Submit".

      • Forget that, why is it after decades I still canâ(TM)t type a quote on my phone without it â it?

  • It's great that he's on their team. Is he blue like Dr. Manhattan or green like Captain Planet?

    Does he hold up a big lightning rod and call out "Tha an cumhachd agam!"?

    Does he live on PEI?

    I assume he's geevin' it all he's got. She's at 1,200 km, and I canna change the laws of physics or she'll implode. I've got ta have 10 minutes!

    • Re:

      Nothing so exciting. The Scottish at one time owned a large part of Canada. Generations of inbreeding and alcoholism reduced their influence to what it is today, non-existent. The area I'm living in was settled by Scots who were kicked off their ancestral lands and replaced with sheep. By other Scots. They called the province Nova Scotia which means New Scotland. But then the British took it over. Going to school and studying Canadian history was pretty boring.
  • I heard this one of Ford's nasty legacies.

    He canceled all sorts of wind and photovoltaic projects and set this one in motion.

    Wind and photovoltaic power is competitive with coal on price. No nuclear waste or danger of radiation.

    You will not read articles about Japan dumping radioactive air from old windmills into the ocean.

      • Re:

        Who are "you people" ?

        I see stories in the news every week about new wind farms going up.

          • Re:

            What an intelligent, well written, logical, and factual comment./s
      • Re:

        Nuclear, natural gas, and coal have and still are subsidized heavily. Nuclear is the worst offender of all.


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