Energy Probe

Taking the temperature on climate change

Posted on March 25, 2008 by energyprbe

Lawrence Solomon
FP Comment
March 25, 2008

Public support for global warming, by some measures, is overwhelming. By other measures, public support more resembles lip-service. As, for example, when the public is asked to put its money where it’s mouth is.

In a public opinion poll last week of registered U.S. voters, only one in six were willing to pay an extra 50 cents a gallon to stave off global warming and almost half were unwilling to pay so much as a penny. In a Washington Post-ABC poll last November, Democratic voters were asked: What is the single most important issue in your choice for the Democratic candidate for president? Top of the list was “Iraq/War in Iraq,” the pick of 33% of responders. “Health care” came second at 26%, followed by “Economy/Jobs” at 10% and “Ethics/Honesty/Corruption in government” at 5%. Next came “Education” at 3%, “Environment” at 2%, “Foreign policy” at 2%, “Immigration/Illegal immigration at 2%, “Energy/Ethanol” at 1%, Terrorism/National security” at 1%. Also at 1% were “Abortion”, “Morals/Family values,” Federal budget deficit” and “Social Security.” As for “Global warming,” it came in with an “*”, denoting less that one half of one percent.

Posted in Costs, Benefits and Risks | Leave a comment

Kyoto’s latest victim

Posted on March 20, 2008 by energyprbe

Lawrence Solomon
National Post FP Comment
March 20, 2008

Climate change continues to wreak havoc throughout the world, Egypt being the most recent example. In the last year, bread prices have climbed 36%, leading to rioting by the hungry. Bread riots are also occurring in Yemen and Pakistan, as they have in other countries over the last year, while in other nations food protests have taken other forms.

The cause of this upset, the Third World perceives, is the wholesale conversion of food crops to fuel uses. With the West’s climate-change-panicked governments desperate to take action, any action, to be seen to be doing something, the world’s agriculture has been turned to the service of filling the gas tanks of the trendy. It is done in the name of sustainable development but just how sustainable is this development?

Do you trust Canada’s nuclear establishment to safely dispose of its wastes?

Posted on March 19, 2008 by energyprbe

More than a quarter century after the nuclear industry started creating Canada’s largest collection of cancer-causing poisons, there still is no acceptable plan to get rid of these wastes. Worse yet, the waste producers haven’t set aside any money to do the job — not even the money they’ve taken from electricity customers in Ontario, New Brunswick, and Quebec for waste disposal. And now, while a federal Environmental Assessment panel is writing recommendations on the subject after years of public hearings, the federal government is quietly creating a new radioactive waste policy, and consulting only with the people who created the problem.

In the 1970s, Canada’s nuclear establishment concluded that we would trust them to bury highly radioactive used fuel from Canada’s nuclear reactors deep underground. The nuclear establishment, led by the federal Crown Corporation AECL (Atomic Energy of Canada Limited), settled on a plan that omitted any ongoing monitoring for radiation leaks and made no provision for fixing leaks if and when they were discovered. Put bluntly, they dreamed of finding a place called “away” — a place where we could put these wastes and forget about them forever.

Having decided that bury-and-forget “disposal” was the best option for nuclear waste, AECL (with the blessing of the federal government and its nuclear regulator, the AECB) then spent 20 years and over $700 million — partly from federal taxpayers, partly from electricity customers served by nuclear utilities — assembling its case. Every few years, AECL officials announced that they had “proved” — based on their forecasts of the distant future — that the resulting risks to humans and the rest of the environment, over the hundreds of thousands of years these waste remain poisonous, will be “acceptable”.

Only recently did AECL bother to ask the Canadian public whether their disposal plan bears any relationship to public values. The public wants an early warning system, in case the wastes start dissolving in groundwater or physically breaking up. The public also wants to leave future generations with some way to fix these problems if and when they occur. Canadians just don’t seem to believe in “away” any more. But the entire Canadian nuclear waste program has been based on the belief that “away” is a real place, and on the assumption that long-term monitoring and retrievability are both bad.

Rather than admit that they’ve spent $700 million of Canadians’ money pursuing an unacceptable approach, AECL, Ontario Hydro, and the others doggedly promoted their approach on two fronts:

T

They spent the last several years trying to convince a federal Environmental Assessment Panel that their plan was acceptable, that their computer forecasts were reliable, and that their approach must be right, because of an “international consensus” — i.e., the nuclear establishments in most other nuclear countries agree with their counterparts here.

Behind the scenes, while members of the public and groups like Energy Probe have been countering the industry’s arguments in these public hearings, the federal nuclear bureaucrats at the Department of Natural Resources have been quietly assembling Canada’s new official policy on radioactive waste disposal, working only with the people who created the problem!

I only uncovered this second, secret approach near the end of the public hearing, when an official with the Canadian Nuclear Society let its existence slip. When Energy Probe’s friends and I had finished asking questions, we had learned that the bureaucrats had been quietly working out their draft policy with the producers of radioactive wastes, and the associations that represent them. The public and environmental organizations weren’t included on the list of “major stakeholders”.

Whatever we eventually do with our nuclear waste legacy, the waste producers admit that it will be very expensive. AECL and Ontario Hydro both estimate that their disposal plan will cost over $10 billion in today’s dollars.

Unfortunately, nobody has set aside any cash to pay for the job. Canada’s three nuclear utilities have collected over $1 billion from their ratepayers, ostensibly to pay for waste disposal — but then spent the money.

This kind of irresponsibility is common to the nuclear establishment worldwide. When the British reorganized and partly privatized their “Hydro” (the Central Electricity Generating Board), they also found that there was no money for nuclear waste disposal, although the utility had been collecting from ratepayers for years.

Thanks to growing public awareness of the nuclear industry’s environmental and financial irresponsibility, and the progress we made in the recent hearings, we are more hopeful than ever that Canada’s radioactive waste policy can be substantially improved, and that we can loosen the waste producers’ stranglehold over policy.

Please contribute generously so we can keep working to protect the environment and future generations from Canada’s legacy of nuclear waste.

Sincerely,

Norman Rubin
Director of Nuclear Research

Posted in Nuclear Safety | Leave a comment

Accomplishments

Posted on March 19, 2008 by energyprbe

In the twenty years since I started working at Energy Probe on nuclear energy and environmental issues, some amazing advances have happened and become widely known, with our help:

The nuclear industry’s promise — to produce reliable, safe, economical power — has proven false. As a result, nuclear utility companies around the world have lost the confidence of their neighbours and their investors, and reactors have become “stranded assets” unable to pay down their mortgages.
Reactor construction has been replaced by reactor shutdowns and dismantlement, especially in the advanced countries of the world, including Canada. In fact, less nuclear power was generated in 1997, worldwide, than in 1996.
Faith in the industry’s schemes to bury its nuclear wastes “away forever” has faded among the general public worldwide. Some countries have stopped rushing toward burial. In Canada, a 9-year federal hearing process recently concluded that the industry’s concept is unacceptable, and Canada should stop and think before moving to a specific dump site.
India and Pakistan’s many nuclear weapons tests — at least some of them using materials from Canada or from Canadian-designed reactors — have educated people around the world to the links between “civilian” Candu reactors and nuclear weapons.
Scientists have established that the health effects of radiation exposure are proportional to the dose, down to much lower levels than previously demonstrated, and with much greater effects per unit dose. Partly as a result, exposures long considered “acceptable” by the industry and its regulator, the Atomic Energy Control Board, are no longer being accepted by communities near nuclear facilities.

But despite these amazing advances, and despite our efforts, the nuclear industry and its government backers keep going as if they were keeping their promises:

The Canadian federal government is just as determined to spread nuclear reactors around the world in 1998 as it was in 1978, when I began. Late last year, the government extended the largest export loan in Canadian history — after the federal Export Development Corporation refused to make the loan itself — to enable Jean Chrétien and the Chinese Premier, Li Peng, to conclude a deal on two Candu reactors. The Prime Minister and the government-owned Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. have been just as aggressively pursuing reactor sales opportunities in Korea, Turkey, Indonesia, Thailand, and elsewhere.
The government continues to deny the link between “civilian” nuclear materials and technology and their military uses. After India tested nuclear weapons almost certainly made with “Maple Leaf” plutonium, and a hydrogen bomb certainly made with tritium from a Candu reactor, the Prime minister excused Canada from all responsibility because 24 years had passed since the first Indian explosion using our plutonium.
The government has also continued to spend taxpayer funds on the reactor design that has made Ontario Hydro and New Brunswick Power unable to retire their own debts. In fact, the government scrapped AECL’s basic research programs, which were the source of legitimate Canadian pride, rather than cut the reactor program that has caused such financial loss and embarrassment.
Without any public or parliamentary discussion, the federal government has offered to accept plutonium from Russian and U.S. nuclear weapons for use as Candu reactor fuel — an ill-conceived plan opposed by disarmament experts and environmentalists alike, and supported primarily by the nuclear industry.

In short, some issues have changed remarkably, while others would be familiar to a modern Rip Van Winkle. The unchanging issues are all the more amazing, considering how long it’s been since nuclear power was a popular and promising technology.

Just now, revolutionary changes are sweeping over the electricity industry, in Canada and elsewhere — changes like allowing new generators to compete with the old monopolies, and allowing customers to choose which power they buy. These changes — if properly managed — promise to help usher in a post-nuclear era, with smaller, safer, and greener generation sources, especially renewables and ultra-efficient co-generation. Badly managed, these changes could set back the cause of green power and prolong the age of dirty, unsafe megaprojects.

We are working — with supporters like you, the press, regulators, and government committees — to ensure that these changes benefit customers, the environment, and future generations. With your help, we can create a new electricity system that is fiscally and environmentally sustainable.

Sincerely,

Norman Rubin
Director of Nuclear Research

Posted in Towards Shutdown | Leave a comment

Nuke sector on upswing?

Posted on March 19, 2008 by energyprbe

Lauren Krugel
Canadian Press
March 17, 2008

CALGARY — With two nuclear mega-projects planned for Alberta and Ontario, the sector is showing signs of growth for the first time in decades, but critics warn those sorts of major projects are fraught with risk.

On Thursday, Ontario power firm Bruce Power said it wants to build Western Canada’s first nuclear power plant near Peace River, Alta. The proposed $10-billion facility could produce enough electricity to power two million homes by 2017.

And a major new nuclear plant planned for Ontario could to power all the homes and businesses in Toronto, Canada’s most populous city, with a capacity of up to 3,500 megawatts.

There’s word New Brunswick’s government is also mulling building a second power plant at Point Lepreau.

As the world looks to secure a clean, inexpensive energy supply capable of providing electricity to its ever-expanding population, “nuclear is always presented in that scenario as part of the solution,” said Claudia Lemieux of the Canadian Nuclear Association.

“There’s all kinds of spinoff benefits that the nuclear industry brings, including high paying jobs and a whole cluster or research,” she said.

Nuclear power has been — controversially — touted by some environmentalists as a good substitute to dirtier fossil fuels, since it does not produce any greenhouse gas emissions, but managing its extremely dangerous waste is a major drawback.

While the cost of building a nuclear power plant is exponentially higher than building a coal or natural gas powered plant, the economics work in the long run, Lemieux said.

“From a cost point of view it is competitive. It’s just that its capital initial costs are expensive.”

For the first time, international private companies will be able to bid on the Alberta build instead of the contract going automatically to Atomic Energy Canada Ltd., the crown corporation behind the internationally used Candu reactor.

“It’s certainly an exciting development. It’s a bold development,” said Norman Rubin of the Energy Probe think tank. “The financial risks are killers to this from an investment point of view, so what’s especially exciting about this is the possibility that governments won’t have to backstop this.”

Rubin warns the nuclear industry has a dismal record of keeping projects on budget and on schedule and that once the plants are built, they are prone to breakdown.

“There are two kinds of nuclear generating stations in the world. There are the future theoretical ones, which are wonderful. And there are the real world ones which break your heart and destroy your wealth and run the risk of leaving you in the dark if you actually depend on them,” he said.

Another huge issue is going to be getting enough skilled workers to build the planned nuclear mega-projects, especially in Alberta’s already squeezed labour market, Rubin said.

And the industry won’t only be short on pipe fitters and welders. Engineers who graduated from university during the past 20 years will not have expected nuclear construction to become a growth field, so it will be tough to get a hold of the brains necessary to design and run a nuclear reactor.

Nuclear proponents are “pinning their hopes” on concern over global warming to get their multi-billion-dollar projects off the ground, said Gordon Edwards of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility.

“What we have here is a consortium of large corporations whose business is building new reactors and they’re trying very hard to stampede people in this direction,” he said.

“The question is are we really heading off on an expensive proposition, which is really not going to solve the problem, but just add extra problems on top of the ones we already have?”

Environment Minister John Baird said last week that the federal government would start cracking down on building new coal-fired plants, the biggest global warming culprits.

“The nuclear industry sees this as a golden opportunity. It’s sort of like a manna from heaven,” Edwards said.

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Burning in the dark

Posted on March 18, 2008 by energyprbe

Lawrence Solomon

March 15, 2008

Nuclear runs all night, can’t be ramped up in day.

After scores of bankruptcies and bailouts, many if not most energy analysts recognize nuclear electricity for what it has been: the single biggest business disaster in history.

But nuclear power’s failings extend beyond the red ink on the balance sheets to the limitations in the technology. The nuclear reactor, though efficient in medical and military applications, is ill-suited for the production of electricity in a sophisticated power market of diverse customers with diverse needs

Non-nuclear power stations such as hydroelectric, coal and gas can generally power up or down quickly, making them suitable to meeting the periods of peak demand that occur during the day, for example, in the mornings when people shower (calling on their water heaters) and when they breakfast (calling on their toasters and tea kettles). Starting at about dawn, as people awaken and begin to use these appliances, operators of power systems systematically bring on this non-nuclear power. No jurisdiction in the world starts up nuclear reactors to meet peak needs because doing so would be dangerous as well as expensive. Unlike other generators, nuclear plants do not have the flexibility to be easily started up or shut down. They run continually, meeting what is called the "base load."

Nuclear proponents portray the technology’s base-load role as a strength. They tout nuclear power as an economic workhorse that provides the stability and reliability that power systems – and especially industrial customers – need. In fact, nuclear power is neither economic nor stable nor reliable. Being limited to a base-load role, which in practice means dominating the market in the middle of the night when people and industries are idle, is no source of strength.

Where nuclear plants do not exist, which is to say in most Canadian provinces and most of the jurisdictions of the world, nonnuclear plants run in the middle of the night. Any plant can be a base-load plant, running at times when power supplies are plentiful and power prices are low – often 2¢ a kilowatt hour. But no nuclear plant can be a peaking plant, and operate when power supplies are tight and power dear – routinely 15¢ to 20¢ a kilowatt hour, and often much, much more. This limitation in the nuclear technology is the chief reason that British Energy, a well-run U.K. nuclear generating company, became insolvent after the U.K. government privatized it and why no nuclear generating company in the world could survive in a free electricity market in which it needed to compete against generators better suited to meeting the many needs of a complex marketplace.

Base-load plants, before the arrival of nuclear power, were typically low-cost, low-performance stations – the stations that were incapable of meeting high-value needs, but as a saving grace they were the lowest-cost plants in the utility’s fleet. With the advent of nuclear reactors, base-load plants became high-cost, low-performance nuclear stations – the utilities had no other use for them.

Ontario, one of the most nuclearized jurisdictions in the world, provides a good example of how base-load nuclear plants, rather than lower the costs of a power system, raise them. The two Ontario companies that operate nuclear plants, Ontario Power Generation and Bruce Power, receive more money per kilowatt-hour for their base-load nuclear power than, for example, Ontario Power Generation receives for its more reliable, more flexible, and more valuable coal-fired power. They receive these high payments even though much of the cost of building the reactors doesn’t show up in the electricity rates – power consumers pay for those nuclear plants’ government bailout through a separate levy. Even these rewards aren’t enough – Ontario Power Generation is now asking for payment increases of as much as 14%.

Nuclear plants not only don’t lower costs, as base-load plants historically have, they also don’t increase reliability. Just the opposite. Nuclear plants experience crippling downtimes, both planned and unplanned. For one stretch lasting almost seven years, from 1998 to 2004, eight Ontario reactors were out of service – without Ontario’s coal plants, the province would have experienced massive blackouts and forced rationing, just as in Third World countries. Last summer, when two newly refurbished reactors at Pickering produced nothing at all over several months, only the coal plants and favourable weather prevented blackouts.

Ontario’s nuclear plants have consistently failed to meet their projections for reliability and durability, and have proven to be less reliable than either coal, gas or hydro plants. To protect itself from future losses due to unreliability, Ontario Power Generation is asking for protection from its own forecasts – it wants to be relieved of 25% of the financial responsibility for falling short of its promises, noting openly the unique risks of operating nuclear plants.

Nuclear operators know that their reactors are unreliable and that their estimates are not to be believed. The government bodies, taxpayers, and captive ratepayers that fund these plants should know this too.

This article is second in a series.

Posted in Energy Probe News, Nuclear Power | 1 Comment

Green Roofs and Homeowner Protection in B.C.: Balancing Benefits and Risks

Posted on March 15, 2008 by energyprbe

Ken Cameron, FCIP
Planning West
March 15, 2008

As provincial and local governments focus their attention on setting and reaching goals for greenhouse has reduction and environmental protection, the role that new development and construction can play is under active scrutiny. Readers of Planning West have received a lot of information recently on planning for sustainability and green building technologies. There has also been considerable attention paid to green roofs, and a number of local governments have been considering mandating this type of roof in new construction of various types. This article is about the need to ensure that other important public objectives, particularly consumer protection for new homebuyers, are given appropriate consideration in these processes.

Read the full article in .pdf format

Posted in Perversions | Leave a comment

Nuclear giant plans 4 reactors; Bruce Power proposes $10B

Posted on March 14, 2008 by energyprbe

Geoffrey Scotton, with files from Jason Fekete
Calgary Herald
March 14, 2008

The only private operator of nuclear plants in Canada, Bruce Power LP, plans to bring nuclear power to Alberta, saying Thursday it hopes to build a $10-billion-plus generating complex near Peace River.

But experts on nuclear power were quick to note that even though nuclear generation has massive capital costs, it has a dismal track record at meeting cost estimates and construction schedules and that, once operational, the reliability of nuclear stations has been spotty, at best.

No facility in Canada has come in on time and on budget and most have required massive, costly refurbishment years ahead of original expectations.

“The history in this field has been that even Bruce Power has experienced significant overruns on projects that were probably more predictable than this one,” said Norman Rubin, director of nuclear research for Energy Probe, a Toronto-based energy advocacy group.

“This is not without its risks,” he added, noting new technology will make it even more financially risky.

“You wonder whether the lessons have been learned,” said Rubin.

“Don’t get into a situation where the lights will only stay on if these things happen as promised and they run as promised, because our history is that that never happens – they never run as promised.”

S ource

Posted in Energy Probe News, Nuclear Economics | Tagged nuclear costs | Leave a comment

The Polluter Overpay Principle

Posted on March 12, 2008 by energyprbe

Lawrence Solomon
National Post FP Comment
March 12, 2008

The UK is clobbering well-engineered automobiles in a move to re-engineer society. A Land Rover will soon face a tax of £950 when purchased, and then an additional £455 per year. Saab owners are hit less hard (£425 in year one, then £270) and Audi owners even less (£155 and £155). To escape these taxes, dubbed “showroom taxes” because they tend to hit hardest at the time of purchase), car-buyers need to think very small, such as the VW Polo Bluemotion, a diesel vehicle.

The taxes — announced Wednesday in the government’s budget — are scaled in proportion to the CO2 that these cars emit per kilometer traveled (the Audi emits 160 grams of CO2 per kilometre, vs 190 g for the Saab). In reality, these showroom taxes are more for show — a way to castigate car owners while grabbing some tax along the way. The cars draw the tax regardless of how many kilometres they’re actually driven — that Saab owner who drives his car sparingly will emit far less CO2 than the commuter in the VW. The tax, in effect, is a mean-spirited tax on lifestyle that has no relation to any damage done to the environment, real or imagined.

Carbon taxes on the UK’s auto sector as a whole, moreover, have become unjustifiable, according to the Royal Automobile Club Foundation, which notes that even the Stern Review — a study that many believe exaggerates the risks and costs of global warming — vindicates auto drivers.

‘”There is no environmental case for higher taxes. Based on the Government’s own figures in the Stern Review, the full cost of the greenhouse gases produced by road transport amounts to no more than 14p per litre. Road users are the only energy users paying the full cost of their carbon emissions; unlike rail or air travellers.” The government isn’t pursuing the Polluter Pay Principle, as it is advertising.

Lawrence Solomon is Executive Director of Energy Probe and author of The Deniers (forthcoming).

Posted in Costs, Benefits and Risks, Energy Probe News | Leave a comment

Ontario’s Roadmap

Posted on March 10, 2008 by energyprbe

Ken Silverstein
EnergyBiz Insider
March 10, 2008

Energy policy isn’t just consuming U.S. lawmakers. It’s also dominating the Canadian agenda and particularly the province of Ontario.

The current government there recently unveiled its long-term supply roadmap that plans to double the amount of renewable energy by 2025 and refurbish or replace the province’s base-load nuclear capacity. But it also expects to phase-out the use of coal-fired generation by 2014 — a strategy that had to be put off for seven years.

The 20-year outlook, which will cost tens of billions to implement and be updated every three years, is necessary to accommodate electricity growth rates of 1.3 percent a year. At least 10,000 new megawatts are now under construction, on top of the current 31,000 total. Plans are also in place to build new transmission lines. Still, the gap between what Ontario needs and what its own generators can provide will remain formidable and according to some estimates will fall short by 15,000 megawatts by 2025.

“The plan must be founded on prudence-cost effectiveness and feasibility of options,” says Amir Shalaby, vice president of power system planning for the Ontario Power Authority, which addresses the province’s supply picture in the face of aging and inadequate infrastructure. “It must also have flexibility-the ability to respond and adapt to what actually happens and changes in our assessment of the future.”

Many experts say that Ontario’s stated goal of phasing out its existing coal plants would result in massive energy shortages, noting that coal provides 16 percent of the province’s electricity. Instead, they say that Ontario ought to implement new clean coal technologies. Natural gas, meanwhile, supplies about 8 percent of the province’s energy mix — an amount that is expected to double by 2018. But flat production and increasing demand are putting upward pressure on those prices and could diminish its appeal.

The province’s energy issues are compounded even further because of its aging nuclear fleet, which provide about 51 percent of Ontario’s daily requirement. The power authority has suggested the modernization of almost all of its nuclear stock of 12 power plants at a cost of $18-$30 (U.S) billion.

It also recommends that Ontario install wind, solar and biomass projects. Altogether, the use of renewables would rise from 23 percent today — that includes 22 percent hydro sources — to 43 percent by 2025. Without a holistic solution, the power authority warns that significant shortfalls will occur by 2025.

Ontario’s regulatory scheme evolved from one of being closely monitored to a more liberalized version. To get there, the Conservative government in 1998 separated the generation and wires businesses. While provincially-owned Ontario Power Generation and Hydro One still control those respective businesses, private companies are now allowed to supply electricity to the energy market there.

Sustainable Focus

When rates were regulated, consumers had been largely oblivious to supply and demand. But such protection served to counter Ontario’s mission — to use fewer resources to deliver increasing amounts of power and to subject consumers to market conditions. As such, the province has steadily raised rates to reflect the increased demand. Independent analysts are furthermore predicting that rates will rise by 6.5 percent a year to pay for new generation, infrastructure and conservation programs.

Wholesale producers can now sell their power at market rates. Consumers, meanwhile, can lock in prices by buying long-term fixed contracts from private suppliers. Overall rates, however, are not expected to rise as fast because the nuclear and hydro generation plants will remain regulated. Regulators there would “blend” the regulated and unregulated components to come up with a quasi-free market rate.

To maintain stability, nuclear power may be the most viable option for Ontario, says Ontario’s Premier Dalton McGuinty. It is efficient, he notes, pointing out that a small amount of uranium is both more productive and more environmentally-friendly than coal. Unlike other alternatives, nuclear provides continuous power and the uranium used to fuel plants is plentiful and the nuclear waste can be safely contained. He acknowledges that there is no perfect solution to fixing the province’s energy dilemma.

“As older reactors come to the end of their life cycle, refurbishment and new generation of nuclear must take over,” says Murray Elston, chair of the Canadian Nuclear Association. “Nuclear is the only technology capable of producing the large quantities of reliable and affordable carbon-free electricity” in an industrial economy like Ontario.

Canada-based Energy Probe, however, admonishes the nation and Ontario in particular to pay heed to the risks surrounding nuclear power. Taxpayers in Ontario, it says, are footing the multi-billion bill to refurbish two nuclear plants there — a process that is now 60 percent complete and which will add 1,500 megawatts of capacity. The group also says that large and centralized facilities use imported fuel from outside the province that leaves open the question of where to bury the radioactive waste. More of the province’s finite resources, it concludes, must be directed to solar and wind.

Like the United States, the province needs a diversity of fuels to meet its future energy needs. The projected growth rate there means there’s room for nuclear power, green energy and natural gas. And while is seems unrealistic that Ontario can phase out its coal units, global pressures to curb climate change will ratchet up the cost of releasing carbon and will make it imperative that it focus on sustainable energy production. No matter how they dissect it, policymakers there are facing the same vexing issues as those in the United States and elsewhere.

Posted in Coal, Nuclear Proliferation, Reforming Ontario's Electrical Generation Sector, Renewables | Leave a comment