Quote:
Originally Posted by opendoor
I mean, banning it was kind of stupid, but not for the reasons he's talking about. More because it's not really viable in BC for a host of reasons, and would never make financial sense. A good chunk of the province is seismically unstable, and BC already has significant baseload capacity with hydro. So adding expensive nuclear power to also act as a baseload doesn't do a whole lot other than raise the cost of power.
Whereas, because hydro output can be modulated almost instantaneously, it's well-suited to overcome the downsides of renewable intermittent power sources like wind. If you have significant renewable capacity generating for part of the day/week/month, then you raise the dams and rely less on hydro for those periods. Then when renewables aren't producing, you rely more on hydro.
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1) If nuclear was/is not viable, then why even bother banning? All forms of energy should be part of the conversation, some will make more sense than others depending on the circumstance. Let science/geography/economics dictate the right answer, not politics or dogma.
2) I'm also a fan of hydro for many of the reasons you mention. It can definitely can make more sense than nuclear under the right circumstances and geography...which in BC it often does. Having said that, how confident are you that when it comes time to expand that baseload capacity, you’ll be able to build more dams in BC under the current environment? You’ll have the same roadblocks/concerns that we see with every large energy infrastructure project in Canada…land rights, first nations issues, environment concerns, habitat disruption, flooding risks, eco-terrorist disruption, political infighting. Costs will balloon, timelines will increase, and politicians will flip flop.
Doing a quick scan, I see that there is currently one dam being built in the northeast part of the province... started in 2015, at a cost of $16 billion and counting (apparently the most expensive public infrastructure project in BC history). All the other ones were built prior to the 80s. How realistic is it going to be built more of these?
3) Everyone wants something that's cheap, and safe, and quick, and won't take up any space, and won't harm anyone or anything...when nothing of that sort exists. There is no free lunch with any energy source, there are only trade-offs. Like hydro, nuclear isn't perfect either, but has proven to be a highly reliable, safe, efficient (both in energy generation and land use!) form of energy use for almost a century now. It may not always be the answer... but to not even consider it part of the conversation is plain idiotic.