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Prioritizing nuclear power and natural gas over renewable energy is a risky move for Ontario’s energy future.

theconversation.com Prioritizing nuclear power and natural gas over renewable energy is a risky move for Ontario’s energy future

The Ontario government’s new policy directive to allow bids from natural gas and nuclear energy may hinder the province’s ability to transition to a cleaner and more sustainable energy future.

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Prioritizing natural gas is risky. Prioritizing nuclear power, not so much.
Even hydroelectric is more risky than nuclear. And in an era of climate change, inconsistent weather can bring inconsistent rainfall. There might come a time when reservoirs simply don’t stay full enough to generate electricity. And yes, while Nuclear power requires water to cool, this water can also be recycled through cooling towers. You don’t need massive bodies of water for nuclear power.
And what hydroelectric, solar, and wind power do, is make electrical systems resilient. Solar power in particular, tends to peak at about the same time that maximum power is needed for air conditioning during the summertime. And the right kind of nuclear reactor can be throttled up and down quite quickly in response to varying demands on the electrical system. If everyone pumping solar power back onto the grid, nuclear power can come to an almost complete standstill in only a matter of minutes. You can’t do that with traditional fossil fuel power plants.
- I totally agree with this comment, a mixture of different energy generation is the most resilient way to future proof a grid. There is no one way that is better than all the rest, adding nuclear and hydro to solar and wind will basically compliment each other extremely well, leading to clean reliable energy
- The risk with nuclear isn’t safety, it’s in the cost overruns and ever expanding build timelines. When it at best takes ten years and twice the funding to match what battery backed solar can do in six months, there is significantly more time for things like inflation and fossil fuel funded lawsuits to turn what is already a questionably profitable investment into a significant loss.
  When the primary thing limiting the energy transition is lack of funding, it makes sense to foucus said funding on renewables which can be built cheaply and quickly over more expensive and slower build methods like Nuclear, conventional Hydro, and deep Geothermal.
  
  I'm not sure it's quite so simple. A modem nuclear plant can run at 80-90% capacity and have an output of 1200MW. How many acres of solar panels are needed to achieve that power output, and how big would the energy storage systems be? Of course you can build solar distributed, but I think I recall equivalent area of solar panels for one modern nuclear plant is on the order of 10000s of acres. Building that with appropriate batteries and hooking it up could easily take a decade or more.
  Anyway we should never aim to put all of our energy generation eggs in one basket. The technologies are complementary and diversity is a key principle of integrity and reliability of the supply.

6 comments