It’s because of AI.
I would have been happy about this, since I generally support nuclear over the fossil fuel alternative, but I fear they’re only doing this to satisfy the AI data centre craze. Though I suppose when the bubble pops, we’ll be left with cheap abundant energy. The question then becomes; how much damage will data centres do before the pop.
How about increase the wind farms a do solar right?
And forget the methods that are toxic for thousands of years.
I love renewables, but a nuclear backbone with renewables on top will allow us to secure being carbon neutral a lot more easily
The aversion to nuclear is a problem. I don’t think people know 60% of Ontario’s power is nuclear.
Even with storage, renewables are cheaper than new nuclear. The economics haven’t made any sense for years now yet these clowns persist with their proposals to make everyone pay more.
Plus, we can put up solar panels faster; we have the land. We don’t (just) need more clean power in 2040, we need clean power now.
There doesn’t really seem to be much in concrete steps here? (Although the article is really barebones)
It sounds like they are basically offering cheaper debt to nuclear power, which is fine, but I can’t see how they can say that translates to a concrete number like 10 plants being built.
““If our goal is to double our grid and build a low-carbon economy in less than 25 years, there is no credible plan to do that without nuclear energy and the clean, reliable baseload power it provides,” Hodgson told a news conference in Newmarket, Ont.”
This clown is either completely misinformed or on the take.
Strongly agree with him, renewables are amazing, but a nuclear baseload is needed to ensure we can always meet demand.
That’s not how it works. Read up on storage vs base load, I just found this article but there are plenty more.
Of course renewable CAN provide baseload, I live in BC, which is >95% renewable, but where we don’t have the low hanging fruit, we would need to over build them.
I’m the end, I’m worried about what it takes for us to make a renewable transition as quickly as possible, and the best way for that is a mix of renewables and nuclear.
Or both.
Small Modular Nuclear Reactors are EXPERIMENTAL. That means for one there is no typical design, let alone good ones. And beyond the BS that Nuclear is clean, it isn’t, they could make regular reactors that take nuclear fuel that is spent and process it back up, the ones that the Canadian Governments have been talking about would be "Oh this module fails, so pull it out and put a brand new one in, which is made like current reactors and generate waste.
This means that every SMR that goes up is a TEST reactor and they have to figure out new best practices, not to mention the human factor of running the plants. There are reasons why Nuclear Scientists have been “No nuclear facilities in residential areas” and for “Best Practices in Plant Construction and Design” which they never are.
And as it is standard plants always have huge cost overruns and mid build redesigns.
Meanwhile although the cost of Solar and Wind is at a all time low, and the down sides of wind are a fraction of what we thought they were, we are still going to need Nuclear to bridge the gap to decarbonizing the economy and that means the best designs, whether they are SMR, Standard, or Thorium Based, and an affordable maintenance system with VASTLY better maintenance, and then deploy that, and not this "Oh we will throw the Uranium at the wall and see what sticks and that we can use to get soft power in other countries. That will come if you do your job right.
This government… I tell you…
Traditionally, reactors were built as big as possible to generate as much power as possible. That’s the only way they ever made (some) economic sense. Now we’re getting smaller reactors pushed as a solution that will generate less power, and that power will be even more expensive than from a bigger nuclear plant.
This just reeks of grift.
