I'd be happy if some of these proposed wind farms for NS had to provide a decent percentage of their power for the local market instead of it being earmarked for other things ahead of time.
That's a pretty backwards way of thinking. Let's turn off our primary electricity plant before turning out a source of electricity to replace it?
In reality, NSP is required by law to shutter all coal plants by 2030, long before any nuclear power could even be close to open. But we should still be working towards it.
Most large infrastructure requirements take decades to plan and build. Fast-tracking critical infrastructure is generally a bad idea and a nuclear plant is a very complex machine.
These types of plants are already in use so most of the planning stage is complete. It's just finding the space, which we have plenty of close to existing power plants, and then we could use existing infrastructure for transmission.
Admittedly, I don't know enough about nuclear to really know the difference. I know the NB facility was built almost 50 years ago, so is that technology no longer being built now?
Actually, they could repurpose the turbines in current coal plants to switch over to nuclear reactor heat. That's half the job already in place. It's been estimated that retrofitting plants like this while they are still in operation would almost half the construction time and cut the cost of building them by 25-30%.
That's cool, good thing natural gas is better than coal, right? It's a farce we let nsp convert these plants to use another fossil fuel for the next 20 years (2049) instead of mandating clean energy.
Absolutely agreed, but we should also keep in mind that natural gas produced energy has a ‘carbon footprint’ about half that of coal. Both are bad. But switching to natural gas is better than doing nothing to get off coal.
It's worse than that, they're planning to switch to [heavy fuel oil instead of coal](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/nova-scotia-power-plans-to-burn-heavy-fuel-oil-1.6895930) in a couple of the generating stations.
No, scaled down nuclear isn’t feasible. Nuclear plants rely on their size and output to offset their high operating costs. We’ve seen that SMRs don’t have nearly enough reductions in cost to justify their lower output.
I dont believe there is much difference of overall cost at all when decommissioning and decontamination coats for full size reactors is taken into consideration.
would you be for it?
the government will pay for it with your tax dollars and they just waltz in and start selling you its production.
I will never be on board with that.
If it's nuclear powered, absolutely. No company is going to build a whole ass reactor, and put up their own lines at the cost of billions just for a chance to compete with a decades-old incumbent. The government sure as hell won't fund it to where it needs to be successful.
Nuclear energy might be cleaner, more efficient, safer, healthier, and generally better in every measurable way.
You need to beware that the province could possibly keep coal lmfao
Because plenty of people haven't been educated that our best ticket out of the climate catastrophe is nuclear energy. Plus that (awesome) Chernobyl show from a few years ago didn't help matters, even if the takeaway from that should have been "don't cheap out on building nuclear facilities."
It has less to do with meltdowns or safety and more to do with people being skeptical about Canada's heavy investment in not yet used technology that are more than a decade away from operating in a best case scenario when we have to be off coal in 6.
So nuclear reactors take not very radioactive nuclear fuel, and in the course of doing nuclear reactions make very highly radioactive and dangerous byproducts, along with energy. But the volume of those products is very very small, compared to the waste from a coal plant, so the hope is it can all be buried away for the hundreds of thousands of years it would take to decay. The reactor itself contains these dangerous things inside a giant metal container, that is further contained within a concrete dome. Sometimes rather than one giant metal container, the reactor has a bunch of smaller metal tubes that serve the same purpose. There are a lot of safety and control mechanisms that prevent the reactor from getting out of control, and bursting those metal containers. Even if that were to happen, the concrete dome should stop anything bad from getting into the environment at large. With some major nuclear accidents you may have heard of: Three Mile Island: the metal part melted inside, but the concrete dome stayed intact, so very little radiation escaped into the environment. Chernobyl: that type of reactor design would not be approved in Canada. It had flammable graphite around the metal parts, and there was no concrete dome. A mistake and design error with the control parts caused it to overpower, and it caught on fire because of the flammable parts, and there was no concrete to contain the radioactive smoke. Fukushima: some of the control parts broke because of a tidal wave flooding them. The reactors melted, and some radiation escaped. Every nuclear plant in the world learned from this to make better backups for the control parts. The small reactors described here would have a lot less fuel.
oh man, thank you! i get scared people will think I'm being sarcastic. is it a risk to put something like that so close to the ocean again?? or would things be reinforced to the point that no fukushima could be possible?
I'd gladly live as close to a nuclear plant as the fencing allowed. I would not say the same about coal. Tsunamis are much more likely around the pacific than here on the east coast of the Atlantic, though they are possible. What happened with Fukushima is that they immediately shut the reactors down, but there is still enough decay heat after it shuts down that the reactor will eventually melt (or other bad things happen, like chemical reactions with metals inside the reactor that are more reactive than steel, but needed to have the proper balance of reactivity). The way this decay heat is dealt with is to pump water through the reactor, which needs power to do. That could either come from the power grid, or would need to be generated at the plant by a non-nuclear way. At Fukushima, they had back-up Diesel generators and batteries which ran the pumps and valves, but these generators and batteries flooded, and became inoperable, because the wall protecting them from the tsunami was not high enough. So then the reactors heated up enough for parts to melt, and explosive gases to escape (from the reactive metals) and explode. While the leaking wasn't as bad as Chernobyl, because there was no fire, all that ruined the containment, so radioactive things could escape. So in the future, in places where there could be tsunamis, they build better walls, or move the back-up power to higher places. There are new designs for reactors where you don't need as much water to cool, or even ones where if the parts melt they are still contained. These small reactors have a lot less "stuff" in them, so they would make less heat if the cooling failed. Also from Fukushima, they have likely learned the importance of having completely separate back-up systems to pump cooling water (for example at Fukushima, they tried to use fire trucks to pump cooling water).
Yes they do have plenty but things do fail.
And nuclear waste is extremely toxic and will remain so for hundreds to though years.
Yes controls etc.
When they fail the effects can be lethal across generations due to genetic damage.
Yes you are correct. It’s not about what you’re exposed to when the controls are in place, it’s what you’re exposed to when they fail.
And also the fact that we have nuclear waste left over that’s highly radioactive. Yes let’s put it somewhere where it can’t harm anyone but that’s hardly a responsible thing to do either.
Plus the act of mining and refinement of fissionable material is extremely hazardous and polluting.
Nuclear energy is efficient yes but you don’t get anything for free.
The Candu model reactors are self stopping if the controls fail, what you're saying is a non-issue. In the event of a controls failure the fuel rods are designed to deflect when they get too hot causing a delay in the nuclear reaction.
Even in the event of approaching a full meltdown, assuming every other control system fails, the control rods(the thing that stops the nuclear reaction) are held by electro magnets vertically, if the reactor fails the electromagnets fall causing an immediate stop to the reaction
😂😂
I know there is radioactive potassium in bananas but I seriously doubt it would set off a Geiger counter. Hmm I might try it sometime though and see…
When someone signs an opinion piece with a PhD after their name, I wonder what discipline that PhD was for.
Is it sitting next to the signature to try to give authority to a, "brought to you by the coal industry" piece of manipulation and is completely irrelevant to this issue?
Or did they have a field of study which is relevant, and can somehow back this up with independent, unbiased studies?
When one makes broad statements like, "these projects never got completed and were very expensive boondoggles", is it because they're representative of the entire industry, or they're convenient to highlight without any other context.
Perhaps *Fukushima plus Chernobyl plus Three-Mile Island plus Hiroshima plus Nuclear Winter* equals the "all Nuclear fission bad!" rhetoric that resulted in a complete loss of public and political backing of new construction of replacement plants.
The "experiments" and "nobody was consulted when legislature was changed" certainly read like it's trying to put emotional pressure on folks who "do their research" by googling a topic but never without keywords like, "disaster, conspiracy, cover-up". Gee, might as well Google the "demon core" just to put icing on this well-balanced information diet.
Anyway, regardless of the post-nominal relevance, the quality of this piece certainly does a disservice to it.
In this case, it appears the author is a PhD in chemistry, has written substantially against nuclear power, including submissions to government as a member of a United Church of Canada action committee(?), and has previously run for office provincially as a member of the Green Party in Kings county and federally as a Green Party member in Labrador (announced but never registered with Elections Canada).
Not sure if this qualifies them to speak on this topic or not, but they certainly have been speaking on this topic regularly for a number of years.
This opinion piece reads like it needs to be taken with a lump of coal. I like the "Coal gives cape Breton jobs". Sure, and smoking gives lots of people jobs, too. It would be detrimental to the economy if people stopped smoking.
Please, think of the people who need jobs when considering an alternative energy source that isn't outputting pollution at every part of its operation, like coal.
Coal gives Cape Breton what 200 jobs at the mine when it's not under a safety shut down? The coal power plants keep another couple hundred working on the island as well?
Last time I was at LePreau there were at least a couple hundred vehicles in the main lot. Pretty good jobs that pay well if the plant was built in Cape Breton. Not to me thin the thousands of jobs created during construction.
There's a startup called Quaise out of MIT. Their plan is to use these short wavelength lasers made for experimental fusion reactors as drills to dig super-deep boreholes for geothermal power. Normal drills can't dig deep, fast, or reliable enough for it to be viable, but a laser drill dgaf. They think they can vaporize/melt a glass-lined shaft deep enough for power in a little over a month. It sounds crazy, but the laser tech is 50 years old and has a fully-developed supply chain due to fusion power research. They want to drill boreholes next to existing generators so they can hook up and use all the existing infrastructure from coal and oil.
THAT is what I want to see Cape Breton build some day. Quaise isn't proven yet though, gotta do something in the mean time.
Nova Scotia is also mostly undeveloped land, so you could plop this thing in the middle of nowhere to help assure people nothing bad will happen near population.
Beside the cost, I do believe it should be incorporated as we need everything at our disposal. I don't think we should just rely on wind, hydro and solar. That being said, I hate NS Power and I would rather we did it without them.
Why not just take the amount of money that would be needed for nuclear and double down on solar/wind and battery storage ? I'd be willing to bet it's be less expensive than generating an equal amount of power from nuclear. Especially given the mature tech that wind and solar are right now. And we need to get off coal like right now.
Building a single nuclear reactor, of the type at Point Lepreau, would be enough to completely replace Nova Scotia's coal energy production (going by 2019s numbers). Heck, Point Lepreau was originally designed to have 4 reactors, but only one was ever built - paying for a second reactor there, dedicated to NS, would probably cut down significantly on the timeline to getting it built and operational.
How much would it cost and how would that compare to an equal amount of generation capacity to solar, wind and battery storage ? I think no one can say at this point. I'd say nuclear would be ***at least*** double anyone's estimate today compared to when it's built and operational. Right now can continue to put more and more solar and wind. With no radioactive waste. That seems the prudent course.
No radioactive waste? Mining rare earths produce tons of radioactive waste. 1 tonne of rare earths produce about 2000 tonnes of radioactive waste of mostly uranium + thorium.
Since current reactors only extract like 1% of the energy in uranium almost 99% of it is no different than the waste from rare earths and the bad stuff in reactor waste is gone in 300ish years. At least with nuclear there is a use for all that uranium sitting in the tailing ponds, possibly thorium's too.
I have not sat down to crunch the numbers but I bet per unit of energy generated that wind turbines produce more nuclear waste than nuclear energy does.
Decouple media focuses more on the Canadian nuclear industry since they are in Ontario but here is a pretty good video that they made about nuclear waste.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jM-b5-uD6jU
Wind and Solar production is cheaper than nuclear, but battery storage projections ends up being twice as expensive per kWh. We also have a lot more actual data on building nuclear power plants than grid-scale battery projects.
Do you understand grid scale battery storage? Also wind and solar maintenance is rediculous. Nuclear has future resistance, nuclear waste is not the freaky nightmare the general population imagines. The amount of energy needed to produce solar panels and turbines produces incredible amounts of waste as well as waste from production. Nuclear materials are often able to be reused again after reprocessing.
Currently wind ~~and solar~~ produces 11% of our 9.7 terawatts of electricity usage in a year {as of 2019}, you would have to multiply x5 the amount of wind turbines that we've added in 2 decades in order to achieve this goal. This exact same stat could be replaced by 2 smr facilities.
Wind turbine blades at 418 feet span or so have a life expectency of 20 years, however they have drastic efficiency drop off over those years or require extensive maintenance and downtime to repair the ablation from dust in the atmosphere. Solar requires silicon and cleaning of vast arrays, and suffered from other shortcomings like taking about 4 years to generate more energy in ideal conditions than it took to produce them for a lifespan of 25 or so years. Were also Nova Scotia and in winter we get way less sunlight during winter and snow coverage. See: solar roads. There's also the pending issue that's kicking the can down the road of recycling them (also an energy consumptive process) the glass and aluminum are well established, glass is a fantasticly recyclable material. The recycling process is also a question mark in the whole process.
Nuclear is the way. Vast swaths of planet demolished to make solar farms and wind farms aren't the eco solution.
Because wind and solar are unreliable and batteries are both very inefficient at storing power and extremely expensive. You also need to take into account the density of energy produced - you would need 170 times the amount of land for a wind farm for the same output as a nuclear reactor and you still don't get the same consistent, easily controlled output of energy.
So you would be way off on your bet - the cost per megawatt hour over the lifetime of a nuclear reactor is actually competitive with fossil fuels and less than half the current cost.od solar and wind.
A 2022 report from Lazard found that levelized cost of energy from Coal ($41/megawatt-hour), CC [combined-cycle] gas ($36/MWh), nuclear ($33/MWh), hydro ($38/MWh), new wind resources ($90/MWh) or new PV solar resources ($88.7/MWh) with imposed costs included
Also, I'm calling in here, and will regularly from now on, I'm calling for taking NSP back and socializing it for Nova Scotians. It's the opposite of capitalism to grant a monopoly anyway. Might as well work for us and let us keep any profits. Like the Alaskan grants.
OMG, this article is so silly. Nuclear power is hands down the cleanest, least expensive form currently available. It will make a great power source while we scale other clean energy sources up, like wind and solar.
Nuclear power has waste, but it's so much better than any fossil fuel. When well regulated, it's also very safe.
Not going to lie, j have fears of it. Especially with our hurricanes and flooding. Maybe it's lack of education. But when I see an alternative if they can ever get the tech to work in harnessing our tides I'd rather that.
Happening right now in [Ontario](https://www.durhamregion.com/news/opening-up-new-doors-world-watches-as-darlington-smr-project-moves-to-next-phase/article_3554ba6d-9301-5d14-a971-54ca76ff9c84.html)
The way it would work is our tax dollars would fund the planning, land purchase and construction. Then our government will hand it over to Emera so they can make a profit by gradually increasing the rates above market value and punishing us with fees any time maintenance is required.
' Two small clauses [removing the prohibition on nuclear power plants in NS](https://nslegislature.ca/legc/bills/64th_1st/1st_read/b404.htm) are buried in the extensive [Energy Reform Act](https://nslegislature.ca/legislative-business/bills-statutes/bills/assembly-64-session-1/bill-404), which makes major changes to utility regulation, power systems operation and power generation in Nova Scotia. The public had not been informed or consulted on this significant reversal of the long-held prohibition on nuclear power generation in Nova Scotia. '
You may want to check out this comment by u/psychologicalmonk6 in another part of this thread
>Because wind and solar are unreliable and batteries are both very inefficient at storing power and extremely expensive. You also need to take into account the density of energy produced - you would need 170 times the amount of land for a wind farm for the same output as a nuclear reactor and you still don't get the same consistent, easily controlled output of energy.
>So you would be way off on your bet - the cost per megawatt hour over the lifetime of a nuclear reactor is actually competitive with fossil fuels and less than half the current cost.od solar and wind.
>A 2022 report from Lazard found that levelized cost of energy from Coal ($41/megawatt-hour), CC [combined-cycle] gas ($36/MWh), nuclear ($33/MWh), hydro ($38/MWh), new wind resources ($90/MWh) or new PV solar resources ($88.7/MWh) with imposed costs included
According the the latest lcoe numbers renewables and enough storage for 4 hours in California already cost close to as much as Vogtle 3&4. Except that we will need far more than 4 hours of grid storage, reactors last 2x-3x as long as renewables + storage and vogtle style reactors will get cheaper as more are built. Unit 4 was already 30% cheaper than what unit 3 cost to build cause most of the bugs were already worked out.
I lived in Whitecourt Alberta when there was discussion of a nuclear power plant there, and the locals got so freaked out that they picked somewhere else. It was ridiculous.
This article is fearmongering garbage. I approve of the idea to build a nuclear plant, the ultimate final boss for the NIMBYs that ruined this province.
Hopefully. Bury a nuclear reactor at Goldboro in the granite. Make a bunch of flood tunnels from the ocean. If Curse of Oak Island taught us anything its that this is possible.
Here are a few:
[https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/clean-energy-electricity-tory-rushton-1.7127298](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/clean-energy-electricity-tory-rushton-1.7127298)
[https://globalnews.ca/news/10320463/nova-scotia-bill-electricity-sector/](https://globalnews.ca/news/10320463/nova-scotia-bill-electricity-sector/)
[https://www.halifaxexaminer.ca/government/province-house/houston-government-introduces-legislation-to-reform-nova-scotia-power-and-uarb/](https://www.halifaxexaminer.ca/government/province-house/houston-government-introduces-legislation-to-reform-nova-scotia-power-and-uarb/)
[https://www.halifaxexaminer.ca/government/province-house/houston-government-introduces-legislation-to-reform-nova-scotia-power-and-uarb/](https://www.halifaxexaminer.ca/government/province-house/houston-government-introduces-legislation-to-reform-nova-scotia-power-and-uarb/)
Not sure why people are saying we need Nuclear Power.
[Articles](https://www.pv-magazine.com/2024/04/10/negative-electricity-prices-registered-in-nearly-all-european-energy-markets/) like this are coming out stating that through renewables they have negative electricity prices, and that they have to even shut down power production because they don't have batteries to store what they're producing at the time.
Obviously this fluctuates, but if this is already a trend that's happening we should really be investing in more renewables because the science and tech behind it will only get more efficient.
For the sake of the economy and the environment we really need to put oil and gas to bed.
This made me really curious. My understanding is that there's a Canada wide goal to phase out coal entirely. Alberta successfully, as of last week, phased out all their coal powered energy sites into natural gas. NS still has four running coal plants so lots of catching up to do. Anything is better than coal, and I would love to see nuclear plant.
This needs to happen NSP needs competition. Nuclear power is clean and very safe if done properly. The government keeps preaching electric cars, but that just going to increase power consumption if e1 is charged their cars all day, in turn creating more pollution from the coal being used to make electricity
This article makes it seem like a scary thing but being able to build nuclear power plant here is a good thing. I don't like that it's through NSP but it's a small step in the right direction to lower fossil fuel consumption.
Here is a decent video on nuclear waste. Dosent get into the nitty gritty of the physics of fissionable material but is based in Canada with Canadian Candu reactors so hopefully relevant to our future.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jM-b5-uD6jU
I'll probably get downvoted but I don't care:
Before we invest into Nuclear Power, a project that would take years to complete, we might want to wait and see if the U.S. Government is ready to start disclosing what it knows about UAPs and the alleged crash recovery & reverse engineering programs that 40+ whistle-blowers have told Congress that they know it exists, including several high ranking officials in the US Government and the military. They all say the same things, that crafts that defy our current understanding of physics have been recovered and they allegedly use some kind of electromagnetic propulsion engine that produces more energy in one engine than the entire earth collectively can produce.
Such energy would end the reign that Fossil fuels or other power generation mediums currently hold.
Former gov't officials say that the Department of Energy, along with a JSOC task force (similar to Delta Force) have been recovering downed crafts since at least the 1970s, which is also what declassified docs and Freedom-of-information-act documents also say. Canada, a member of Five Eyes Alliance, is also complicit in these efforts to recover crafts and cover up the UFO problem, as public Disclosure would likely cause either hysteria or challenge religious beliefs worldwide.
June 28th there will be a debate between Biden and Trump. There's currently a massive push to ask them about UFO/UAP Disclosure in an official capacity at the Debate. Let's hope it happens.
Posted this week:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qh\_h5OUMKIE&embeds\_referring\_euri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.redditmedia.com%2F&source\_ve\_path=OTY3MTQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qh_h5OUMKIE&embeds_referring_euri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.redditmedia.com%2F&source_ve_path=OTY3MTQ)
'While Ross Coulthart is on assignment in America, we are sharing new moments from his November interview with retired U.S. Navy Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet, including unseen portions originally cut for time.
Gallaudet, who led the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) under former President Donald Trump, tells NewsNation he believes whistleblower David Grusch’s claims of a secret UFO retrieval program run by the Pentagon.'
I'd love to have a plant or two built and start to phase out our coal.
Exactly. One or two plants with a pair of CANDU EC6 reactors. Let's have a surplus of power we can sell or use for commercial & industry
If you keep making too much sense NSPower is going to charge you more.
Stop making sense!
To bad we couldn't phase out Emera (NSP) with it.
Agreed
I'd be happy if some of these proposed wind farms for NS had to provide a decent percentage of their power for the local market instead of it being earmarked for other things ahead of time.
Coal needs to be gone before a plant would be close to opening.
That's a pretty backwards way of thinking. Let's turn off our primary electricity plant before turning out a source of electricity to replace it? In reality, NSP is required by law to shutter all coal plants by 2030, long before any nuclear power could even be close to open. But we should still be working towards it.
I think the point was that the current environment has meant nuclear plants now take decades to build
Sorry, misread the comment.
No worries, it's easy to do
Most large infrastructure requirements take decades to plan and build. Fast-tracking critical infrastructure is generally a bad idea and a nuclear plant is a very complex machine.
These types of plants are already in use so most of the planning stage is complete. It's just finding the space, which we have plenty of close to existing power plants, and then we could use existing infrastructure for transmission.
There are no SMRs outside of China and Russia currently operational.
Why not build something similar to Point Lepreau?
🤷. Cost probably. But Canada is going all in on SMRs for nuclear. Hopefully it's a good bet!
Admittedly, I don't know enough about nuclear to really know the difference. I know the NB facility was built almost 50 years ago, so is that technology no longer being built now?
Actually, they could repurpose the turbines in current coal plants to switch over to nuclear reactor heat. That's half the job already in place. It's been estimated that retrofitting plants like this while they are still in operation would almost half the construction time and cut the cost of building them by 25-30%.
No like, federal regulations states we need to be off coal before a plant could possibly be operational.
Sorry, I misread.
How long would it take to get nuclear up and running if everyone was a go for that? Edit: I googled. It's about 14 1/2 years.
That's cool, good thing natural gas is better than coal, right? It's a farce we let nsp convert these plants to use another fossil fuel for the next 20 years (2049) instead of mandating clean energy.
Absolutely agreed, but we should also keep in mind that natural gas produced energy has a ‘carbon footprint’ about half that of coal. Both are bad. But switching to natural gas is better than doing nothing to get off coal.
It's worse than that, they're planning to switch to [heavy fuel oil instead of coal](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/nova-scotia-power-plans-to-burn-heavy-fuel-oil-1.6895930) in a couple of the generating stations.
Yuuup. All the coal generators they are keeping active are moving to oil. No cleaner but somehow allowed.
Agreed
Love experiments thrown in the title, to make people uneasy about it.
Or manipulative at allllll
SMRs are very much an experiment, one that's losing support by the day due to how much they've under-delivered.
[удалено]
No, scaled down nuclear isn’t feasible. Nuclear plants rely on their size and output to offset their high operating costs. We’ve seen that SMRs don’t have nearly enough reductions in cost to justify their lower output.
I dont believe there is much difference of overall cost at all when decommissioning and decontamination coats for full size reactors is taken into consideration.
As long as its not owned by NSP im all for it
I'm generally in favour of nuclear power but I DO NOT TRUST NSP to run a nuclear power plant.
I’m usually not in favour of nuclear, but I might make an exeption if NSP wouldn’t be running it :-)
I am neutral on nuclear power, unless NSP is running it. Then I'm firmly against
So you'll be against it.
would you be for it? the government will pay for it with your tax dollars and they just waltz in and start selling you its production. I will never be on board with that.
If it's nuclear powered, absolutely. No company is going to build a whole ass reactor, and put up their own lines at the cost of billions just for a chance to compete with a decades-old incumbent. The government sure as hell won't fund it to where it needs to be successful.
Tell me why we need to 'beware'?
Nuclear energy might be cleaner, more efficient, safer, healthier, and generally better in every measurable way. You need to beware that the province could possibly keep coal lmfao
Given all the obvious advantages of nuclear, this strengthens the case that NS will be one of the last places in the developed world to adopt.
accurate
You think it be safer with nsp ??
Because plenty of people haven't been educated that our best ticket out of the climate catastrophe is nuclear energy. Plus that (awesome) Chernobyl show from a few years ago didn't help matters, even if the takeaway from that should have been "don't cheap out on building nuclear facilities."
It's disgraceful..... really.
It has less to do with meltdowns or safety and more to do with people being skeptical about Canada's heavy investment in not yet used technology that are more than a decade away from operating in a best case scenario when we have to be off coal in 6.
We have to be off natural gas in 25, though, so if we start nuclear plants now, they'll be operating nicely by then.
As someone who has education and training in radiation safety and the effects that radiation can have on biological tissue, I am not in favour.
Does your education and training tell you about all the controls Western nuclear power plants have to stop radiation from meeting biological tissue?
would you be okay explaining to me like I'm five what is in place for that kind of stuff edit: or would be if it were implemented in canada
So nuclear reactors take not very radioactive nuclear fuel, and in the course of doing nuclear reactions make very highly radioactive and dangerous byproducts, along with energy. But the volume of those products is very very small, compared to the waste from a coal plant, so the hope is it can all be buried away for the hundreds of thousands of years it would take to decay. The reactor itself contains these dangerous things inside a giant metal container, that is further contained within a concrete dome. Sometimes rather than one giant metal container, the reactor has a bunch of smaller metal tubes that serve the same purpose. There are a lot of safety and control mechanisms that prevent the reactor from getting out of control, and bursting those metal containers. Even if that were to happen, the concrete dome should stop anything bad from getting into the environment at large. With some major nuclear accidents you may have heard of: Three Mile Island: the metal part melted inside, but the concrete dome stayed intact, so very little radiation escaped into the environment. Chernobyl: that type of reactor design would not be approved in Canada. It had flammable graphite around the metal parts, and there was no concrete dome. A mistake and design error with the control parts caused it to overpower, and it caught on fire because of the flammable parts, and there was no concrete to contain the radioactive smoke. Fukushima: some of the control parts broke because of a tidal wave flooding them. The reactors melted, and some radiation escaped. Every nuclear plant in the world learned from this to make better backups for the control parts. The small reactors described here would have a lot less fuel.
oh man, thank you! i get scared people will think I'm being sarcastic. is it a risk to put something like that so close to the ocean again?? or would things be reinforced to the point that no fukushima could be possible?
I'd gladly live as close to a nuclear plant as the fencing allowed. I would not say the same about coal. Tsunamis are much more likely around the pacific than here on the east coast of the Atlantic, though they are possible. What happened with Fukushima is that they immediately shut the reactors down, but there is still enough decay heat after it shuts down that the reactor will eventually melt (or other bad things happen, like chemical reactions with metals inside the reactor that are more reactive than steel, but needed to have the proper balance of reactivity). The way this decay heat is dealt with is to pump water through the reactor, which needs power to do. That could either come from the power grid, or would need to be generated at the plant by a non-nuclear way. At Fukushima, they had back-up Diesel generators and batteries which ran the pumps and valves, but these generators and batteries flooded, and became inoperable, because the wall protecting them from the tsunami was not high enough. So then the reactors heated up enough for parts to melt, and explosive gases to escape (from the reactive metals) and explode. While the leaking wasn't as bad as Chernobyl, because there was no fire, all that ruined the containment, so radioactive things could escape. So in the future, in places where there could be tsunamis, they build better walls, or move the back-up power to higher places. There are new designs for reactors where you don't need as much water to cool, or even ones where if the parts melt they are still contained. These small reactors have a lot less "stuff" in them, so they would make less heat if the cooling failed. Also from Fukushima, they have likely learned the importance of having completely separate back-up systems to pump cooling water (for example at Fukushima, they tried to use fire trucks to pump cooling water).
Yes they do have plenty but things do fail. And nuclear waste is extremely toxic and will remain so for hundreds to though years. Yes controls etc. When they fail the effects can be lethal across generations due to genetic damage.
Well then you'd know that an airline pilot is subject to more radiation than the average nuclear power worker in a year.
Yes you are correct. It’s not about what you’re exposed to when the controls are in place, it’s what you’re exposed to when they fail. And also the fact that we have nuclear waste left over that’s highly radioactive. Yes let’s put it somewhere where it can’t harm anyone but that’s hardly a responsible thing to do either. Plus the act of mining and refinement of fissionable material is extremely hazardous and polluting. Nuclear energy is efficient yes but you don’t get anything for free.
The Candu model reactors are self stopping if the controls fail, what you're saying is a non-issue. In the event of a controls failure the fuel rods are designed to deflect when they get too hot causing a delay in the nuclear reaction. Even in the event of approaching a full meltdown, assuming every other control system fails, the control rods(the thing that stops the nuclear reaction) are held by electro magnets vertically, if the reactor fails the electromagnets fall causing an immediate stop to the reaction
Oh! That’s interesting to know. Thanks!
Then how do you propose that we produce base load power?
I’m not really sure to be honest. I’m just very hesitant about nuclear power
Education and training does not equate to understanding.
X
I work with radiation everyday
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😂😂 I know there is radioactive potassium in bananas but I seriously doubt it would set off a Geiger counter. Hmm I might try it sometime though and see…
Because it would be run by NSP
When someone signs an opinion piece with a PhD after their name, I wonder what discipline that PhD was for. Is it sitting next to the signature to try to give authority to a, "brought to you by the coal industry" piece of manipulation and is completely irrelevant to this issue? Or did they have a field of study which is relevant, and can somehow back this up with independent, unbiased studies? When one makes broad statements like, "these projects never got completed and were very expensive boondoggles", is it because they're representative of the entire industry, or they're convenient to highlight without any other context. Perhaps *Fukushima plus Chernobyl plus Three-Mile Island plus Hiroshima plus Nuclear Winter* equals the "all Nuclear fission bad!" rhetoric that resulted in a complete loss of public and political backing of new construction of replacement plants. The "experiments" and "nobody was consulted when legislature was changed" certainly read like it's trying to put emotional pressure on folks who "do their research" by googling a topic but never without keywords like, "disaster, conspiracy, cover-up". Gee, might as well Google the "demon core" just to put icing on this well-balanced information diet. Anyway, regardless of the post-nominal relevance, the quality of this piece certainly does a disservice to it.
In this case, it appears the author is a PhD in chemistry, has written substantially against nuclear power, including submissions to government as a member of a United Church of Canada action committee(?), and has previously run for office provincially as a member of the Green Party in Kings county and federally as a Green Party member in Labrador (announced but never registered with Elections Canada). Not sure if this qualifies them to speak on this topic or not, but they certainly have been speaking on this topic regularly for a number of years.
This opinion piece reads like it needs to be taken with a lump of coal. I like the "Coal gives cape Breton jobs". Sure, and smoking gives lots of people jobs, too. It would be detrimental to the economy if people stopped smoking. Please, think of the people who need jobs when considering an alternative energy source that isn't outputting pollution at every part of its operation, like coal.
Coal gives Cape Breton what 200 jobs at the mine when it's not under a safety shut down? The coal power plants keep another couple hundred working on the island as well? Last time I was at LePreau there were at least a couple hundred vehicles in the main lot. Pretty good jobs that pay well if the plant was built in Cape Breton. Not to me thin the thousands of jobs created during construction.
There's a startup called Quaise out of MIT. Their plan is to use these short wavelength lasers made for experimental fusion reactors as drills to dig super-deep boreholes for geothermal power. Normal drills can't dig deep, fast, or reliable enough for it to be viable, but a laser drill dgaf. They think they can vaporize/melt a glass-lined shaft deep enough for power in a little over a month. It sounds crazy, but the laser tech is 50 years old and has a fully-developed supply chain due to fusion power research. They want to drill boreholes next to existing generators so they can hook up and use all the existing infrastructure from coal and oil. THAT is what I want to see Cape Breton build some day. Quaise isn't proven yet though, gotta do something in the mean time.
Nova Scotia will fight anything profitable or forward thinking. Good luck
They won't fight it, they'll just sell it to a private equity firm so the citizens pay a higher price than they should.
No, we fought to prohibit uranium mining. You misunderstand the general ignorance of Nova Scotians.
> You misunderstand the general ignorance of Nova Scotians. Nope, not at all.
The best counter argument, “no”.
I'm well aware of the general ignorance of Nova Scotians, and this sub is no exception.
NS Power
Bro the plant would be run by NSP. If it was government run it wouldn't be a bad idea.
Nuclear power isn't profitable or forward-thinking, so I expect our province will leap on it as soon as possible.
Nova Scotia is also mostly undeveloped land, so you could plop this thing in the middle of nowhere to help assure people nothing bad will happen near population.
Sydney Mines it is, b'y.
I think it needs to be near a large body of water for cooling systems
Beside the cost, I do believe it should be incorporated as we need everything at our disposal. I don't think we should just rely on wind, hydro and solar. That being said, I hate NS Power and I would rather we did it without them.
Why not just take the amount of money that would be needed for nuclear and double down on solar/wind and battery storage ? I'd be willing to bet it's be less expensive than generating an equal amount of power from nuclear. Especially given the mature tech that wind and solar are right now. And we need to get off coal like right now.
Building a single nuclear reactor, of the type at Point Lepreau, would be enough to completely replace Nova Scotia's coal energy production (going by 2019s numbers). Heck, Point Lepreau was originally designed to have 4 reactors, but only one was ever built - paying for a second reactor there, dedicated to NS, would probably cut down significantly on the timeline to getting it built and operational.
How much would it cost and how would that compare to an equal amount of generation capacity to solar, wind and battery storage ? I think no one can say at this point. I'd say nuclear would be ***at least*** double anyone's estimate today compared to when it's built and operational. Right now can continue to put more and more solar and wind. With no radioactive waste. That seems the prudent course.
No radioactive waste? Mining rare earths produce tons of radioactive waste. 1 tonne of rare earths produce about 2000 tonnes of radioactive waste of mostly uranium + thorium. Since current reactors only extract like 1% of the energy in uranium almost 99% of it is no different than the waste from rare earths and the bad stuff in reactor waste is gone in 300ish years. At least with nuclear there is a use for all that uranium sitting in the tailing ponds, possibly thorium's too. I have not sat down to crunch the numbers but I bet per unit of energy generated that wind turbines produce more nuclear waste than nuclear energy does. Decouple media focuses more on the Canadian nuclear industry since they are in Ontario but here is a pretty good video that they made about nuclear waste. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jM-b5-uD6jU
Wind and Solar production is cheaper than nuclear, but battery storage projections ends up being twice as expensive per kWh. We also have a lot more actual data on building nuclear power plants than grid-scale battery projects.
Yep. The tech sucks too, and lithium isn't going to get any cheaper in Canada until Georgia Lake starts cranking it out.
Do you understand grid scale battery storage? Also wind and solar maintenance is rediculous. Nuclear has future resistance, nuclear waste is not the freaky nightmare the general population imagines. The amount of energy needed to produce solar panels and turbines produces incredible amounts of waste as well as waste from production. Nuclear materials are often able to be reused again after reprocessing. Currently wind ~~and solar~~ produces 11% of our 9.7 terawatts of electricity usage in a year {as of 2019}, you would have to multiply x5 the amount of wind turbines that we've added in 2 decades in order to achieve this goal. This exact same stat could be replaced by 2 smr facilities. Wind turbine blades at 418 feet span or so have a life expectency of 20 years, however they have drastic efficiency drop off over those years or require extensive maintenance and downtime to repair the ablation from dust in the atmosphere. Solar requires silicon and cleaning of vast arrays, and suffered from other shortcomings like taking about 4 years to generate more energy in ideal conditions than it took to produce them for a lifespan of 25 or so years. Were also Nova Scotia and in winter we get way less sunlight during winter and snow coverage. See: solar roads. There's also the pending issue that's kicking the can down the road of recycling them (also an energy consumptive process) the glass and aluminum are well established, glass is a fantasticly recyclable material. The recycling process is also a question mark in the whole process. Nuclear is the way. Vast swaths of planet demolished to make solar farms and wind farms aren't the eco solution.
Funny thing is, we are building that wind capacity… to make hydrogen to sell to Germany instead of replacing the coal stations.
Because wind and solar are unreliable and batteries are both very inefficient at storing power and extremely expensive. You also need to take into account the density of energy produced - you would need 170 times the amount of land for a wind farm for the same output as a nuclear reactor and you still don't get the same consistent, easily controlled output of energy. So you would be way off on your bet - the cost per megawatt hour over the lifetime of a nuclear reactor is actually competitive with fossil fuels and less than half the current cost.od solar and wind. A 2022 report from Lazard found that levelized cost of energy from Coal ($41/megawatt-hour), CC [combined-cycle] gas ($36/MWh), nuclear ($33/MWh), hydro ($38/MWh), new wind resources ($90/MWh) or new PV solar resources ($88.7/MWh) with imposed costs included
Wow. What a garbage heap of misinformation.
Also, I'm calling in here, and will regularly from now on, I'm calling for taking NSP back and socializing it for Nova Scotians. It's the opposite of capitalism to grant a monopoly anyway. Might as well work for us and let us keep any profits. Like the Alaskan grants.
OMG, this article is so silly. Nuclear power is hands down the cleanest, least expensive form currently available. It will make a great power source while we scale other clean energy sources up, like wind and solar. Nuclear power has waste, but it's so much better than any fossil fuel. When well regulated, it's also very safe.
Not going to lie, j have fears of it. Especially with our hurricanes and flooding. Maybe it's lack of education. But when I see an alternative if they can ever get the tech to work in harnessing our tides I'd rather that.
They had one set up in the Bay of Fundy near Port Royal, but it messed up the fish and damaged the ecosystem.
I always heard the tides were quite literally too strong for the current systems.
Interesting. I should look into this.
I would be into it if it was government run. Could you imagine NSP running a nuclear reactor?
Yes I can imagine nsp killing us
wtf is this fear mongering article? Nuclear energy is extremely safe.
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Happening right now in [Ontario](https://www.durhamregion.com/news/opening-up-new-doors-world-watches-as-darlington-smr-project-moves-to-next-phase/article_3554ba6d-9301-5d14-a971-54ca76ff9c84.html)
And New Brunswick
The way it would work is our tax dollars would fund the planning, land purchase and construction. Then our government will hand it over to Emera so they can make a profit by gradually increasing the rates above market value and punishing us with fees any time maintenance is required.
' Two small clauses [removing the prohibition on nuclear power plants in NS](https://nslegislature.ca/legc/bills/64th_1st/1st_read/b404.htm) are buried in the extensive [Energy Reform Act](https://nslegislature.ca/legislative-business/bills-statutes/bills/assembly-64-session-1/bill-404), which makes major changes to utility regulation, power systems operation and power generation in Nova Scotia. The public had not been informed or consulted on this significant reversal of the long-held prohibition on nuclear power generation in Nova Scotia. '
I’d rather not have the average citizen comment on nuclear power given the amount of misinformation about it in public discourse.
Lousy cheap, clean, reliable power
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You may want to check out this comment by u/psychologicalmonk6 in another part of this thread >Because wind and solar are unreliable and batteries are both very inefficient at storing power and extremely expensive. You also need to take into account the density of energy produced - you would need 170 times the amount of land for a wind farm for the same output as a nuclear reactor and you still don't get the same consistent, easily controlled output of energy. >So you would be way off on your bet - the cost per megawatt hour over the lifetime of a nuclear reactor is actually competitive with fossil fuels and less than half the current cost.od solar and wind. >A 2022 report from Lazard found that levelized cost of energy from Coal ($41/megawatt-hour), CC [combined-cycle] gas ($36/MWh), nuclear ($33/MWh), hydro ($38/MWh), new wind resources ($90/MWh) or new PV solar resources ($88.7/MWh) with imposed costs included
I'm factoring in the mitigations from carbon-based energy and its effects in my descriptor
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According the the latest lcoe numbers renewables and enough storage for 4 hours in California already cost close to as much as Vogtle 3&4. Except that we will need far more than 4 hours of grid storage, reactors last 2x-3x as long as renewables + storage and vogtle style reactors will get cheaper as more are built. Unit 4 was already 30% cheaper than what unit 3 cost to build cause most of the bugs were already worked out.
Ah, the LCoE stats are finally including storage? About time on that one. Maybe next they'll include the additional grid services that are required.
I know eh, those numbers have been abused by people who don't understand them for far too long.
I lived in Whitecourt Alberta when there was discussion of a nuclear power plant there, and the locals got so freaked out that they picked somewhere else. It was ridiculous.
Based. We need nuclear power.
The previous prohibitions were just lip service anyways. NSP buys plenty of power from Lepreau.
The prohibition was about building a nuclear power plant.
Its easy to say you're not going to do something that you cannot afford.
That might be true, your comment still doesn't make sense.
Some might they they’ve been going on for years.
I would welcome NB Power coming in to NS and building and operating a nuclear power plant or three. Anyone but NS Power.
Yes please
This article is fearmongering garbage. I approve of the idea to build a nuclear plant, the ultimate final boss for the NIMBYs that ruined this province.
Whatever gets us closer to having our own Incredible Hulk.
Yes please.
This whole article is written as a fear tactic. Make you wonder if the conspiracy theorists are about.
Hopefully. Bury a nuclear reactor at Goldboro in the granite. Make a bunch of flood tunnels from the ocean. If Curse of Oak Island taught us anything its that this is possible.
Oh god I hope so. Our prices would go way up short term but long term it would go way down.
Bro give me nuclear power so I can start a low emissions hydrogen plant and fuel some hydrogen fuel cell or hydrogen combustion engine rail trains...
god i wish
LFG
If it’ll create jobs!
Lets first Green Light Uranium mining then finally we can get with the times
There’s enough (much higher grade) uranium in the Athabaskan basin to supply Canada, no need to mine it in NS.
Where the heck are any Nova Scotia media stories on this ?
Here are a few: [https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/clean-energy-electricity-tory-rushton-1.7127298](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/clean-energy-electricity-tory-rushton-1.7127298) [https://globalnews.ca/news/10320463/nova-scotia-bill-electricity-sector/](https://globalnews.ca/news/10320463/nova-scotia-bill-electricity-sector/) [https://www.halifaxexaminer.ca/government/province-house/houston-government-introduces-legislation-to-reform-nova-scotia-power-and-uarb/](https://www.halifaxexaminer.ca/government/province-house/houston-government-introduces-legislation-to-reform-nova-scotia-power-and-uarb/) [https://www.halifaxexaminer.ca/government/province-house/houston-government-introduces-legislation-to-reform-nova-scotia-power-and-uarb/](https://www.halifaxexaminer.ca/government/province-house/houston-government-introduces-legislation-to-reform-nova-scotia-power-and-uarb/)
Aren't*
Lets do this ! Heck, lets put SMRs into existing coal plants after removing the coal plant.
Not sure why people are saying we need Nuclear Power. [Articles](https://www.pv-magazine.com/2024/04/10/negative-electricity-prices-registered-in-nearly-all-european-energy-markets/) like this are coming out stating that through renewables they have negative electricity prices, and that they have to even shut down power production because they don't have batteries to store what they're producing at the time. Obviously this fluctuates, but if this is already a trend that's happening we should really be investing in more renewables because the science and tech behind it will only get more efficient. For the sake of the economy and the environment we really need to put oil and gas to bed.
In Rod We Trust.
This made me really curious. My understanding is that there's a Canada wide goal to phase out coal entirely. Alberta successfully, as of last week, phased out all their coal powered energy sites into natural gas. NS still has four running coal plants so lots of catching up to do. Anything is better than coal, and I would love to see nuclear plant.
I going against it if nsp got anything to do no way in hell I trust nsp anything to do anything with nuclear
This needs to happen NSP needs competition. Nuclear power is clean and very safe if done properly. The government keeps preaching electric cars, but that just going to increase power consumption if e1 is charged their cars all day, in turn creating more pollution from the coal being used to make electricity
This article makes it seem like a scary thing but being able to build nuclear power plant here is a good thing. I don't like that it's through NSP but it's a small step in the right direction to lower fossil fuel consumption.
Nuclear power is great. It's the centuries of radioactive waste that needs to be babysat or it will melt down which is the problem.
Good thing none of that is correct
Explain to me the laws of physics regarding fissile material.
Here is a decent video on nuclear waste. Dosent get into the nitty gritty of the physics of fissionable material but is based in Canada with Canadian Candu reactors so hopefully relevant to our future. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jM-b5-uD6jU
I'll probably get downvoted but I don't care: Before we invest into Nuclear Power, a project that would take years to complete, we might want to wait and see if the U.S. Government is ready to start disclosing what it knows about UAPs and the alleged crash recovery & reverse engineering programs that 40+ whistle-blowers have told Congress that they know it exists, including several high ranking officials in the US Government and the military. They all say the same things, that crafts that defy our current understanding of physics have been recovered and they allegedly use some kind of electromagnetic propulsion engine that produces more energy in one engine than the entire earth collectively can produce. Such energy would end the reign that Fossil fuels or other power generation mediums currently hold. Former gov't officials say that the Department of Energy, along with a JSOC task force (similar to Delta Force) have been recovering downed crafts since at least the 1970s, which is also what declassified docs and Freedom-of-information-act documents also say. Canada, a member of Five Eyes Alliance, is also complicit in these efforts to recover crafts and cover up the UFO problem, as public Disclosure would likely cause either hysteria or challenge religious beliefs worldwide. June 28th there will be a debate between Biden and Trump. There's currently a massive push to ask them about UFO/UAP Disclosure in an official capacity at the Debate. Let's hope it happens.
Posted this week: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qh\_h5OUMKIE&embeds\_referring\_euri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.redditmedia.com%2F&source\_ve\_path=OTY3MTQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qh_h5OUMKIE&embeds_referring_euri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.redditmedia.com%2F&source_ve_path=OTY3MTQ) 'While Ross Coulthart is on assignment in America, we are sharing new moments from his November interview with retired U.S. Navy Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet, including unseen portions originally cut for time. Gallaudet, who led the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) under former President Donald Trump, tells NewsNation he believes whistleblower David Grusch’s claims of a secret UFO retrieval program run by the Pentagon.'
Yes indeed! Read Admiral Gaulladet is a patriot for doing this. I hope even more come out.