This week seems to be dominated by power generation pieces. The announcement in Ontario on Thursday has enormous implications for Saskatchewan, as we’re finally getting a price tag on how much four GE Hitachi BWRX-300 reactors cost. The cost is $20.9 billion, equal to the ENTIRE Saskatchewan 2025 budget. And we’re still very early on in the process, so there’s plenty of time for cost overruns. And we would need four, actually five, to replace our existing coal fleet of 1400 megawatts. The question before Saskatchewan will soon be can we afford nuclear? And if not, do we run coal – even perhaps expand it as our power needs grow?
Ontario greenlights four SMRs identical to the model SaskPower has chosen.
Here’s the verbatim Ontario press release:
Ontario Leads the G7 by Building First Small Modular Reactor
Other news about Saskatchewan oil producers from Canadian Press:
Cenovus Energy reports $859M Q1 profit, raises quarterly dividend
Canadian Natural Resources reports Q1 profit up, record quarterly average production
Pembina Pipeline reports higher profits, revenues for first quarter
$20B is a hefty chunk of change.
My questions would be:
What is the value of the electricity an SMR will produce over its lifetime (or when would it produce $20B worth)?
Is this the cost of being an early adopter?
So why did the left suddenly accept nuclear power?
Because the tech oligarchs need the power, so they tweaked the algorithm, and the programmable were reprogrammed.
Greenpeace still campaigns against nuclear power.
SMRS: an idea for a solution to a problem that never existed that was so stupid only a politician could love.
My thoughts stay with Coal for now! And once we separate look at both options!
Possibly get 1 reactor!
Isn’t that the problem? You can stay with coal when you separate, but Massah Ottawa won’t let you do that now?
When bankrupt ontariowe builds these, they will need a lot more ‘equalization’. Guess where that comes from? Ontariowe does not have much industry left so why do they need this?
Ummm… you might want to talk to the Chinese about their brand-new thorium reactor.
Or maybe these guys: https://www.nucnet.org/news/mbir-will-cost-about-usd1-1-billion-says-report-6-1-2020#
Not a power reactor. Soviet reactor expertise demonstrated at Chernobyl.
And American expertise demonstrated at Three Mile Island among other places. The Russian nuclear industry today is run by engineers and economists ; the western nuclear industries are run by fat black ladies doing Tik Tok videos and Greta Thunderberg.
Still a bargain compared to wind and solar.
“Still a bargain compared to wind and solar.”
Yup. Almost every other power generation method looks good by comparison…
That’s friggin ridiculous! GE has completely lost its way. I wouldn’t trust them to build anything. Ant it’s still just a boiling water reactor. Nothing new or innovative about it.
Why SMR?
It seems like they are a compromise to the no-nuke crowd. (Oh they are small and safe, not like dirty Soviet plants)
Why not build a giant giant giant nuke plant? Become the biggest and best in the world?
Because mass production is supposed to make cheaper by unit and less prone to bespoke mistakes. Will this be true? I am not sure. GE reactors have at least not rendered large areas uninhabitable.
Bruce Nuclear is one of the largest operating nuclear power plants in the world.
When the Fukushima plant went offline it was, for a time, the largest plant in the world.
OK, they want to charge $5B each. What is the cost? 2B? What’s the connection of the company to the Laurentian Elite? Ontario likes Liberals, they’re not your friend.
So, infrastructure costs about 17,000 per home. Not bad really, with coal and at gas most cost is incurred as power is produced, with solar, most cost is paid upfront( installation and purchase) and at the very end (decommissioning,clean up). With wind, costs are incurred upfront, during (maintenance), and at the very end. Nuclear a mix of above, but dead reliable. H
No one has ever done a fair costing of “renewables.” What is the proper applied overhead for having full redundancy, required because of unreliability and unpredictability? For the grid changes to accommodate the wonky supply? A senior engineer at Emera told me their wind cost is around $0.50/kwhr with a fair costing, as best they can determine, but it is not an easily determinable number due to each installation driving it’s own unique set of costs, some not knowable. That would indicate a minimum retail rate north of 0.61/kwhr to break even. That will adjust your lifestyle, quickly.
5 Billion per 300MW smr unit is a dramatic price escalation. A 300MW combined cycle natgas plant is around 1.5 to 2 billion. Even with natural gas price volatility, it looks like natgas is the better option. Coal is also an option but refurbishing or adding units in power plants that are 35-50 years old comes with its own technical issues.
I like nuclear power but not with a 5 billion dollar price tag (with cost overruns, probably even higher).
From the Ontario press release:
“Once complete, the Darlington New Nuclear Projects four SMRs will produce 1,200 megawatts (MW) of electricity, enough to power 1.2 million homes.”
That seems to be about 1000 watts/home.
Not even the power from a single15 amp circuit, not even enough to run your average hair dryer.
Saskatchewan and Alberta have how many tons of known coal reserves?
The obstacle to using coal for baseload power and the driving force behind the vast waste of wealth on unreliables, has been and still is..The federal Government.
Gang Green.
Uncle Moe,Thats Maurice Strong to the rest of us,working on behalf of the Liberal Party of Canada,created this massive theft scheme..The do-gooders and natural suckers of “Educated Canadians”,rushed to embrace Anthropogenic Catastrophic Global Warming.
Canadians have committed that “Crime against Humanity” Dear Leader Justine so desperately wanted to find..
We created Gang Green.
Thanks Jean Cretin..Chretien.
Sensible citizens would remove the actual problem.
Fools and bandits ,fanatics from the Cult of Calamitous Climate.
Currently Can Ahh Duh has no legal cure for stupidity.
Allow the feds to continue to destroy our infrastructure.
The cure will come.
To all.
Separating from The Confederated Kleptocracy solves all of these “Energy Problems”.
As they exist only in the Ideologues and Idiots minds.
As China and Indian can tell you ..
COAL is KING!
Coal certainly has advantages in fuel costs but I’m not sure we’ll see coal fired plants of the past make a resurgence in Saskatchewan. My bet is that coal power will need a technological revolution similar to oil field frakking and SAGD oilsands tech. Instead of digging up the coal, in situ processes will be used to extract coal products (example – coal gasification).
Unless there’s a desperate need for baseload power with no better options, of course. In that case mining, grinding and burning coal is far better than blackouts.
Trudeau the Elder was one of Maurice Stong’s acolytes. It was Strong’s influence to create the NEP and fetter Alberta.
Does anyone want to ask if Carney’s former employer, Brookfield Asset Management, has shares in reactor companies? Anyone? That is why nuclear has become restored as righteous instead of dangerous and dirty. They know that solar cells and wind farms are passing into history as unreliable, and they still want to have stability because of rotational inertia which they can’t get out of the aforementioned sources. So the “gospel” of saving the planet takes a back seat to the needs of the corporate public/private partnerships and tyranny.
I’ve never understood the current love affair with small modular reactors. They seem to be designed to solve a problem that wasn’t a problem, and the result is a reactor that doesn’t really represent any cost savings over established designs, yet produces less energy. Then there’s the problem of what you do with the irradiated modules once the fuel is spent. In the end these seem to present a bigger waste disposal and management problem than established reactor designs.
I’m missing something here. Why aren’t premiers looking to price the construction of an updated Candu reactor or one of the many established designs used in the US or Europe instead?
As a long-time follower of propaganda trends, I can’t help but suspect this approach is designed to create the impression that developing nuclear power just isn’t an option.
The theory is that SMRs can be built on an assembly line, with prices getting cheaper over time, and since they are a standard design they won’t need individual design approvals which can take years. In addition, the idea was to not just use them to generate electricity, but also for the thermal energy available.
In practice, we aren’t there yet, and we may never be.
The final installed cost will be at least triple the initial cost estimate.
Quadruple if the successor to SNC Lavalin is involved.
It takes balls of steel for a utility to build a Nuclear Power Plant– whether small or large– balls of steel. Utility leaders have not had to confront this level of risk in project management. We’ve been building CCs and CTs and wires. The risk is much less.
I’m a 30y nuclear engineer in the utility space (US).
I don’t think my utility can do it– and we are a leader in operations in the US.
If one is spending billions on multiple SMRs perhaps it’s time to also look at enrichment,