Quote:
Originally Posted by Azure
Nuclear energy is how we get off fossil fuels. We've just sent decades making sure it didn't happen.
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Not really. Canada's electricity generation could be completely emission free, and it'd still only drop our emissions by about 10%. And we could get part of the way way there simply by having better inter-provincial connectedness (i.e. Ontario, Saskatchewan, and Alberta importing hydro power from Quebec, Manitoba, and BC rather than having those places export power to the US).
Reducing emissions beyond that requires significant electrification of things where either the technology isn't totally there yet or are quite capital intensive to implement (i.e. transportation switching almost totally to EVs, heat pumps that are cost effective in the coldest climates). Long term, more nuclear might help Canada if there are significant increases in demand, but hopefully SMRs will be ready for prime time by the time that actually happens. As it is, there hasn't been a whole lot of need for newly built, massively expensive traditional nuclear plants that take 20 years to build.