New Democrat leader Dwain Lingenfelter’s promise to get more electricity from wind turbines is being criticized by the Saskatchewan Party.
The party says if elected on Nov. 7, an NDP government will add 400 megawatts of new wind power over four years.
But Sask. Party Leader Brad Wall says there’s a huge hole in the NDP platform because it’s not being costed out.
According to SaskPower planning documents, large wind power projects have capital costs of between $2 million and $3 million per megawatt…
Wall said that’s another example of the NDP making unaffordable promises.
“Are you going to make SaskPower borrow the money? Is it going to come from the general revenue fund? Or are people going to pay higher electricity rates?” Wall asked.
The wind power promise is part of the NDP’s environmental plan to ensure that by 2025, 50 per cent of the province’s electricity is clean, renewable energy.
A plan to generate half of Saskatchewan’s power from renewable sources by 2030 is “ambitious,” but the provincial government insists it can be done.
Days after Premier Brad Wall announced that by 2030, wind, solar and geothermal power would be developed to meet a 50-per-cent renewable target, minister responsible for SaskPower Bill Boyd on Monday said he was “confident SaskPower can meet the target by taking an ‘all of the above’ approach to planning.
Wynneing, flatlander-style.
Isn’t it really starting to look like no matter what the name of the elected party is, what we get is the Liberals?
I thought this Wall guy was supposed to be awesome.
I read somewhere recently that the world’s average IQ had dropped 10 points since the Victorian error.
I think politicians are starting to understand that they need to jump on every stupid bandwagon what comes along in order to be electable.
Guns and Diesel seem to be our future
I am hoping that Premier Wall has figured out from the Ontario experience that voters appear to like being lied to, so he is giving them what they want to hear to defuse the possibility of LIV voting for the feel good, Shiny Pony approved, green option. The difference between the Sask and Ont approaches is that in Sask, the Premier is spinning a story to ensure that the action taken (not the action promised) is the best course for the province – in Ontario, the actions taken are the best course of action for the Liberal party. Given the choice, I would smile and wink at Premier Wall and say, “of course we will do that” ;-)”Let me get right on that.”
Enough of this green energy scam please
If this keeps up we are going to need to start a civil war against these corrupt governments who keep foisting this scam on us. Starting with Trudope and his new Carbon taxes.
Reliable energy could become a thing of the past. Which might be, what it takes for the world to wake up.
In the mean time, we bought a generator.
Seems everybody wants to be re-inserted into the Matrix.
Note to my all fellow Canadians in Saskatchewan who have no desire to end up bankrupt like Ontario.
You can stop this bullshit dead in its tracks right now – and it will only take 5 minutes of your time.
Dear ___________________, MLA
If you go ahead with this foolish plan to meet a 50 percent renewable energy component by 2030, neither I or my family will support you in the next election. Count on it.
Yours truly,
Pass it on……
It would appear that a few in here are starting to wake up. They have banged their gums about Ontario and now find they are in the same rut:-)))
Ambitious because it is impossible.
Brad Wall Bilderberg
I wonder if this has anything to do with the above link? Is he being groomed to be the PM after Trudeau?
Just trying to stir the pot! 🙂
Saskatchewan has enough uranium to power our electrical needs for the next million years and reap the royalties off of same. Cheap and abundant power makes freedom possible. Cheap power assures the old of a comfortable life and the young an edge in competing in the future. The power lines are built for the transmission to the rural areas of the province, especially the northern communities which rely on expensive propane or wood. As I age I find it despicable that our govts. want to take us back two hundred years to the age of sailing ships and horse drawn vehicles.
Saskatchewan would be a great place to return radioactive waste. As mines are depleted put the waste (from nuclear power facilities) back into the empty mines – for a price of course. Use wind turbines to power the long term monitoring systems of the returned waste. After all they don’t have to operate every day.
Not much water in prairie rivers most of the year but why not develop hydro first? Wind simply doesn’t work. The rivers never stop flowing and can produce a reliable amount of power for 12 months. Since the whole thing is an exercise in stupidity, why not go with what is proven and dam every significant river on the prairies. Wind power has been tried a lot but has never worked. And anyone who mentions solar in subarctic Canada is a retard.
I have two ,but it’s not a good way to provide power , backup only
How many times have I told you people? What politicians say is irrelevant; it’s what they do that’s important. 2030 is many years away, at least four elections. If any of you actually believe that anything more than a token amount of this stuff is ever built, well, I have a bridge over the St. Lawrence River to sell you.
By making this announcement, which commits him to nothing right now, Wall blows off all the other critics from all the other socialist provinces who would otherwise be merrily ganging up on him right now. Has it escaped your notice that every other province in Canada right now OTHER than Saskatchewan is a socialist regime? It’s not beyond these clods to introduce new inter-provincial trade barriers if Saskatchewan and Wall followed your advice and said “nuts to this nonsense”. Even Alberta swallowed the koolaid when it elected Notely.
(And I really don’t want to hear any self-righteous crapola from Albertans here about this. It’s you lot sh!t the bed and elected Dipper loons even after Ontario’s hideous experience in 1990.)
And as evidence, what’s the Communist Broadcasting Corporation saying negative about Saskatchewan right now amid all this global warming hysteria hoax? NADA. If Wall followed your advice, the airwaves would be full of vituperation against him. And make no mistake, the Saskatchewan media presstitutes would be just waiting to lead the crusade against him.
First rule in combat: don’t give the enemy a target.
The uranium mines aren’t the best place for storing long-term waste. They occur at locations where hydrogeological mixing was essential for the creation of the deposits in the first place. They are generally within sandstone or near the unconformity between the sandstone and bedrock, meaning there are plenty of faults and potential for movement at some point in the future. The mines were built for mining, not for remaining accessible for the long-term (100s+ years).
The better option is to develop a repository within more stable bedrock like the Canadian Shield, but it’s too far away from reactors to ship without issues with local residents along the transport line.
Better off putting one in Ontario.
1. “Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build a bridge where there is no river.”
Nikita S. Khruschev
2. “Politicians are the lowest form of life on earth.”
General George S. Patton
If the greenies and politicians are certain wind and solar will work then let them start with all hockey arenas being converted to wind and solar. No backup generators or other power allowed. The howling will get their attention.
“What politicians say is irrelevant”
I agree with cgh on this whole thing. Unlike Notley and Wynne, Brad Wall is not a stupid person. When the premiers get together to pat themselves on the backs over their monumental efforts to combat “global warming”, Wall can point to this long-term plan and the fact that Saskatchewan is into the carbon sequestration thing. That should shut the fools up sufficiently so that important, reality based issues can be discussed. If he was to tell the other premiers what he is really thinking about their bloviating, he would be piled on and hectored incessantly. And don’t forget the Kool-Aid guzzling media. They would embellish, spin and lie in order to portray Wall as a redneck Neanderthal. This includes the Saskatchewan media, most of whom long for the good old days of Allan Blakeney, Roy Romanow and equalization cheques.
Sent a message directly to Wall that I will not be voting for his party if they continue with this nonsense. I did give him an out by suggesting that this maybe was just a way to deflect criticism of SK at the Paris gabfest, which I hope it is.
“I will not be voting for his party if they continue with this nonsense”
And the alternative is??
Rob,
I agree with your geology description but ask you to reconsider your opinion on the suitability of the uranium mines to host radioactive waste.
If these mines cannot be sealed after mining has concluded then they should never have been opened in the first place. But they are safe. Safe to open, safe to mine and safe to store waste.
On the other hand stable rock such as thought to exist in Ontario is a real unknown. You stress rock when you excavate into it. How do we know that rock which has been stable for millions of years will remain so when we blast and drift into it, redistributing the stress that has slowly built up over millennia.
The best place to deposit waste is inside a radioactive deposit such as those that occur in Saskatchewan’s Athabasca Basin. It hosts 20% of the world’s economic uranium deposits and could easily host all of the world’s radioactive waste.
Previous ideas have included putting waste on a rocket and blasting it into space. The risk of driving the waste to Saskatchewan is extremely low.
Tommy Douglas is Allan Blakney is Roy Romanow is Dwaine Lingenfelter is Brad Wall…..
The idea that Wall is a conservative is as believable as the fiction that Alberta was a conservative province the past 40 years. He hasn’t dismantled one of the 80? Crown Corporation and is shit scared of the provincial unions. He is premier until the unions turn on him and then it’s more of the same from the ndp.
Yeah, it’ll totally work. Alberta brought in carbon pricing under the PC’s and the lefties, media, and enviro’s totally left them alone.
Well, my earlier comment didn’t make it, it appears.
Fact is in politics, first, you have to get elected, and, need a majority.
Second, get elected again, with a majority.
Third, screw your hard support ridings, to appease the “at risk” ridings. Don’t worry, they’ll vote the line.
In essence, say what “entitled” and “something for nothing” folks want to hear. Cubicle dwellers want to feel they are “changing the world”, and fixing “the worlds” problems.
Woe to the generation that “worked”. “suffered”, endured, and BUILT this country.
They will suffer, they will be vilified and hunger and be cold. Welcome to GREEN politics.
Animals, immigrants, non working, entitled, something for nothing folks, the new focus. Sad, sad, situation.
We are in serious trouble folks. Be aware, STALIN, gulag revisted.
History is truth, re-inventing or massaging it does not make it palitable, real, or better.
Gold and diamonds folks, Jews in Germany, my grandfather from Russia, paper is about to become worthless.
You, the working class, WILL become the enemy and funder on the demise.
Just saying, be aware, and, prepare.
How many times have I told you people? ….Really? When (particularly conservatives who have no social license to govern) politicians deceive the public they pay. Look what happened to Harper. He had the same strategy as Wall. The Stubble-jumpers prefer Wall because their memories of the NDP are still fresh, period. The dominant progressive culture is a green theocracy hell-bent on economic and cultural suicide. Demonizing Carbon is an article of that faith.
Also there are no non-socialist governments in Canada and there hasn’t been one for a long time. They are all content with highly mixed economies with no intent to roll back leviathan.
I concur. There is much of the socalist agenda,regulation,law and policy that Wall is to timid to tackle. Just like Harper!!
Incrementalism as we witnesed and experianced with Harper has failed us big time.
Please Brad. Defending and presenting a conservative and truthful view of the facts regarding the phony “climate” issue which is realy an anti free market/capitalist agenda is not that hard to do. If you have confidence in you convictions.
Viable wind power to replace fossil fuels. No nay, never, right up your kilt!
Steve, Rob, this is a very complicated topic. To start with, there’s no such thing as sealing. The presumption by the nuclear industry is that 1. any storage containers will leak over time, 2. water over geologic time will get into and through everything. The secret to a geologic storage facility is to build within it passive filters for all the water that will flow through it over geologic time, primarily just clay. This is known to work from all the deep geology work in Pinawa, Manitoba during the 1980s. Look up Oklo, Gabon for an example of a natural fission reactor about 1 billion years ago. Over the billion years, none of the fission products moved more than 2 metres despite constant water flow. And there was no natural containment whatsoever.
So it doesn’t matter whether the rock is fractured or not. The repository is designed for and assumes rock fractures.
Next, Ontario rock is under serious consideration because it’s Pre-Cambrian. That means it has huge areas with no intrusions for at least a billion years. No earthquakes, no volcanic activity. They’re called batholiths.
But can you store spent fuel in a Saskatchewan mine? In principle, yes. But the political facts are that all of the money to pay for this will be ponied up by Ontario ratepayers. And they are going to want it done in their province.
Both McArthur River and Cigar Lake mines require the use of mass ground freezing to help maintain stability in the sandstone. That tells you how stable those places are if you leave it open in the long-term.
Also, the reason those deposits exist is because those geological formations were not sealed. Water needed to flow through the fissures in order to deposit the mineral.
Yes, boring through Canadian Shield does create some instability, but it’s nothing compared to mining in sandstone.
Finally, there is no reason why we need to use an old mine to store it. The nuclear industry has earmarked $20 billion to build a new one. Why not custom build one instead of working around the constraints of a former mine?
I no longer trust Brad Wall. I think Trudeau and his henchmen have gotten to him, and I believe it’s only a matter of time before he throws a royal ”F” into this province. We have coal and carbon dioxide recapturing, Mixed with natural gas, it burns clean and it keeps the guys along the border employed. Leave it alone Brad!
Like that idea. Hit up Canadians where it hurts. That will open some more eyes.
“If you have confidence in your convictions.” I do not think that there are like that left in Canada. Marxism is to ingrained. Those politicians that are not socialist have to tread on tip toes and talk policy they do not believe in and later quietly forget or the media, unions, and educational system make big leftist stink. We need a total economic collapse similar to that of the utopia in eastern Europe to do a reset.
Plainzfyre, I hope that you are wrong in your first sentence.
“I no longer trust Brad Wall”
I, for one, will still cut the Premier some slack. He just doesn’t come across as the smarmy, creepy, narcissistic type (Trudeau) or the hopelessly, duh stupid (Notley, Wynne).
If Wall starts indulging in selfies with the PM or announces the creation of new crown corporations, I will reconsider. If he decides to nationalize the potash mines, reintroduce the Land Bank, ban privately-owned liquor stores or start a government-run potato industry (remember Spudco), then I will definitely be in your corner.
Bullshit. Where do you think the mill’s tailings go? Let me help you here … the tailings, high in nickel and arsenic, go back into the mined out pit.
With the power of conviction, there is no sacrifice.
Biff i understand your posture. But think about it. Its the path of least resistance. Will we live to regret it that Harper didn’t fill the 22 Senate seats? No doubt about that. The shiny pony will fill them for sure.
We need some Regan conservatives in this country. Remember what he did with the air traffic controllers?
All the amunition Wall needs to shoot down the green leftest agenda can be found right here on this blog.
Tails go into the mined-out open pits. The only mines now are underground.
Is this the time I disclose that I work for Cameco?
Though, I should also note, I do not speak for the company. The opinion expressed is my own.
Let’s allow the kids to figure that out.
Leslie Dewan is an MIT nuclear physicist.
http://youtu.be/4UXXwWOImm8
Phantom, no we do not just get liberals, we get liberal liars.
Eating crow without swallowing? Lets see how events unfold, but I see the climate hordes
eating the regurgitate.
I’ve worked for Cameco as a contractor back in the late 1980s and early 1990s. When underground I was amazed at the amount of water always entering the mine and all the wooden spigots in the underground drillholes. They had big stop lights (green, yellow, red) monitoring the amount of radon in the air.
I also worked on the RadWaste program, the precursor to the work at Pinawa, Manitoba. Work in Ontario included East Bull Lake, a stable batholith thought to be fracture free. But we mapped fractures and observed there is no such thing as a fracture-free batholith. Eventually the government cut back on the program and transferred everyone to Pinawa (the few who would go anyway). If you ever want to fire government employees just transfer everyone to Pinawa and 95% will quit rather than move to Manitoba.
I also worked at Inco for several years. We surveyed deep exploration boreholes with optical televiewers to look at fractures several thousand feet below surface. At depth there were no open fractures. But in the nearby mines you could map large open fractures that only show up after the infrastructure (drifts, stopes etc) is in place. It turns out that all rock is fractured to some degree. But at great depth these fractures are sealed shut because of the weight of the overlying rock. Until you sink a shaft that is.
My suggestion to put radioactive waste in the exhausted mines of Saskatchewan is, IMHO, a great one. The mines are already highly contaminated with radioactive material. Saskatchewan could become an international expert in radioactive waste storage without the NIMBYism present in so many countries and especially in Ontario.
I am not aware of any long term storage facilities for radioactive waste in Canada even though they have been looking for one for over 30 years. The only problem I can see against putting rad-waste in mines is that the liability would have to be transferred from the mine owner to the Province and that might never happen.
http://www.nwmo.ca/wastemanagement
Wind Energy a total waste and harmful to birds and bats and still these idiots want windturbines becuase most of them dont live in the same vicinity of a windfarm with the choped birds and bats and the horrible noise
The mines are contaminated with long-lived radioactive dust and radon gas, which is kept in check through ventilation and pumping, making the work environment safe.
High-level radioactive waste is another monster altogether. It creates enormous amount of heat and radiation, and has to be contained. An ideal environment would be a low-radiation environment, because the high-level waste fuel would already be contained and you’d still need to access the area.
honestly, people, this idea has been debated and discarded long ago for many reasons. It’s a really bad idea, for the reasons I’ve stated and others. Let it go.
“High-level radioactive waste is another monster altogether.”
There’s a swimming pool full of high-level radioactive waste at McMaster University in Hamilton Ontario, right on the freakin’ campus. It’s been there since the 1950’s when the reactor was built.
Every nuclear plant in North America has a pool full of high-level waste, usually right next to a city. They’ve all been there a really long time. Nobody has grown a tail from it yet.
Somebody explain to me how that situation is less dangerous than sticking the stuff down an ALREADY RADIOACTIVE hole in a -uranium mine-.
And please, spare me the groundwater song and dance ok? It’s a f-ing uranium mine, why aren’t we all long since dead from the uranium water? The mine’s been going a long time too. We should be dead by now, right?
Pretty much bang on. However, over the past 20 years, much of the used fuel has been moved out of water storage into dry concrete storage canisters, also on the plant sites. The actual volume of material is not that much. Each of the world’s reactors require about 150 tonnes of fuel per year. Visually, that would be a cube of about 3 metres.
By contrast, a coal-fired unit of the same size will need about 100 100-car trainloads of coal in a year. Just in avoided transport costs, nuclear is hugely efficient. In general historically, nuclear plants were built in places to which coal could not be readily transported.
It is obvious that you have never visited McClean Lake. The tailings go into the mined out pit.
It is obvious that you have never visited the McClean or Rabbit Lake mines. The tailings go into the mined out pit.
So, if you were to decide to use a nuclear reactor (if that’s the correct term) to power the city of Regina, what do you use for back-up when you take the reactor down for service like they did with that big plant in Ontario?