The Energy Transition and technologies

[Firebot]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

Didn't Canada once have a government owned research arm for nuclear? What happened to that?

Harper happened?

Just because I loathe what the current government is doing in energy transition plans, doesn't mean I agree with decisions of prior governments for purely partisan reasons as you may think. As far as I know the CPC embraces SMRs but is silent on traditional nuclear.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news...rticle1198757/

I also know that despite your political leaning, that you do favour nuclear. They don't have to interconnect.

[PepsiFree]

The correct answer was, “they nuked it.”

[Fuzz]

It wasn't meant as partisan, I couldn't remember what happened to it. I see Harper sold it to SNC Lavalin for $15 million.

[opendoor]

Originally Posted by Bill Bumface

I found this pretty interesting on the cost front of nuclear. I didn't realize they were getting built for so much less elsewhere:

https://unchartedterritories.tomaspu...he-best-energy

I don't know, the whole thesis in the cost section is basically "reduce/remove costly regulations". And then he holds Japan and South Korea up as good examples of plants being built cheaply. But he doesn't mention the scandals that have plagued those countries:

Now, a snowballing scandal in South Korea about bribery and faked safety tests for critical plant equipment has highlighted yet another similarity: experts say both countries’ nuclear programs suffer from a culture of collusion that has undermined their safety. Weeks of revelations about the close ties between South Korea’s nuclear power companies, their suppliers and testing companies have led the prime minister to liken the industry to a mafia.

The scandal started after an anonymous tip in April prompted an official investigation. Prosecutors have indicted some officials at a testing company on charges of faking safety tests on parts for the plants. Some officials at the state-financed company that designs nuclear power plants were also indicted on charges of taking bribes from testing company officials in return for accepting those substandard parts.

Worse yet, investigators discovered that the questionable components are installed in 14 of South Korea’s 23 nuclear power plants. The country has already shuttered three of those reactors temporarily because the questionable parts used there were important, and more closings could follow as investigators wade through more than 120,000 test certificates filed over the past decade to see if more may have been falsified.

In a further indication of the possible breadth of the problems, prosecutors recently raided the offices of 30 more suppliers suspected of also providing parts with faked quality certificates and said they would investigate other testing companies.

Last year, the government was forced to shut down two reactors temporarily after it learned that parts suppliers — some of whom were later convicted — had fabricated the safety-test certificates for more than 10,000 components over 10 years. But the government emphasized at the time that those parts were “nonessential” items and that the industry was otherwise sound.

As it turned out, the problems went much deeper.

The investigation that began this spring suggested that the oversight within the supply chain may also be more deeply compromised. A company that was supposed to test reactor parts skipped portions of the exams, doctored test data or even issued safety certificates for parts that failed its tests, according to government investigators. And this time the parts involved included more important items. Among the parts that failed the tests were cables used to send signals to activate emergency measures in an accident.

“This is not a simple negligence or mistake; this is a deliberate fabrication by those who were supposed to safeguard the reliability of parts,” said Kim Yong-soo, a professor of nuclear engineering at Hanyang University in Seoul. “It raises serious questions about the immune system of our nuclear power industry.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/04/w...velations.html

Nuclear is quite safe if it's regulated properly. But the downside risk of shoddy regulations is massive.

[Bill Bumface]

^ I'll take it as a success story. Widespread, blatant corruption and circumvention of safety standards... yet still way less dead people than any other form of power.

[Azure]

Wind and solar combined represented 94 percent of the federal renewable electricity-related subsidies in FY 2022, while producing a combined 5.5 percent of primary energy.

Wondering what the total subsidy amount is.

And where hydro is on this list.

But this is wild. And a complete bloody waste of taxpayer money to spend so much money and get so little back on our investment.

[Bring_Back_Shantz]

Originally Posted by Azure

Wondering what the total subsidy amount is.

And where hydro is on this list.

But this is wild. And a complete bloody waste of taxpayer money to spend so much money and get so little back on our investment.

You realize those 2 percentages are totally uncorrelated right?
One is how much of the 2022 pie the two biggest renewable sources got of the funding for renewable power projects.

The Other is how much power they produce in total (it has nothing to do with what was subsidized in 2022)

How are you able to make any sort of assessment on whether or not this is a waste of taxpayer money without the most important info.

You have no idea what the scale of the investment is based on those numbers, so how can you be so confident we are getting so little back in return?

You're getting upset because 1 number is bigger than a totally unrelated one.

[Azure]

Originally Posted by Bring_Back_Shantz

You realize those 2 percentages are totally uncorrelated right?
One is how much of the 2022 pie the two biggest renewable sources got of the funding for renewable power projects.

The Other is how much power they produce in total (it has nothing to do with what was subsidized in 2022)

How are you able to make any sort of assessment on whether or not this is a waste of taxpayer money without the most important info.

You have no idea what the scale of the investment is based on those numbers, so how can you be so confident we are getting so little back in return?

You're getting upset because 1 number is bigger than a totally unrelated one.

I know nuclear is subsidized by the billions by taxpayers.
Do the math from there.

[Table 5]

The EIA (US Dept of Energy) report is here if anyone wants to dive deeper into the data, however Azure, to answer your question, total subsidies to renewable were $15.6 Billion in 2022. $41M of that went to hydro.

Chart based on that data that shows Renewable energy subsidies by type:

Spoiler!

Another chart that shows subsidies per unit of production (ie $/megawatt hour). Solar generation was subsidized 76 times more, and wind 17 more, than nuclear electricity production on a unit-of-production basis.

Spoiler!

Keep in mind this was only one year (2022) and only Federal subsidies... so no state or local, and it does not include the mother of all American subsidies that was enacted in late 2022...the Inflation Reduction (lol) Act, that is directing about $400 Billion towards "clean energy". Although this does now at least include nuclear.

Take from it what you will, but either way, plenty o' subsidies to go around!

[Azure]

There are 3 provinces in Canada that sit and laugh at everyone else in the world when it comes to energy costs, and all 3 of them are heavy hydro provinces.

When its -40 C, we laugh even harder. But then we help make up for needed power capacity.

That fact that hydro is subsidized so little compared to bloody biomass and biofuels is a joke. Nevermind solar & wind.

Good lord we are stupid.

[Street Pharmacist]

Originally Posted by Azure

Wondering what the total subsidy amount is.

And where hydro is on this list.

But this is wild. And a complete bloody waste of taxpayer money to spend so much money and get so little back on our investment.

Originally Posted by Table 5

I won't pretend to know the the intricacies of electricity markets, but I don't think you have large-scale electricity grid changes without government involvement and subsidies, no matter what energy source you try to transition to.

But if you DO have a problem with subsidies going into nuclear, then you're really going to have issues with subsidies going into renewables, as they make up the vast majority of subsidies (and in the US have doubled since 2016).



You want cheap energy? Well then you better stick to hydrocarbons, because they are abundant and energy-dense. There's a reason why developing countries rely on coal first.

You want clean energy, that's also cheap? Well that's just not going happen considering the poorer energy density and added complexity. If we're adamant that we're going to transition, then somebody has to pay for that difference, and it's going to be the end-user/tax-payer.

Nuclear isn't cheap, and we won't build more without subsidies, but it still provides the most energy-dense option amongst the renewable options. It also happens to be great for baseload energy, is safe and reliable, and is not reliant on geography to work. If we're going all in the transition, it needs to not only be a part of the mix, I think it needs to lead the way.

So these numbers don't really add up. Is this American or Canadian data?

[SeeGeeWhy]

Originally Posted by Table 5

I know SMR's are the hot thing to talk about, and I think more exploration/research makes sense, but I wish Alberta (and Canada in general) would just forge ahead with a large scale plant design that is already existing and proven first. The biggest impediment to nuclear is the time it takes for permitting and regulations, so the more efficient we can make the process the better. There are 60 reactors under construction around the world (and 110 planned)...it would probably be most efficient to pick whatever design we think works best/safest from S.Korea or France etc, and go forward with that. A 1 Gigawatt reactor can power about 750,000 homes (and most large scale plants range from 1-7 Gigawatts). Let's build one around Calgary and one around Edmonton, and we should be sitting pretty for decades while the SMR stuff figures itself out.

I agree that large nuclear should continue to be supported, but Alberta is not well suited for GW scale plants the way somewhere like Ontario is. The already proven CANDU EC6 would be an excellent choice for Alberta, for instance. What OPG and Capital Power are talking about is a 300MWe design from GE-Hitachi called the BWRX-300, and would be one of dozens of such reactors being delivered as part of an expansion strategy that OPG has been quietly assembling for years. Darlington, Saskatchewan (likely Estevan area), and Poland have committed to ~90 units in total, Alberta would be added to that list.

Keep in mind that the last time Alberta got into heavy petting stages with a nuclear build, it was for TWO twin ACRs. The ACR has a design output of 1,100MWe per reactor, so it would have added 4,400MWe to the grid at a time when the grid was about 8,000MWe, did not have meaningful interconnection between the north and south, did not have a meaningful amount of gas fired cogeneration being supplied by SAGD sites, was at a time when AECO gas prices touched $12/GJ, and carbon pricing was an itch in Gilbo's greasy nutsack. Things are very different today.

That project stopped because AESO could not wrap it's head around how to maintain uptime in the event the system lost 1.1GWe due to a trip event or whatever reason. They asked if the capacity could be built in smaller bites, but AECL was not in the business of selling it's smaller capacity designs at the time, so it all went away.

Now we have a 12 GW demand peak, and ironically 4.5GW of nameplate wind that can at any time (typically the WORST times), crap out and provide exactly zero. Single 50-100MWe installations do not receive the amount of reliability scrutiny that a single GWe plant would (reasonably so), but here we are with a system that behaves as if we have a jittery nuke plant because of the amount of VRE and the nature that VRE experiences common mode failures (both predictable and random), and therefore do not provide inherent redundancy or resilience.

If you believe in the future of electrification (EVs, Heat pumps, BES back up), this would add roughly 25GWe in new demand to our profile. Even MORE if you believe what Shell and others believed at the time of the Lac Cardinal project about electric based production of bitumen resource from carbonate formations. Even MORE if you believe there is a future in providing excess export capacity for Western Grid Regions more broadly. And if you believe in all of that and are willing to pre-invest, then sure, go for the GW scale builds.

Personally, I don't think it's a bad idea to let the government and local talent develop with smaller projects to begin with. I'm not saying AB will NEVER see GW scale plants built, but it would surprise me.

This is not including the potential for high temperature SMRs to be co-located with major heat consumers in the province. Remember, only 7% of our total energy consumption is in the form of electricity. We have a WAY bigger project on our hands in addressing how to make our thermal demand and our energetic substitution demand more sustainable. The only viable way I see to do this is with fission heat. While the OPG-CP announcement about the BWRX will not address this need directly, it will lay a lot of foundation towards taking on that much larger task.

Originally Posted by opendoor

Alberta would likely have to change the whole electricity market for nuclear to work. As far as I'm aware, there are essentially zero examples worldwide of nuclear being built in a deregulated market, as its viability normally depends on state-run or heavily regulated utilities setting prices.

In an open market, nuclear can't compete at current energy prices. That's why the US government is spending billions of dollars every year to subsidize plants in deregulated markets so they can stay open. And those are existing plants which have already incurred the capital costs of construction. The math gets even tougher with new plants.

There's a lot to say about this topic for sure, and I would expect changes in Alberta to come if it happens. But the fact is that jurisdictions with significant contributions from fission enjoy some of the lowest and most stable total delivered system prices to end users; and in comparison, there are NO markets with significant contributions from VRE that enjoy low or stable prices. Hydro is the exception. Nuclear is basically hydro for places that have no water, with far less environmental footprint.

IMO delivered costs to end users are the only numbers that actually matter. Everything else is subject to deep biases being promoted, and homie don't play that.

Originally Posted by Fuzz

Didn't Canada once have a government owned research arm for nuclear? What happened to that?

AECL shut down Whiteshell in Manitoba in 1996, but bundled Chalk River in the IP deal it made with SNC-Lavalin under Harper around 2014. CNL continues to operate Chalk River and several other smaller facilities under their operating agreement.

[Street Pharmacist]

Originally Posted by Table 5

The EIA (US Dept of Energy) report is here if anyone wants to dive deeper into the data, however Azure, to answer your question, total subsidies to renewable were $15.6 Billion in 2022. $41M of that went to hydro.

Chart based on that data that shows Renewable energy subsidies by type:

Spoiler!

Another chart that shows subsidies per unit of production (ie $/megawatt hour). Solar generation was subsidized 76 times more, and wind 17 more, than nuclear electricity production on a unit-of-production basis.

Spoiler!

Keep in mind this was only one year (2022) and only Federal subsidies... so no state or local, and it does not include the mother of all American subsidies that was enacted in late 2022...the Inflation Reduction (lol) Act, that is directing about $400 Billion towards "clean energy". Although this does now at least include nuclear.

Take from it what you will, but either way, plenty o' subsidies to go around!

This is the trouble with this kind of argument is that it's far more complex and is missing a lot of context. For example, is it a subsidy if the government in Georgia allowed the Georgia power company to collect $3.8B from rate payers to fund the construction of vogtle? The rate payers can't opt out or choose another supplier. If you live there, you paid for it for over a decade before the reactors were finished. Or the $12B in Federal loan guarantees that are highly unlikely to be paid back for that one plant? Or the $6B in funding to be given to nuclear plants that are uneconomic as part of the Civil Nuclear Credit Program?

Is it fair to compare renewables production tax credits to gas electricity generation but ignore subsidies for the actual production of the gas? That's just silly

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by Azure

Wondering what the total subsidy amount is.

And where hydro is on this list.

But this is wild. And a complete bloody waste of taxpayer money to spend so much money and get so little back on our investment.

Hydro projects are pretty heavily subsidized by government, I think. I assume site C and the Newfoundland projects are getting a lot of taxpayer support. Or am I wrong on that?

[accord1999]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

Hydro projects are pretty heavily subsidized by government, I think. I assume site C and the Newfoundland projects are getting a lot of taxpayer support. Or am I wrong on that?

Might not be direct government support at the start but with the project owners being publicly owned utilities, creditors are likely loaning them money at lower cost because they expect governments to bail them out and/or allow rate hikes if necessary (like what happened for the project in Newfoundland).

[DoubleK]

Originally Posted by SeeGeeWhy

That project stopped because AESO could not wrap it's head around how to maintain uptime in the event the system lost 1.1GWe due to a trip event or whatever reason. They asked if the capacity could be built in smaller bites, but AECL was not in the business of selling it's smaller capacity designs at the time, so it all went away.

You seem to imply that the AESO was acting poorly. Is that what you intended?

[DoubleK]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

Hydro projects are pretty heavily subsidized by government, I think. I assume site C and the Newfoundland projects are getting a lot of taxpayer support. Or am I wrong on that?

It's hard to view that through an Alberta lens. The province does the generation planning in both those places, but not in Alberta.

[Street Pharmacist]

Originally Posted by SeeGeeWhy

If you believe in the future of electrification (EVs, Heat pumps, BES back up), this would add roughly 25GWe in new demand to our profile. Even MORE if you believe what Shell and others believed at the time of the Lac Cardinal project about electric based production of bitumen resource from carbonate formations. Even MORE if you believe there is a future in providing excess export capacity for Western Grid Regions more broadly. And if you believe in all of that and are willing to pre-invest, then sure, go for the GW scale builds.

Considering most of Alberta's load is industrial I don't see electrification of households tripling demand. AESO certainly doesn't in any of their projections even with high electrification scenarios.

Personally, I don't think it's a bad idea to let the government and local talent develop with smaller projects to begin with. I'm not saying AB will NEVER see GW scale plants built, but it would surprise me.


This is not including the potential for high temperature SMRs to be co-located with major heat consumers in the province. Remember, only 7% of our total energy consumption is in the form of electricity. We have a WAY bigger project on our hands in addressing how to make our thermal demand and our energetic substitution demand more sustainable. The only viable way I see to do this is with fission heat. While the OPG-CP announcement about the BWRX will not address this need directly, it will lay a lot of foundation towards taking on that much larger task.

There are really 3 types of heat needed. 1) low heat like space heating and food processing w) medium heat for industrial, and 3) high heat for industrial like you mention. I think new thermal storage technologies will solve 1&2 pretty well and very cheaply. High heat will be difficult and will probably be a good use for hydrogen.
Nuclear for thermal would be an excellent option as a byproduct of generation

There's a lot to say about this topic for sure, and I would expect changes in Alberta to come if it happens. But the fact is that jurisdictions with significant contributions from fission enjoy some of the lowest and most stable total delivered system prices to end users; and in comparison, there are NO markets with significant contributions from VRE that enjoy low or stable prices. Hydro is the exception. Nuclear is basically hydro for places that have no water, with far less environmental footprint.



IMO delivered costs to end users are the only numbers that actually matter. Everything else is subject to deep biases being promoted, and homie don't play that.

I think this is really the problem with nuclear though, but we've had this discussion before and really it boils down to how you determine final delivered costs. All else being equal, nuclear is a great option for firm power.

[Azure]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

Hydro projects are pretty heavily subsidized by government, I think. I assume site C and the Newfoundland projects are getting a lot of taxpayer support. Or am I wrong on that?

I would assume that they are.

I know here in Manitoba, Keeysak cost $8.7 billion + to build which is about $2-3 billion over original estimates. COVID and other things created an issue.

695-megawatt station producing 4,400 gigawatt hours a year.

Quick search.

In 2022, hydroelectricity systems had an average installation cost of 2,881 U.S. dollars per kilowatt installed.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/...allation-cost/

If we go by industry average, it should have cost $3 billion, so only 3x more expensive than industry average.

But curious what the cost is compared to other solutions.

Pretty sure the hydro cost per MhW is less than most other renewables.

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by Azure

I would assume that they are.

I know here in Manitoba, Keeysak cost $8.7 billion + to build which is about $2-3 billion over original estimates. COVID and other things created an issue.

695-megawatt station producing 4,400 gigawatt hours a year.

Quick search.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/...allation-cost/

If we go by industry average, it should have cost $3 billion, so only 3x more expensive than industry average.

But curious what the cost is compared to other solutions.

Pretty sure the hydro cost per MhW is less than most other renewables.

Data table here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_o...city_by_source