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Originally Posted by Bill Bumface
The premier of BC has come out and said nuclear energy is a no-go in BC. People are getting far less tolerant of the downsides of large hydro projects.
Why isn't Alberta putting up a bunch of nuke plants in the swaths of barren wasteland we have and throwing some transmission lines across the border?
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From the Energy Transitions thread:
Some sobering reading on the future of SMR nuclear by a fairly knowledgeable person. She was Chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and has had fellowships at places like MIT, Stanford, and Harvard
[B]The end of Oppenheimer’s nuclear energy dream: Modular reactors supported by ideology alone[b]
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With large nuclear power plants struggling to compete in a deregulated marketplace against renewables and natural gas, small modular reactors (SMRs) offer the promise to save the nuclear energy option.
In the past few years, investors, national governments, and the media have paid significant attention to small modular nuclear reactors as the solution to traditional nuclear energy’s cost and long build times and renewable’s space and aesthetic drawbacks, but behind the hype there is very little concrete technology to justify it.
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Recent construction experience in the US and Europe does not herald success for SMR new builds. The two French-design evolutionary power reactor (EPR) builds have been far over budget and schedule.
The EPR in Finland was originally supposed to cost €3 billion and open in 2009. It finally began producing electricity in 2023 at a cost of €11 billion.
There is a similar story in France, where the EPR at Flamanville was set to begin operation in 2012 at a cost of €3.5 billion. Instead, it is still under construction and costs have ballooned to €12.4 billion.
And Europe is the rule, not the exception. US – based Westinghouse’s AP-1000, a robust design with passive safety features has suffered similarly.
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With all these potential drawbacks and delays, why would anyone invest in an SMR company? I put a similar question to Ray Rothrock, a venture capitalist, at a meeting of a committee of the National Academy of Engineering that was studying the potential of these new reactors (and of which I was a member).
If these reactors won’t be commercially available for a decade or more, how do investors make money?
His response? “Even before they sell [energy], they go public and that’s how early investors make money…it fits the model – the company hasn’t made money, but the investors have made money.” He goes on to say that going public opens the door to much more money that is needed
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https://reneweconomy-com-au.cdn.ampp...ogy-alone/amp/
Basically, Alberta is a deregulated market so anyone is free to build one, but no one will because it's too expensive