Weekend Watch: Are we on the brink of a nuclear revival?
This is a really good video showing many sides of the nuclear debate. Wind, solar and batteries are also discussed.
Weekend Watch: Are we on the brink of a nuclear revival?
This is a really good video showing many sides of the nuclear debate. Wind, solar and batteries are also discussed.
If you’re fer it or agin it, there’s someone taking that side in this story. It really is good, balanced journalism.
It’s better than some I’ve seen. But Ramana makes a host of statements that simply cannot be supported. His claims that nuclear delays the deployment of renewables ignores the fact that renewables cannot produce 24-7. The only effect of renewables is to increase the consumption of fossil fuels for electricity production.
The question of lower cost is highly debateable. What was promised in the 1950s was that the cost of nuclear-generated electricity would be affordable and comparable to conventional (fossil fuel) sources. And this has been exactly the result for jurisdictions having no choice but to depend on nuclear power: Ontario, France, Sweden, Belgium, Britain, South Korea.
No nuclear plants were ever built for environmental performance reasons. They were all built because supplies of coal were unavailable. And that reason remains in force to this day everywhere.
I entirely concur. The green wingnut was just that. No realism. Oh, nuclear can go away in 15 years and we’ll go all green. Get real.
Ramana is a PoliSci at University of Victoria. His position is sustained by antinuclear funding from an assortment of ENGO trust funds. His technical expertise is zero.
Same thing applies in Alberta-Saskatchewan. The reason for nuclear power plants was the unavailability of coal. These two provinces have lots. It’s therefore insane to simply discard coal for purely religious reasons of the supposed evil of CO2. I can think of a host of reasons why diversification from gas and coal into some nuclear would be a good idea. But you will never get those reasons from Ramana.
Rosatom is the company to talk to if you want a nuke power plant: https://jamestown.org/program/russias-nuclear-sector-capitalizes-on-global-nuclear-revival/
I’d go with Westinghouse, Hitachi, AECL or Areva, before the people who brought us Chernobyl, but that’s just me.
So you would go with a woke western company where the reactor is going to be built by obese black ladies who make lots of Tik Tok videos -OK. I would at least consider Rosatom, a company that has $200 billion worth of projects on the go, built by people who who are basing their plans on economics and engineering, not the woke insanity that permeates most western corporations.
Actually, if you want a reliable company to build your NPP, you select one which has a recent, well established performance. That would be Kepco who built Barakah in UAE. They built it under budget and ahead of schedule. All four 1400 MW units are complete and on line as of last year.
The Canadian Safety Industry cannot will not allow under budget and ahead of schedule.
CSI is even worse than Trade Unions.
Maybe those massive icebreakers PP is talking about buying, if elected PM, will be nuke powered…. That would be long overdue.
There’s no company in Canada capable of building such ships.
So buy some of these: https://www.mining-technology.com/features/the-nuclear-icebreakers-enabling-drilling-in-russias-arctic/?cf-view
I still wonder at the huge delay on approval for proven technolgy. These delays seem opositional by design or ‘griftful’ by ‘stakeholders’. Please pardon my faulty terminology. Corrections are appreciated.
The delays are intentional by government. All governments, national or local, are desperately afraid of encountering some fierce opposition group to any proposal where government permission is required to proceed. So, starting in the early 1990s, all governments put in place a public hearing process of some form in which the opposition to any project could be expressed. If the opposition was extensive, then government could quietly agree to halt or stop the project regardless of its merits.
Nuclear and Coal power are the cheapest way of producing electricity before all the environmental regulations and years if not decades of litigation has changed that. “In fact, giving society cheap, abundant energy at this point would be the moral equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun.” had been the warning from non other than Paul Ehrlich in 1975 about the reduction in electricity cost caused by the implementation of nuclear power.
The green guy with the hamas headscarf was being dishonest. Windmills are an environmental disaster. Because of their high failure rate, they only pay for themselves within 18 months on paper. Their lifespan is less than the 20 years advertised. The only thing they score points on is CO2 emissions, and the savings there is questionable.
Picked up on the headscarf, did you? Me too.
Take a look at Germany. 81% of Germans believe that it is the right decision to phase-out nuclear power, and only 16 percent think that it is wrong. This becomes even clearer when looking at those 14 to 29 years old—93% of this group support the transition.
At the same time they are turning their backs on nuclear energy, they are paying energy costs that are astronomical, not getting anywhere near the “carbon goals” they set, and continue to set unachievable goals of dropping “carbon polluting” energy while simultaneously and adamantly neglecting the one energy source available that causes the least amount of “carbon pollution.”
I think, maybe, WW2 broke something in the logic cycle.
As a German I agree that Germans have an unhealthy tendency to follow government or educated authorities, the 1930th and 40th had been a grim example what a mistake that can be. But with today’s policies paralleling those of the past like media control of public broadcasters and internet hate speech laws the mistakes of the past are less prominent in the German conscious as they should be. Having said that what I recall from conversations with relatives and friends non figured that it was a good idea to shut down the nuclear power they still had. Those statistics you list aren’t representative of the german public but perhaps a environmentalist professor asking his students.
The survey was by EMNID (a polling institute for the German outlet BILD am Sonntag). EMNID has a pretty solid reputation for market research and a presence in about 100 different countries.
That said, all it takes is some zealot running the project and you can massage the results to say whatever you want them to say. So, point taken.
When I read “nuclear revival”, I thought Trump vs Xi……
When I read “nuclear revival”, I thought gospel! Speakin’ in tongues, droppin’ nukes and shoutin’ halleluyah! Now that’ll trigger gym, I bet.
Is it possible for a nuclear power reactor to make a profit?.. They all seem to need retrofitting halfway through their projected life span.. They all need Federal and Provincial subsidies.. A industry that writes its own checks :)..
Born in cold war propaganda.. IMO nuclear is the original boondoggle.. Yes, it works but can we afford it to be widespread?.. Small cities cant afford such expensive luxuries.. Towns don’t have a hope in hell.. And rural people even more so..
I suspect nuclear power is expensive because governments make it to be expensive.
Just like capital punishment. If it is made so expensive, people will be less willing to accept it.