First, Saskatchewan was considering four small modular reactors. Then the SaskPower minister said maybe as many as nine. Now Premier Scott Moe is floating the idea of large scale, 1000 megawatt reactors.
And the province just coughed up some money to help develop a domestic nuclear supply chain within Saskatchewan.
Also, Crescent Point Energy grew up in the Bakken, and at one point was briefly Saskatchewan’s largest oil producer. Well, they just sold all their North Dakota Bakken assets. Anyone want to start a pool as to when they will sell off remaining assets in Saskatchewan?
Saskatchewan, as should Alberta should just say no to ‘net zero’ and continue to burn coal as it has done for many years. It is doubtful that future generation will be able to pay for the cost of developing nuclear in a substantial way. Future generations already have the burden of paying for the scamdemic, out of control immigration, and the war on Russia among other gubmint boondoggles. They can’t afford a switch to nuclear as well although hopefully they can continue to experiment with promising technologies.
L – Thomas Sowell’s 3 questions:
1. Compared to what?
2. At what cost?
3. What hard evidence do you have?
Small Nuclear Reactors for remote power generation have to prove
themselves for both cost, reliability and safety. Definitely, worth
consideration in prairie provinces with remote mining operations.
But that is far different than the Sask. Party Gov’t. smothering the
oil, natural gas and coal industry, to bow obsequiously to the Trudeau
regime, yet again.
Yet again? Yes, the Cov-19 Lockdowns and vaxx(expt. genetic therapy)
mandates, via censorship, resulted: in injury, maiming, deaths and
massive destruction of thousands of small and medium sized
businesses. Even the mental health damage to children/students and
impaired social/language, educational achievement is long term.
The inflation/recession is largely due to the huge deficits by the
Trudeau regime, which included payoffs to prov. gov’t’s to get
them to surrender their responsibilities/jurisdiction.
No gov’t. program gets a pass on Sowell’s 3 questions of wisdom!
Safety? What safety issues? Nuclear power is already the safest form of power generation. Small nuclear reactors have been in service for at least seven decades. All American, French, British SMRs have a 100% perfect safety and reliability record. Any other lies you want to dig up? Perhaps you should show your Greenpeace membership card as a nuclear expert?
Brian,I am puzzled as to why the feds and environmentalists seem to not notice the tremendous stream of coal leaving western Alberta by train for China.
Oh… I think I know.
Don’t think I have ever read your take on this.
Canada’s coal exports are all metallurgical or coking coal. There are no steam coal exports from Canada.
You could be right, but how realistic is it that China segregates Australian steam coal from Canadian coke coal? Even if that’s true, it’s simply displacing Aussie coal that could be used for both so who cares?
Greg, steam coal and coking coal are two very different things.
I am not an expert here but I suspect Australian coal imports, like Canadian coal imports to China, are limited primarily by port shipping capacity from Australia and Canada. All of Canada’s coal has to be shipped to China via Vancouver, and this creates a severe bottleneck. Brian is the expert here, so I await his comment.
Shipping limits are the usual reason why coal shipments are restrained. Shipping limits are the reason that France went nuclear starting in the 1960s – inability to ship coal from North Africa regardless of how much there was and how cheap it was. China has lots of coal, but it’s in the wrong end of the country for where the growth is taking place. Because the Chinese rail system cannot hope to move the coal that’s needed, it has to import from Australia and Canada.
As for segregating, you are likely right. China doesn’t care a rat’s ass where its coal comes from. The only thing that matters to China is that it gets it as cheaply as possible to making into things we buy from them.
Coking coal costs twice what thermal coal does, so only a fool would mix them together.
Canada exports thermal coal at the moment.
I am not in any way an expert on coal exports. But I have had this conversation with local lignite coal miners:
1. There are several grades of coal. From top to bottom:
a. Anthracite
b. bituminous
c. Subbituminous
d. Lignite
All things being equal, shipping costs per ton via rail and ships are probably pretty similar. So if you can get double the energy content out of a higher grade of coal, and shipping costs are a major factor, why on earth would you pay to ship lower grades of coal long distances? This is why mine-mouth power generation, such as in Estevan, Coronach, Hanna, Genessee, North Dakota, etc. make sense. It costs less to ship an electron by wire than coal by rail. Now before, when local-ish coal might have been an option – i.e. shipping Estevan lignite to Brandon – then exports might have made some sense. But that doesn’t appear to be the case. So if you’re China, would you rather get higher-grade coal from the Powder River Basin in Wyoming, or lowest grade coal from Estevan? Thus, don’t expect anyone to be knocking on the door to export local lignite. That ship has sailed, so to speak. Maybe I’m wrong. But I don’t see anything to the contrary.
Doesn’t both types pollute??
Environmental reasons (which I believe is bs) is the excuse for curbing oil and gas production.
That’s why I asked the question.
You cannot have steel without coking or metallurgical coal. Steel is an alloy of iron and carbon. Stainless steel is an alloy of steel and chromium. As to ‘pollution’ what do you mean? What do you consider to be pollution?
L – Coking coal is for manufacturing steel.
An industrialized nation, one striving to increase the standard
of living of it’s citizen’s would take advantage of a natural supply of it.
As it would cheap, natural energy resources of all kinds.
The leaders of a first world nation would only subvert their own
economy and impoverish it’s citizen’s by de-industrializing. If they
were 1. Machiavellian. 2. Psychopathic. 3. Narcissistic 4. Sadistic…
That’s the Dark Triad !!! The fall of Canada is not a story about autumn.
It’s a tale of intrigue, subversion, suffering, and a citizenry that rises
up and via self-sacrifice, voluntarily shoulders the responsibility of self-government.
Love overcomes fear. But just in the nick of time.
A call to adventure, to the *hero’s journey.
Available only in Samizdat.
*(Incomes only 60% of American ones, not good enough. Risk taking,
masculinity required to stop being the poor cousin. Trudeau’s serfs
break their chains. Hundreds of thousands of the world’s most
productive workers, tradesmen, technicians and scientists in Germany
are about to become unemployed in a high energy cost recession
or depression. Hire on merit again and Canadians could afford
housing, transportation and raising a family. )
Make some bombs while you’re at it.
AAA+++!!!
You win the internet!
“And the province just coughed up some money to help develop a domestic nuclear supply chain within Saskatchewan.”
Well these attempts at using government largesse to create home-grown ‘ecosystems’ have been a disaster in the past but Saskatchewan is doing it for nuclear so I think it will still be a disaster.