[opendoor]

Originally Posted by Table 5

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.

Because the government that banned it were pack of idiots who liked to make a big show about things like that. The funny thing is, Rustad was actually part of that government, but maybe he was less of a climate change skeptic back then.

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?

New baseload isn't really what BC needs. With Site C coming online, BC Hydro is still expecting a surplus of production into the 2030s even with the anticipated increase in demand. But because BC has a lot of electric heating, there are narrow demand peaks during cold snaps that they need to satisfy. Now theoretically they could build nuclear to satisfy baseload demand and then reduce hydro output to save for peak periods. But that is going to raise rates far more than the other option of developing cheap renewables (i.e. wind, small-scale hydro, etc.) to reduce the load on dams and then relying on small amounts of gas or imported electricity to cover peak periods that hydro can't handle.

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.

I guess, but it's just not all that suitable for BC. Just like solar isn't for a lot of the province due to cloud cover during peak demand periods in the winter.

The fact is, there are places that are far more well-suited to nuclear power and with far less paranoia around nuclear, but they aren't building any plants either. So why would BC? Particularly given that there is no real nuclear expertise in the province given hydro's dominance.