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Power Canada

Canada Plans World's Biggest Nuclear Plant In Ontario (financialpost.com) 92

Posted by BeauHD from the energy-of-the-future dept.
Bruce Power, a Canadian utility company, is planning to build the world's biggest nuclear plant as growing demand for clean energy spurs interest in atomic energy. The Financial Post reports: The Ontario government said Wednesday Bruce Power will conduct an environmental assessment of adding as much as 4.8 gigawatts of capacity to its plant in Canada's most-populous province. The plant's eight reactors currently have about 6.2 gigawatts of capacity and supply 30 per cent of the province's power. The expansion would make the site larger than Japan's Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant, the biggest in the world with seven reactors and more than eight gigawatts of capacity.
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Canada Plans World's Biggest Nuclear Plant In Ontario More

Canada Plans World's Biggest Nuclear Plant In Ontario

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  • The fault line runs under the Pickering plant, not the Bruce plant.

    And why isn't anyone looking into grabbing tidal power from the Bay of Fundy? We have enough potential tidal energy waiting to be captured to cover over 60% of our current use. I'd really like to see that tapped before we expand our nuclear power generation.

    Also... sorry, NF, but we oughta screw the tourists and divert more water for hydro generation too.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by sfcat ( 872532 )
      Because theoretical total amounts of power of natural phenomenon are useless. Look at it this way, you have to generate X amount of power. That means you need Y * X amount of generators which require rare earths which are very environmentally costly. So you want Y to be as close to 1 as possible. If you use tidal, Y is going to be twice what it is for nuclear at least. So this way you create fewer lakes of acid in Asia.

    • Re:It's OK though (Score:4, Informative)

      by DavenH ( 1065780 ) on Wednesday July 05, 2023 @10:04PM (#63660604)
      They have looked into it. As you'd expect, it's not reliable or economical. "There's enough potential energy" is a starting point, but not close to a convincing argument for it. Real answers would only be sufficient if they provide a realistic analysis of it's levelized cost of electricity (LCoE), and its full lifecycle carbon emissions including those of producing its fuel. Once you've got those numbers, you begin to understand just how good we have it with nuclear.
    • bah why did I comment on this thread, I'd mod ya up. That's a damn good point.
    • Because no one lives nearby. No major 1 million+ city. The existing hydro is far easier and cheaper to utilize.

    • They did have a tidal plant in Fundy. Thereâ(TM)s a bridge over it you can drive across. Been there, done that.

      Lost money continually, and was shut down.

    • Tidal only produces energy when the tide is coming in or out which makes it predictable but it might not match demand. It would need to be paired with energy storage. It is also expensive and impacts marine life. Nuclear is great for base power demands. It provides very consistent power 24/7. Nuclear is safe as long as we don't build in an area prone to natural disasters. Three Mile Island was an experimental reactor with a bad design. It was also likely a murder-suicide over an affair. Nuclear waste is al
    • > And why isn't anyone looking into grabbing tidal power from the Bay of Fundy? Too much energy. It is difficult to harness. There's only brief periods of time when the tide changes where you can do anything.

    • And why isn't anyone looking into grabbing tidal power from the Bay of Fundy?

      They have and do look at it, and most of the test turbines they put in get ripped apart.

  • Needed in the Prairies (Score:5, Interesting)

    by rbrander ( 73222 ) on Wednesday July 05, 2023 @09:29PM (#63660560) Homepage

    This is needed for expansion in Ontario, which isn't all hydro, unlike so much of Canada. Ontario is still 80% non-carbon (50% nuke, 25% hydro, some wind and solar).

    Where Canada really needs it, are the prairie provinces, that always scorned it because they were coal and gas producers. Manitoba is 97% hydro, but Alberta and Saskatchewan, got nothin'. Last Dec 22, Alberta was -40F, wind was dead, longest night of the year. 96% gas. Alberta and Saskatchewan can't lose the gas with batteries alone. They need about 5GW of nuclear apiece, some better ties east and west, and Canada could be pure green power.

    But, no, it's not even being discussed.

    • Manitoba has hydro? I was only through it once,but what I remember is flat, as in Lake Agassiz bottom flat. Is there an elevation drop in the north down to Hudson Bay?

    • I don't know about Alberta, but in Saskatchewan it is definitely being discussed. A SMR design has been chosen by SaskPower and potential sites are being evaluated: https://www.saskpower.com/Our-... [saskpower.com]
    • Multiple power plants with say 2-3 GW would be better.
      Concentrating it in one place means that you must depend on that grid connection, which is an easy place to bring it down.
      Far better to keep it a bit more distributed.

      • Multiple power plants with say 2-3 GW would be better.
        Concentrating it in one place means that you must depend on that grid connection, which is an easy place to bring it down.
        Far better to keep it a bit more distributed.

        Perhaps that is true but there's something to be said for economy of scale.

        Each nuclear power plant site has to have some given amount of staff for security and maintenance regardless of how many reactors are on the site. Put more reactors there and this cost can be spread out over more energy sold. There's going to be a point of diminishing returns so we should not plan on all eggs in one basket. Japan routinely had a half dozen reactors on any given site, likely a reasonable choice given their high pop

    • This is needed for expansion in Ontario, which isn't all hydro, unlike so much of Canada. Ontario is still 80% non-carbon (50% nuke, 25% hydro, some wind and solar).

      Where Canada really needs it, are the prairie provinces, that always scorned it because they were coal and gas producers. Manitoba is 97% hydro, but Alberta and Saskatchewan, got nothin'. Last Dec 22, Alberta was -40F, wind was dead, longest night of the year. 96% gas. Alberta and Saskatchewan can't lose the gas with batteries alone. They need about 5GW of nuclear apiece, some better ties east and west, and Canada could be pure green power.

      But, no, it's not even being discussed.

      It was actually discussed in Alberta and part of the plan was actually to use the heat to extract oil from the oil sands [wikipedia.org].

      Either way, the project eventually got nimby'd into oblivion (though it might have just be economics as well).

      • The project, led by the same Bruce Power, was nixed when AECL sent out the new price estimate for ACR-1000, which was three times the initial estimate. That made it economically impossible. This is all well recorded and easily gogelgleable.

        But sure, blame those nimbies if it makes you feel better.

    • Manitoba is 97% hydro, but Alberta and Saskatchewan, got nothin'.

      Alberta gets 10% of its power from renewables [cer-rec.gc.ca] which is not "nothin'" but definitely could be a lot better.

      Last Dec 22, Alberta was -40F, wind was dead, longest night of the year. 96% gas. Alberta and Saskatchewan can't lose the gas with batteries alone. They need about 5GW of nuclear

      Here in Alberta, we call it -40C, the longest night of the year was 21st December, and our power is only 54% gas with 36% being coal and our generating capacity is ~16GW, 90% of which is fossil fuel-based, so 5GW is not going to cut it. But yes, the one thing you got right is that we can't replace gas power stations with batteries alone but that's not really unique to Alberta since you can never repla

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Strider- ( 39683 )

        Alberta gets 10% of its power from renewables [cer-rec.gc.ca] which is not "nothin'" but definitely could be a lot better.

        And that 10% is only if you don't include the absolutely insane amounts of energy it takes to extract the bitumen from the sand up in the tar sands. I once saw an estimate that to replace all the natural gas used would take something along the lines of 27 generation 4 CANDU reactors, just producing process heat.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by rbrander ( 73222 )

        https://www.aeso.ca/aeso/under... [www.aeso.ca]

        7% coal overall; less than 7% when demand spikes. You're two years behind. They closed three more plants. The 96% for Dec 22 came from AESO, on TV news, that night.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      It's the cost. Can they afford to build it?

      And can they afford to wait for it to be built? Let's see how long it takes to build the Ontario one, but smaller plants in Europe are around 20 years from start to finish these days.

      Climate change needs addressing today. Chances are, for the money involved, there are much better options. First start by saving energy, i.e. insulation and more efficient appliances. It's kind of crazy that tax money can be used to fund for-profit generation projects, but not energy s

      • It's the cost. Can they afford to build it?

        And can they afford to wait for it to be built? Let's see how long it takes to build the Ontario one, but smaller plants in Europe are around 20 years from start to finish these days.

        While the planned unit is probably a Candu design, the two ABWR's at Kashiwazaki-Kariwa went from Construction to commissioning in around 4 years, as did the first 6 BWRs, so it can be done. A lot depends on the licensing regimen and how well the the process is managed.

        • Itâ(TM)s not CANDU, that is literally dead. The design team was sold off for negative 150 million to SNC-Lavin and development ended. Like 15 years ago.

          Only two real options for it, Westinghouse or Areva. Neither is particularly attractive given the massive cost overruns seen in both. Areva wouldnâ(TM)t even bid on Darlington.

          • Itâ(TM)s not CANDU, that is literally dead. The design team was sold off for negative 150 million to SNC-Lavin and development ended. Like 15 years ago.

            Only two real options for it, Westinghouse or Areva. Neither is particularly attractive given the massive cost overruns seen in both. Areva wouldnâ(TM)t even bid on Darlington.

            Interesting. I thought SNC was still trying to sell CANDU 6's even after the newer designs were dead. I wonder if Hitachi/GE would pitch the ABWR?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          Kashiwazaki-Kariwa might not be the best example. It was shut down due to an earthquake that went beyond its design limits, and required major changes to make it safe. In other word, they skimped on the geological survey, the design, and construction.

          Then it shut down again due to the same earthquake that damaged Fukushima Daiichi. It hasn't restarted since, because now that there is increased scrutiny and some new geological data, it seems like it was a bad idea to build it there in the first place.

          • Kashiwazaki-Kariwa might not be the best example. It was shut down due to an earthquake that went beyond its design limits, and required major changes to make it safe. In other word, they skimped on the geological survey, the design, and construction.

            Then it shut down again due to the same earthquake that damaged Fukushima Daiichi. It hasn't restarted since, because now that there is increased scrutiny and some new geological data, it seems like it was a bad idea to build it there in the first place.

            I was only using it as an example of how fast a plant could be built, assuming the design is fit for purpose, in response to the 20+ year comment. OTOH, Plant Vogtle 3&4 took 14 years and billions more dollars because they couldn't seem to properly manage the construction.

    • Canada is supposed to be going hard on wind to hydrogen to serve a deal they made with Germany to provide them energy.

      If they are doing that, there is absolutely no need for nuclear, because they are going to have to go hard on hydrogen storage.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        Yep. But this is a "plan". It can be stopped any time in the 10-15 years before building this thing actually starts.

  • Just a pedantic comment that bugs me (Score:4, Informative)

    by drhamad ( 868567 ) on Wednesday July 05, 2023 @09:34PM (#63660568)
    They aren't planning on building the world's biggest plant. They're planning on enlarging an existing plant to make it what would be the world's largest. To me that's an important distinction - to use their numbers, it isn't 11 gigawatts of new capacity, it's a 50% enlargement of an already existing plant - still a lot of power, but a lot less new power than the headline makes it seem.

    • They aren't planning on building the world's biggest plant. They're planning on enlarging an existing plant to make it what would be the world's largest. To me that's an important distinction - to use their numbers, it isn't 11 gigawatts of new capacity, it's a 50% enlargement of an already existing plant - still a lot of power, but a lot less new power than the headline makes it seem.

      Plant is a bit of a misnomer - the Bruce plant consists of 8 reactors and would add a ninth to the plant. You are correct in that it's not a new 11 GW unit, but a new 4.8 GW unit. 4.8GW is likely an addition of several CANDU reactors.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by RobinH ( 124750 )
      If you're going to be pedantic, then a 4.8 GW expansion of a 6.2 GW plant isn't a 50% enlargement, it's more than 75%.

    • And by the time it would be completed the older reactors would be EOLed, so it would end up being a 4.8G plant and nowhere near the largest.

  • Ontario lacks power on demand and this won't help. Wind in Ontario blows the hardest in the evenings in the winter when demand is the lowest (the price will frequently go negative). Our hydro is almost all river run not dammed so we either use it or let it just fall over the cliff like at Niagara. Ideally our neigbours to the east, Quebec and Newfoundland, would start selling electricity at market rates. We could use this new nuclear as baseload for all of the Eastern grid and use the dammed hydro for p
  • No costs listed?? I wanted to bet the cost at 2 to 5 times the original estimates. What's the over under?

  • They are "starting early work", and maybe in 15-20 years they could generate some electricity, good luck.

    Meanwhile loads of other power sources including storage will have already been built and generating it much cheaper.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by MacMann ( 7518492 )

      They are "starting early work", and maybe in 15-20 years they could generate some electricity, good luck.

      Meanwhile loads of other power sources including storage will have already been built and generating it much cheaper.

      They can do more than one thing at a time. We can safely assume that they will still need power in 15 to 20 years so building new nuclear reactors isn't going to be a wasted effort.

      What other options could they take for producing this electricity? Wind? Solar? Natural gas? Likely one of those. What is the expected build time for those? I'd guess 18 months, maybe a bit more. Then the question is, how long will they last before needing replacement? Perhaps 15 to 20 years? There's your answer on why

      • âoe What is the expected build time for those? I'd guess 18 months, maybe a bit more. Then the question is, how long will they last before needing replacement? Perhaps 15 to 20 years? There's your answerâ

        Indeed.

        Think about wind and solar 15 to 20 years ago. It cost five to ten times as much as it did now, took much longer to install, and had lower density and was less reliable.

        Now consider nuclear 15 to 20 years ago. The exact same designs we have today, all experiencing cost and time overruns dur

      • "The global weighted average LCOE of newly commissioned utilityscale solar PV projects declined by 88% between 2010 and 2021, whilst that of onshore wind fell by 68%"

        "The global weighted average levelised cost of electricity (LCOE) of new onshore wind projects added in 2021 fell by 15%, yearonyear, to USD 0.033/kWh, while that of new utility-scale solar PV fell by 13% year-on-year to USD 0.048/kWh and that of offshore wind declined 13% to USD 0.075/kWh."

        https://www.irena.org/publicat... [irena.org]

        You've got to be able

        • The trend of falling prices for renewables will continue

          No, the fall of the prices will not continue. There is a very real reason why the prices can't keep going down, at some point the cost of construction will hit the costs of materials.

          meanwhile the price of nuclear electricity is the highest of any power source and continues to rise.

          What makes you believe this cannot change? We saw costs of solar and wind go down as the technology developed, why can't that happen with nuclear power too? This is a common catch-22 given for nuclear power, we should not build until nuclear power can prove the costs will come down, this while knowing the costs will not come

          • The cost of the raw materials for renewables is negligible. If the cost of construction reaches that point it will be a very satisfactory situation, and nuclear will have zero chance of competing.

            Fission plants have been around for decades and have been built on top of massive public subsidies. There are many expensive failures. They simply are not economical to build and operate. That is the current state of affairs.

            You contend that "If we only allow the technology to develop then costs will come down", bu

            • It ain't happening, buddy.

              This is a discussion about Canada building the world's largest nuclear power plant. It is happening. It is happening right now. Much of the costs preventing new build of nuclear power plant is from outdated regulations and a lack of a supply chain, both easily resolved as the government gets out of the way.

              • They are not building it, why did you lie? They "will conduct an environmental assessment".

                And now you are advocating that "the government gets out of the way", as in safety regulations that clearly are well justified and which several recent projects have rightfully failed.

  • thank you (Score:3, Insightful)

    by resfilter ( 960880 ) on Wednesday July 05, 2023 @11:56PM (#63660788)

    it's one of those 'the best time to plant a tree is 100 years ago' things when you build a mega scale power plant. it's not like they're throwing billions into something that they know will give them a return tomorrow.

    as a pragmatic and logically minded canadian i'm really proud of our nuclear capability and safety record, even though we definitely have accidently discharged some tritium into a lake or two, the incidents over the past century have been handled very well and i do feel like canadian nuclear is managed by people who give a flying fuck.

    we need energy to live and this is how it works up north. it's either freezing cold or boiling hot, and we have huge distances between key resources, so we need energy to move stuff around too, especially with a future filled with electric transportation.

    anyway it's a huge investment in canada that is playing a long game for returns. thank you bruce energy.

    • What part of that pragmatism and logic is ok with the massive cost overruns on our last build that led to us all paying an extra rider on our power bills for years before they sold off the debt?

      Perhaps you have a different definition of pragmatism. And logic.

  • The Ontario government said Wednesday Bruce Power will conduct an environmental assessment

    It's great that he's on their team. Is he blue like Dr. Manhattan or green like Captain Planet?

    Does he hold up a big lightning rod and call out " !" ?

    Does he live on PEI?

    I assume he's givin' it all he's got. ..

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by cstacy ( 534252 )

      Does he hold up a big lightning rod and call out " !" ?

      "Tha an cumhachd agam"

      Which roughly translates as either "damnit Slashdot UNICODE" or "that's what you get for not actually looking at the Preview before hitting Submit".

  • The Ontario government said Wednesday Bruce Power will conduct an environmental assessment

    It's great that he's on their team. Is he blue like Dr. Manhattan or green like Captain Planet?

    Does he hold up a big lightning rod and call out "Tha an cumhachd agam!"?

    Does he live on PEI?

    I assume he's geevin' it all he's got. She's at 1,200 km, and I canna change the laws of physics or she'll implode. I've got ta have 10 minutes!

    • Nothing so exciting. The Scottish at one time owned a large part of Canada. Generations of inbreeding and alcoholism reduced their influence to what it is today, non-existent. The area I'm living in was settled by Scots who were kicked off their ancestral lands and replaced with sheep. By other Scots. They called the province Nova Scotia which means New Scotland. But then the British took it over. Going to school and studying Canadian history was pretty boring.
  • I heard this one of Ford's nasty legacies.

    He canceled all sorts of wind and photovoltaic projects and set this one in motion.

    Wind and photovoltaic power is competitive with coal on price. No nuclear waste or danger of radiation.

    You will not read articles about Japan dumping radioactive air from old windmills into the ocean.

  • ... reactor. It's gonna have to be pretty big to be bigger than the current biggest one. Just saying.

  • Bruce is ALREADY the biggest Nuclear Power Plant in the World, No building required.

    Typical fucking headline writers that can neither understand the English language nor utter coffect facts.

  • Follow the French FTW https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... [wikipedia.org]

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