Your commentary on electricity in Canada is very good. Your takedown of the so-called ‘influencer’ was very accurate. His statements were so off-the-wall, that I’m not sure who he thought he would influence.
With respect to Canada’s environmental benefit of building nuclear, that was almost entirely by happenstance. The problem was Ontario. From its inception in 1906, Ontario’s electricity system had been entirely hydraulic. However, the massive increase in industry during World War II meant that Ontario’s electricity resources were nearly fully developed and used by about 1940.
So, Ontario had to import coal from the United States to supplement its power supplies. However, this posed severe problems because of the extreme difficulty in transporting coal from the Tennessee Valley to Ontario. The only possible alternative was nuclear power.
This is the same reason that drove nuclear power development in France, Belgium, Sweden, Japan and the eastern United States. No coal.
I agree with all of your conclusions about CANDU. It was arguably the finest nuclear power generating system ever devised for technical reasons. As a result of its construction program, Ontario now has the world’s largest nuclear power generating complex: the eight large reactors of the Bruce nuclear power station in Kincardine. In Ontario, it is only matched by the four large reactors at Darlington. Depending on the time of day, Ontario gets up to 80 per cent of its electricity from nuclear power.
However, all of these reactors were built by a company that no longer exists: the Nuclear Design and Construction Branch of Ontario Hydro. That company was deliberately demolished by the NDP government under Bob Rae in 1993. All of the people who designed and built those nuclear reactors are now all long dead. The companies which built all of the large components of those reactors are also largely dismantled or repurposed.
The good news is that the existing reactors are not going anywhere. All Bruce and Darlington reactors have been refurbished for nominal operations for another 40 years. The same program will be carried out for four of the reactors at Pickering as well. However, Ontario gets about 250,000 immigrants every year. They all consume electricity, so the question now is where will that electricity come from. If there are no new nuclear power plants, that electricity will come from burning natural gas.
One thing this article missed about the seeming “hodgepodge” of energy regimes is the gigantic size of the country itself topographically. The United Kingdom fits into a little less than 2/3 of the fourth biggest province, Alberta.
Thank you for an an excellent and informative post. Interestingly, parts of Africa are also currently affected by drought, and hydropower output is down in Zimbabwe and Zambia (Kariba Dam ) as well as in Mozambique (Cahora Bassa Dam). Both dams are on the Zambesi River. Mozambique is planning to build a second generation facility at Cahora Bassa (only one side of the dam has generators installed) as well as a new hydropower dam downstream (Mpande Mecua, 1,500 MW capacity). South Africa buys most of Mozambique's hydropower output, but there is pressure within the country to use more of its electrcity resources for national development programmes. Meanwhile, two floating LNG plants built in South Korea will soon be processing some of Mozambique's offshore gas finds, which could be a major game-changer for this impoverished country's fortunes.
Your commentary on electricity in Canada is very good. Your takedown of the so-called ‘influencer’ was very accurate. His statements were so off-the-wall, that I’m not sure who he thought he would influence.
With respect to Canada’s environmental benefit of building nuclear, that was almost entirely by happenstance. The problem was Ontario. From its inception in 1906, Ontario’s electricity system had been entirely hydraulic. However, the massive increase in industry during World War II meant that Ontario’s electricity resources were nearly fully developed and used by about 1940.
So, Ontario had to import coal from the United States to supplement its power supplies. However, this posed severe problems because of the extreme difficulty in transporting coal from the Tennessee Valley to Ontario. The only possible alternative was nuclear power.
This is the same reason that drove nuclear power development in France, Belgium, Sweden, Japan and the eastern United States. No coal.
I agree with all of your conclusions about CANDU. It was arguably the finest nuclear power generating system ever devised for technical reasons. As a result of its construction program, Ontario now has the world’s largest nuclear power generating complex: the eight large reactors of the Bruce nuclear power station in Kincardine. In Ontario, it is only matched by the four large reactors at Darlington. Depending on the time of day, Ontario gets up to 80 per cent of its electricity from nuclear power.
However, all of these reactors were built by a company that no longer exists: the Nuclear Design and Construction Branch of Ontario Hydro. That company was deliberately demolished by the NDP government under Bob Rae in 1993. All of the people who designed and built those nuclear reactors are now all long dead. The companies which built all of the large components of those reactors are also largely dismantled or repurposed.
The good news is that the existing reactors are not going anywhere. All Bruce and Darlington reactors have been refurbished for nominal operations for another 40 years. The same program will be carried out for four of the reactors at Pickering as well. However, Ontario gets about 250,000 immigrants every year. They all consume electricity, so the question now is where will that electricity come from. If there are no new nuclear power plants, that electricity will come from burning natural gas.
One thing this article missed about the seeming “hodgepodge” of energy regimes is the gigantic size of the country itself topographically. The United Kingdom fits into a little less than 2/3 of the fourth biggest province, Alberta.
Thank you for an an excellent and informative post. Interestingly, parts of Africa are also currently affected by drought, and hydropower output is down in Zimbabwe and Zambia (Kariba Dam ) as well as in Mozambique (Cahora Bassa Dam). Both dams are on the Zambesi River. Mozambique is planning to build a second generation facility at Cahora Bassa (only one side of the dam has generators installed) as well as a new hydropower dam downstream (Mpande Mecua, 1,500 MW capacity). South Africa buys most of Mozambique's hydropower output, but there is pressure within the country to use more of its electrcity resources for national development programmes. Meanwhile, two floating LNG plants built in South Korea will soon be processing some of Mozambique's offshore gas finds, which could be a major game-changer for this impoverished country's fortunes.