Tag: nuclear power

Saskatchewan election – NDP energy policy

Climate Cult Drill, Baby, Drill 21 Comments
Aleana Young

Election 2024: All-of-the-above energy strategy, no changes to royalties: New Democratic Party

This is the third in a series of in-depth interviews with the parties vying for the Saskatchewan election. In it, NDP Energy Critic Aleana Young speaks about the NDP’s all-of-the-above energy strategy.

The greatest threat to nuclear development is not technological or even financial – it’s change in government. This was evident with the Site C Dam in BC, where a new NDP government pumped the brakes, but then ultimately went ahead with it. The NDP in Saskatchewan continue to support nuclear power development, but “we have to get it right.”

As I’ve done with the other parties, I reproduced everything I could find in the party platform related to energy. Well, the terms “oil” “natural gas” “potash” “critical minerals”  “SMR” “nuclear” or “electricity” are not referenced within the document. But “healthcare” comes up 35 times.

Friday will be the Buffalo Party. So far, I have not heard from the Greens, PCs or Progressives. Wonder why? Is anyone else writing 3200 word stories on their energy policies?

On a side note, I attended a three hour long Estevan city council/mayor town hall this evening. It took 2 hours and 25 minutes before anyone made any serious comments about coal. That was right before I got my chance to ask about dealing with the impending eventual shut down of coal-fired power generation, but also preparing the city for nuclear power. Amazingly, about half of the 13 people on stage really had no substantive answer on that front, and several had no clue or hadn’t thought of it. You would think that would be the most important issue facing this city – much more important than sidewalks or boulevard flowers (which got more discussion up until that point than coal or nuclear). Especially since the nuclear built out will be the most costly infrastructure project in Saskatchewan history to date. (If I attend a forum like this, you can be damned sure I’m going to ask the toughest questions.)

Jordan Peterson: In Defense of Canada

Insufferable Twits Military 25 Comments

This video has little to do with energy and everything to do with how this country’s military has gone to hell in a handbasket. Dr. Jordan Peterson speaks with retired a retired three-star admiral and former head of the Royal Canadian Navy, a three-star army general and a retired air force major. They tear apart DEI and the woke reality in the military today.
If you care at all about the Canadian Armed Forces, or ever served, you should watch or listen to this.

Also, on the nuclear front:

‘Ontario’s moment:’ Minister says Canada building blueprint for nuclear energy future

And it turns out pipelines make money. Who’da thunk it?

Enbridge makes progress on utility purchases; raises earnings forecast

CO2 is not a pollutant, it’s plant food, says Sask United Party leader

Baiting The Left Baiting the Right Climate Cult Drill, Baby, Drill youmightbeinsaskatchewan 23 Comments
Sask United Party Leader Jon Hromek. Photo by Brian Zinchuk

CO2 is not a pollutant; we’re going to burn coal until we run out of coal: Sask United Leader Jon Hromek.

It’s not often an oil company CEO sells his company to run for provincial politics, becoming the leader of an upstart party in the process. But that’s exactly what Jon Hromek has done. And as someone coming from industry, his thoughts on energy transition, CO2 and coal differ from a lot of the other politicians in Saskatchewan, or for that matter, Canada.

 

First implementation of the Sask First Act – Saskatchewan won’t follow Clean Electricity Regulations

Climate Cult 16 Comments
Jim Reiter, Bronwyn Eyre, Michael Milani. Photo by Brian Zinchuk

For a long time, Premier Scott Moe has been saying it’s impossible to comply with federal regulations regarding getting rid of our fossil-fueled power generation, in the timeline the federal Liberal government wants.

It’s coming to a head.

This is the first action of this type thus far under the Saskatchewan First Act. This is what it was meant for.

If implemented in their current form, the Clean Electricity Regulations mean to all but eliminate the burning of fossil fuels for power generation in 10 years, six months and three days from now. Saskatchewan relies on natural gas and coal to produce the vast majority of its power, up to 88 per cent on some days. And if implemented, these regulations will fundamentally alter Canada and its economy, and affect all of its people in one form or another. It’s one of the most important policy pieces in generations, seeking to remake Canada.

Saskatchewan won’t follow Clean Electricity Regulation, citing Economic Assessment Tribunal report.

Executive summary of the report

The government released all the submissions to the tribunal. I will be reprinting many of them over the coming days, maybe weeks. There’s a lot. And there’s a lot to be said.

Buy Saskatchewan? Major nuclear MOU signed

Ethical Energy youmightbeinsaskatchewan 22 Comments

SaskPower, Cameco and Westinghouse sign MOU on future nuclear development

With Westinghouse now 49% owned by Saskatoon-based Cameco, the prospect of “buying Saskatchewan” becomes significant.

As a side note, I’ve been expecting this sort of development ever since Cameco announced it was buying nearly half of Westinghouse. While SaskPower is currently committed to building GE-Hitachi reactors at Estevan, at least two of them, it’s quite possible subsequent reactors will be Westinghouse models. And Moe has told me several times the government is considering big, 1000 megawatt reactors.

As for the fancy curved architecture, I expect the final product will be much more utilitarian.

Estevan for the reactor win

Ethical Energy Uncategorized youmightbeinsaskatchewan 23 Comments

Premier Scott Moe came to Estevan to announce that if SaskPower builds reactors, they will be near Estevan. It’s been narrowed to two possible sites (maps in story).

Here’s the reactor portion of his speech, verbatim.

And in it, he talks about how SaskPower just might keep its coal fleet in operation until the reactors are built and operating. That would be well past the federal mandate, which Saskatchewan just might ignore.

And the premier’s social media shared the story, too.

 

Guilbeault takes out the trash on Clean Electricity Regulations

Climate Cult 10 Comments

 

The Friday before a long weekend, Environment and Climate Change Minister Steven Guilbeault released his updates to the proposed Clean Electricity Regulations. This is the full update, verbatim.

In Pipeline Online’s continuing mission to ensure Canadians know exactly what Guilbeault is telling them, here’s his verbatim release on the Clean Electricity Regulations.

Remember what I said the previous week about taking out the trash day? Guilbeault did exactly that. Interesting, that.

And for something a little different, yesterday was Family Day. Not everyone gets to go sledding. While I took these photos three weeks ago, they’re pretty representative of what Family Day is to a lot of people in the oil sector – just another day.

Clean Electricity Regulations, LNG and fusion, oh my!

Climate Cult 46 Comments
Steven Guilbeault. X/@s_guilbeault

Guilbeault’s proposed Clean Electricity Regulations have been slightly modified. This is the Canadian Press story. I’ll be working on this to have a lot more in depth next week.

In my editors note, I point out: Pipeline Online will have extensive coverage on this early next week, including reaction from the Saskatchewan government. The “Clean Electricity Regulations”, if implemented, will be one of the largest and furthest reaching policies in recent Canadian history, impacting almost every aspect of our society and economy.

I should point out the most important lesson I ever learned about government communications came from a first season episode of The West Wing, called Take out the Trash Day.

This announcement from Guilbeault came out early Friday afternoon. Imagine that.

https://twitter.com/s_guilbeault/status/1758547663958483250?s=20

Also:

Peter Zeihan makes some sense, kinda sorta, out of Biden’s LNG export approval pause.

And who needs small modular reactors when we can apparently just jump to fusion? Hasn’t fusion power been just 30 years away for something like 60 years?

The nuclear renaissance coming to Saskatchewan

Climate Cult 13 Comments

Weekend Watch: Juice: Power, Politics & the Grid

 

This video series is a spectacular take on many of the energy issues of the day. It starts with the February, 2021, Texas blackouts, and goes on to tackle renewable power in the form of wind and solar. It doesn’t speak too fondly of coal, but goes broadly into the adoption of nuclear power. Canada and its experience with nuclear figures heavily into this series, including the influence of Dr. Chris Keefer, a Toronto ER physician who had lead the crusade to bring nuclear power back to the fore. And the series gets into why nuclear all of a sudden is in a renaissance after decades of being in the dumps.

This applies directly to Saskatchewan, where just last week, SaskPower inked a deal with GE Hitachi Canada to continue the development path of small modular reactors. And in that press conference, SaskPower president and CEO Rupen Pandya, when asked by Pipeline Online how many reactors we’re going to build, said Saskatchewan’s grid is expected to grow from 5,400 megawatts currently to 13,000 to 15,000 megawatts by 2050. That’s about 2.5x what it is now. And nuclear appears like it’s going to play a huge part in that. So the issues presented in this series are very topical for this province.

Juice really highlights a lot of the issues Pipeline Online has been focusing on for the last two years. In particular, reliability trumps all, and wind and solar can only be relied upon to be utterly unreliable.

I strongly suggest anyone in the decision chain of Saskatchewan going nuclear – all MLAs, including cabinet and opposition, all executives, board and management of SaskPower, and union leadership and membership, take the time to watch this at some point in the near future. This is the reality Saskatchewan is rapidly heading towards.

This series was put together by Robert Bryce and Tyson Culver. Bryce one of the most astute energy analysts out there. You can follow his Substack at https://robertbryce.substack.com/

This was originally a feature, but broken up into manageable chunks and posted for free on YouTube. Each episode is around 22 minutes long. It’s definitely worth watching all five. All five videos are in the story link above.

We’re going to need a LOT of reactors in Saskatchewan…

Climate Cult 23 Comments

SaskPower and GE Hitachi advance small modular reactor plans, but won’t say how many, or how much they’ll cost just yet. Also, SaskPower looking at increasing grid by 2.5x in 25 years and 11 months. Didn’t I just write a column about that earlier this week? Oh yeah. What doubling the grid really means. Also, if you start doing the math, my earlier predictions Saskatchewan will need 15-20 small modular reactors (if not more) is looking pretty much on the money.

What ‘doubling the electrical grid’ really means

Climate Cult 22 Comments
This is what the Boundary Dam to Regina transmission line looks like currently. Photo by Brian Zinchuk
And this is what the Boundary Dam to Regina transmission line would look like if the grid were doubled. It’s a lot easier to Photoshop than to build. Photo by Brian Zinchuk

 

Brian Zinchuk: Imagine twinning every highway, grid road, street and alleyway across the country in 25 years. Because that’s what doubling the #grid is going to be equivalent of.

Reactors by the dozen

Climate Cult 57 Comments

Their German neighbours may have shut down their last nuclear reactors in 2023, but Poland is ALL IN when it comes to nuclear power. They’re building large reactors, small reactors, maybe even some micro (not sure on the last one). But they are going to be building 24 small modular reactors of the same design SaskPower has chosen. And that number might go up. I’ve seen references to as many as 70 BWRX-300s for Poland. One thing is clear – the manuals will be written in Polish before English, it seems. Meanwhile, Saskatchewan will not formally decide to go ahead or not until 2029. I’m not sure where they’re going to get their reactor fuel from, but they’ll be damned if they buy a pound from Russia. That puts Saskatchewan uranium in good stead for the possible supply – and with the numerous large reactors planned for Poland, plus all the SMRs, that’s a good, new, long-term market for us.

Clean Electricity Regulations and nuclear power: Moe

Climate Cult 5 Comments
Scott Moe.

Saskatchewan’s Year in Energy: Premier Scott Moe, 2023: Part 3: Clean Electricity Regulations and Nuclear Power

Clean Electricity Regulations proposed by the federal government mean to totally change our nation and its economy. And nuclear power is really the only option Saskatchewan has for large-scale, baseload power that does not emit greenhouse gasses.

Part 3 discusses the Clean Electricity Regulations and their impact, and widespread adoption of nuclear power

COP28: Canadian gov’t focused on shutting down oil and gas while Saskatchewan was speaking for it

Climate Cult Drill, Baby, Drill Ethical Energy 22 Comments

Feds “focused on targeting the shutdown of a complete industry, regardless of whether they’re going to meet their emissions targets or not,” says Saskatchewan Premier Moe in Dubai

Pipeline Online speaks with Premier Scott Moe at conclusion of Dubai COP28 trip. (Another reporter asked questions, too, like do you believe the planet is warming…?

Saskatchewan says following the Net Zero by 2035 Clean Electricity Regulations are not possible, unaffordable, unconstitutional and unobtainable

Climate Cult youmightbeinsaskatchewan 24 Comments
Dustin Duncan

In August, Steven Guilbeault released the draft Clean Electricity Regulations which mean to remake our entire country in just 11 years.

On Nov. 2, Saskatchewan told them where to go. Today, they said publicly how to get there.

Three stories:

‘It just isn’t possible’ – SaskPower Minister in-depth response to Clean Electricity Regulations.

SaskPower response to the Clean Electricity Regulations: ‘Not possible from technological, financial and logistical perspectives‘

Saskatchewan response to the Clean Electricity Regulations: Unaffordable, unconstitutional and unobtainable.

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