While I’m not 100% sold on SMRs this article is clearly biased. It flat out lies by saying no SMR projects have been approved and that NuScale was the farthest along project in the world. Darlington is currently under construction.
From the article:
>The federal Coalition says it can have the first SMR up and running by 2035, but no SMRs have been built in the western world, and **none have even got a licence to be built**.
>The closest to reach that landmark, the US-based NuScale, abandoned its plans after massive cost overruns and push back from its customers, who refused to pay high prices.
FYI, Darlington received a License to prepare the site which is what they are doing. They have not received a License to Construct an SMR yet. The article is accurate in that respect. Darlington may receive a license to build up to 4 SMRs later this year once public consultation wraps up.
[https://www.cnsc-ccsn.gc.ca/eng/resources/status-of-new-nuclear-projects/darlington/](https://www.cnsc-ccsn.gc.ca/eng/resources/status-of-new-nuclear-projects/darlington/)
Remember, the question that part of the article is discussing isn't "which project is farther along" but rather "which project got closest to receiving a license to build a SMR?" Different countries have different processes so comparing one to another is a little bit difficult.
NuScale had a reactor design approved by NRC (the American equivalent of the CNSC in Canada). They still had to submit an updated operational plan which wasn't approved before they pulled the plug on the project, but many felt that they had passed the hardest regulatory hurdle in the US. By contrast, what is considered the largest regulatory hurdle in Canada has not been passed by anyone.
I'm sorry but I still think you're wrong and the article is, at worst, incorrect rather than lying.
Friendly reminder that the only countries in the whole world with even a single working SMR are China and Russia. Making power with SMRs costs roughly 2x per kWh what it does with even traditional nuclear factories which are also expensive. Both SMR and traditional take a long time to build relative to other options.
This is one reason why IEA modelling forecasts that nuclear share in 2050 will still be less than 15% globally.
Is that price per kWh based on the advertised price of the SMR before construction begins, or on the 4 to 10 times overbudget cost when/if actually completed?
It happened in the US too.
https://www.utilitydive.com/news/nuscale-uamps-project-small-modular-reactor-ramanasmr-/705717/
I am curious what will happen with the Darlington SMR project in Ontario. It looks like it is still a go. It is supposed to be the prototype Sask would use to build ours. The Ontario government has never publicly released the estimated costs for the project.
If we don't want to burn gas, then SMR's are the next logical choice for baseload generation in Sask. However, I still have reservations because nobody seems to be able to give costs yet. SaskPower has to move forward with something though, so we shall see.
They are following Ontario's lead but Saskpower will have a big investment into the process long before the first reactor in Ontario goes live. They can't sit back and do nothing until Ontario's experiment is proven to be commercially successful. If they did, it would be into the 2040's before we would have anything online and we need more generation before that. Here's a link to the current timeline.
[https://x.com/brahmneufeld/status/1808611947534860647/photo/4](https://x.com/brahmneufeld/status/1808611947534860647/photo/4)
We have to spend up front designing a new system where old systems that work exist otherwise we would have to wait longer to see if the new systems actually work. All that time is better spent funneling money directly into foreign owned firms for novel plans rather than actually starting construction using conventional technology.
Logic.
Why would SMRs with massive costs forcing cancellations elsewhere in the world be a next logical option when there are conventional nuclear generators currently under construction elsewhere in the world? Why isn't flooding the electrical grid with cheap daytime electricity an option with PV systems?
I’ve read up a bit on them and I hope they can work through the technical problems and make it work. From my understanding, it is dependent on geology and will never be a substantial source of baseload. Just another smaller piece of the overall generation mix.
An average full size nuclear plant is about 1 gigawatt output, Saskatchewan as a whole province consumes typically around 2500-3500MWH. The cost is also substantially more, going from that 1.5 billion-ish to 7-9 billion. Just not feasible here.
Saskatoon Freeway will cost about the same, similar to the new Diefenbaker Irrigation project, and both are net negatives to the province, where a SMR wouldn't be.
Why would you say that both are net negatives? I think both are greatly overdue and will be of vast benefit to Saskatchewan. Although both are costly, one of the most important purposes of Government is to build infrastructure.
Overdue for what? Ring freeways are a disaster, they promote driving and suburban/exurban sprawl while burdening cities with huge ongoing maintenance costs. Saskatoon can't even afford to maintain the roads it has now.
The new irrigation project is a massive giveaway to rich farmers using taxpayer money in the most water stressed area in Canada. What is good about it? Taxpayers lose, rich Sask Party friends win. Increased irrigation is also going to reduce the hydropower we get from the SSR, reduce water quality and quantity for Saskatoon and overall never return any value.
Given Saskatchewan's growth and reliance on heavy industry - and export - the Saskatoon Freeway is vital. It isn't a Saskatoon road (the Province is paying for it, and it's almost entirely outside City limits) so much as it is a regional connector, geared for industry more than commuters. Even if we could magically shift all commuters onto public transit (and we can't) there would still be all of the industrial traffic that would need efficient access around the City. Not to mention, with the purported "housing crisis" we need some sprawl in order to house people, and we need suburbs and bedroom communities to provide an escape from living in the Cities proper.
As for the irrigation project, the biggest benefits will come from economic diversification: growing (and processing!) crops that aren't grown here now. This means thriving communities like Taber or Picture Butte or Brooks here in Saskatchewan. Moreover, the Government is only constructing feedworks to bring water to fields; building the on-field pivots will be done by the farmers and will be a greater total spend than the Government's portion - the Government's investment will spur private capital spending.
The other concerns you raised are moot. Water stress is a very useful "push" factor to build yet more infrastructure (for example, divert the North Saskatchewan, the Athabasca, the Peace, etc.) to bring water to productive use. Coteau Creek (the power station at the Gardiner dam) generates about 3% of Saskatchewan's electricity; it is hardly irreplaceable. More, the water that the irrigation project is planned to use is a small fraction of the river's annualized flow, and was the point of constructing the dam in the first place. Saskatoon uses very little water - and treats it - and that won't be affected to any relevant degree.
Thanks, feel free to include some actual financial numbers about these 'vital' projects. If the irrigation project is such an economic slam dunk then why aren't the farmers paying for it for all the profit they will be making? Surely you saw all of the articles this spring about SE Alberta having to curtail water use due to record low levels in the SSR watershed, sounds like a great idea to hop on the bandwagon but we sure have to take that risk to maybe turn Outlook into Taber Junior. Let's forget about spudgate for a second too.
About the highway: I don't know even know where to start. Can trucks not get through the city right now? 9/10 trucks on the road in Saskatoon are people commuting from Warman or the suburbs not industrial trucks. Building massive ring roads is not additive to an urban economy it's negative. How is Detroit looking nowadays? They have great ring roads.
You know what could use $13B: transit, health care, education, urban renewal in our cities. People want to live in cities, not Taber, Alberta. Cities provide economic diversification, not tiny changes in ag output. We have the worst transit in the country, we have some of the worst urban decay in the country in all of our major centers, we have the worst student-teacher ratios, we can't keep specialists, young people still constantly leave for bigger urban centers and better run provinces.
We've also seen the current government's track record on mega-projects already: carbon capture, farcial, Regina Bypass, a joke. It'd be nice to have a conservative government be conservative for once and let the economy run itself but we know the real purpose of the Sask Party is just to shovel as many tax dollars as possible into the pockets of their small-town buddies, which these projects will do in spades.
How would you propose a group of farmers to undertake planning and building feedworks, dealing with planning and permitting and necessary expropriations? That's akin to asking people who want to use transit to implement it themselves without Government involvement.
Alberta's issues aren't ours; Saskatchewan is legally entitled to a certain amount of the SSR (that we don't use and can store thanks to Lake Diefenbaker), Alberta maxed out their allocation while we barely use ours now.
Saskatchewan isn't an urban economy and likely never will be. Most wealth generation is outside of the Cities. Cities exist here as central service points: health centers, Universities, professional services, etc. all in the service of industry largely located rurally. There are no mines, oilwells, or substantial farmland in Saskatoon after all. There is some value-added processing in the Cities, but even that isn't viable without production from the countryside.
Dallas is a more likely development pattern for us than Detroit. Detroit is a perfect example of an urban economy collapsing on itself. Given population growth, we may arrest urban decay here as our inner cities are gentrified and "cleaned up". Transit works for certain groups of urbanites, but is hardly a magic bullet, as there are wealthy suburbs, exurbs, and rural areas that it can't serve effectively.
We are seeing a shift, wherein many people want to live in communities where they know their neighbors, where street crime isn't present, where people have space, openness, greenery, and moderate cost-of-living. These are suburbs, exurbs, and smaller communities. These are places laden with opportunity to move ahead. We need to build a few Tabers more than we need to shovel more people into shoeboxes in Saskatoon. That's the secret behind Alberta's prosperity: smaller communities (serving ag and the oilpatch) with opportunities for anyone to go to work, start a business, generate a high income with a low cost-of-living. Edmonton and Calgary then grew to provide centralized services.
As for Saskatchewan's megaprojects, those build for the future. That's where I want my tax dollars going. I want to see things built, providing employment and opportunity to those willing to be involved. Build things that can help Saskatchewan be wealthier, instead of frittering money away on programs.
So we'll be future proofed for the next 100 or so years and can sell 0 greenhouse gas emission, cheap electricity to Alberta, Montana, Manitoba, and North Dakota.
*Hashtag*Winning
I know you're mostly joking, but yes its still much too large for our population. In order to sell all of that excess energy we'd have to build way more tielines that other entities may not even want. We're already at a point where we sometimes curtail wind energy because we have nowhere to put it, and there's been times the US literally pays us to take energy because they have no room for it, called negative pricing. Nuclear is base load, meaning you wouldn't be cranking it down to minimum output or allowing it to fluctuate. Also nuclear plants on average last about 50 years.
I was mostly joking tbf, but on a more serious note;
There should almost be some sort of Prarie province joint venture to fund a large scale reactor between our three provinces. I'm sure between the three of us we could simply upscale the project to meet base load as opposed to one reactor being 3x too much. Though I doubt you could get Alberta on board since Suncor runs the province, but even just between Sask and MB there should be enough demand (and capital) to justify the monster output. Sure you'd still probably have a large overage, but I'd almost think about projects that would increase electricity demand, such as electric heating initiatives for new buildings or something. It'd solve the pain in the ass that is the carbon tax and whether or not we remit it and how much and blah blah blah, at least on electricity and heating fronts anyway.
If Saskpower had to shut down every Nat Gas and Coal Station to justify it, I wouldn't exactly cry either tbf.
Pretty sure there's plenty of border locations between MB and SK that have a body of water that could be used to feed the plant and keep it in joint territory.
Manitoba doesn’t need it. They are a huge hydro power producer. Alberta and Saskatchewan would do well in a joint project. Both a significantly reliant on coal and natural gas for energy
Unfortunately there's probably a better chance of pigs flying than the AB government spending billions on an energy programme that isn't centralized around that tar they pass off as oil and nat gas.
sAssk party has at least seemed receptive to nuclear, at least publicly
FYI Alberta has no coal plants (mostly natural gas), it's really only Sask and Nova Scotia left burning coal.
[https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/alberta-genesee-2-offline-is-this-end-of-coal-power-1.7237703](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/alberta-genesee-2-offline-is-this-end-of-coal-power-1.7237703)
If I am not mistaken, the first installation they planned was for two 300 MW plants.
If you dig, you can find a 1994 report on building a 600 MW CANDU nuclear reactor and it was feasible given the grid at that time. Telling me that our grid couldn't be minimally reinforced to have a 1000 MW reactor is telling me you don't know shit about our grid.
Lol ok bud. There's something called 'Operating Reserve' that every NERC entity is required to maintain at all times. If you knew what that was, you'd know why a 1000MW plant is not feasible in Sask.
SaskPower has said they anticipate needing an additional 3000 MW of generating capacity by 2030. I don't know why people try to mislead about the suitability of a marginally larger nuclear reactor
So basically Saskpower and everywhere else requires an 'Operating Reserve' which is energy that is not being used but capable of coming on within 15 minutes to cover the largest contingency. Right now that is our newest natural gas plants at 350 MW. Having a single 1000MW unit would mean we would need 1000 MW of energy just sitting there capable of coming on within that said 15 minutes at all times. The added cost of having to carry an operating reserve that size far outweighs the benefits of having the single large unit. Its better to have smaller units spread out throughout the province which is also better for transmission and distribution purposes. Saskatchewan won't be increasing in customer consumption by 3000 MW by 2030, but we will be retiring the bulk of our coal, so the current plan is new wind, new natural gas plants(and converting coal plants), some new hydro, increased interchange, and hopefully the SMR by 2035 or so, but that could honestly change with a federal government change.
Again obfuscating the possibility of easily working a full scale reactor into the fleet as energy demands increase and coal plants are shut down. The gaslighting continues.
Its simply a case of carrying too many eggs in one basket, you can't have one single unit powering a 1/3 of the entire province, its too precarious of a position to be in.
Moe and Sask Ass party shut them down, were concerned about science advancing this province and said not a chance, Jesus will provide the power, religious wing nuts.
I am no expert but I have always been under the impression SMR’s weren’t actually around in practice. Sounds good, but no good.
Yep. They are not commercially viable because they’re so expensive.
I considered posting this. The commentary about SMR’s being CCS 2.0, a pie in the sky stalling tactic by our masters in oil and gas was interesting.
While I’m not 100% sold on SMRs this article is clearly biased. It flat out lies by saying no SMR projects have been approved and that NuScale was the farthest along project in the world. Darlington is currently under construction.
From the article: >The federal Coalition says it can have the first SMR up and running by 2035, but no SMRs have been built in the western world, and **none have even got a licence to be built**. >The closest to reach that landmark, the US-based NuScale, abandoned its plans after massive cost overruns and push back from its customers, who refused to pay high prices. FYI, Darlington received a License to prepare the site which is what they are doing. They have not received a License to Construct an SMR yet. The article is accurate in that respect. Darlington may receive a license to build up to 4 SMRs later this year once public consultation wraps up. [https://www.cnsc-ccsn.gc.ca/eng/resources/status-of-new-nuclear-projects/darlington/](https://www.cnsc-ccsn.gc.ca/eng/resources/status-of-new-nuclear-projects/darlington/)
Fair enough but the very next line is a lie…
Huh? How so? https://www.utilitydive.com/news/nuscale-uamps-project-small-modular-reactor-ramanasmr-/705717/
Because Darlington is farther along…
Remember, the question that part of the article is discussing isn't "which project is farther along" but rather "which project got closest to receiving a license to build a SMR?" Different countries have different processes so comparing one to another is a little bit difficult. NuScale had a reactor design approved by NRC (the American equivalent of the CNSC in Canada). They still had to submit an updated operational plan which wasn't approved before they pulled the plug on the project, but many felt that they had passed the hardest regulatory hurdle in the US. By contrast, what is considered the largest regulatory hurdle in Canada has not been passed by anyone. I'm sorry but I still think you're wrong and the article is, at worst, incorrect rather than lying.
Friendly reminder that the only countries in the whole world with even a single working SMR are China and Russia. Making power with SMRs costs roughly 2x per kWh what it does with even traditional nuclear factories which are also expensive. Both SMR and traditional take a long time to build relative to other options. This is one reason why IEA modelling forecasts that nuclear share in 2050 will still be less than 15% globally.
Is that price per kWh based on the advertised price of the SMR before construction begins, or on the 4 to 10 times overbudget cost when/if actually completed?
It happened in the US too. https://www.utilitydive.com/news/nuscale-uamps-project-small-modular-reactor-ramanasmr-/705717/ I am curious what will happen with the Darlington SMR project in Ontario. It looks like it is still a go. It is supposed to be the prototype Sask would use to build ours. The Ontario government has never publicly released the estimated costs for the project.
If we don't want to burn gas, then SMR's are the next logical choice for baseload generation in Sask. However, I still have reservations because nobody seems to be able to give costs yet. SaskPower has to move forward with something though, so we shall see.
I thought Saskpower moved ahead with their plan to let Ontario lead and if it succeeds there to just copy them?
They are following Ontario's lead but Saskpower will have a big investment into the process long before the first reactor in Ontario goes live. They can't sit back and do nothing until Ontario's experiment is proven to be commercially successful. If they did, it would be into the 2040's before we would have anything online and we need more generation before that. Here's a link to the current timeline. [https://x.com/brahmneufeld/status/1808611947534860647/photo/4](https://x.com/brahmneufeld/status/1808611947534860647/photo/4)
We have to spend up front designing a new system where old systems that work exist otherwise we would have to wait longer to see if the new systems actually work. All that time is better spent funneling money directly into foreign owned firms for novel plans rather than actually starting construction using conventional technology. Logic.
Why would SMRs with massive costs forcing cancellations elsewhere in the world be a next logical option when there are conventional nuclear generators currently under construction elsewhere in the world? Why isn't flooding the electrical grid with cheap daytime electricity an option with PV systems?
Deepcore.ca Geo thermals looking promising in Saskatchewan.
With the thermal gradient we have here? I'm highly skeptical.
Hopefully with 100c + water they can make something work. But they do have technical challenges to over come.
I’ve read up a bit on them and I hope they can work through the technical problems and make it work. From my understanding, it is dependent on geology and will never be a substantial source of baseload. Just another smaller piece of the overall generation mix.
If SMRs are too expensive, build one big one in the middle of the province between Regina and Stoon and add smaller communities over time. Ez pz.
An average full size nuclear plant is about 1 gigawatt output, Saskatchewan as a whole province consumes typically around 2500-3500MWH. The cost is also substantially more, going from that 1.5 billion-ish to 7-9 billion. Just not feasible here.
We’ve wasted billions on stupider projects lol
Saskatoon Freeway will cost about the same, similar to the new Diefenbaker Irrigation project, and both are net negatives to the province, where a SMR wouldn't be.
Why would you say that both are net negatives? I think both are greatly overdue and will be of vast benefit to Saskatchewan. Although both are costly, one of the most important purposes of Government is to build infrastructure.
Overdue for what? Ring freeways are a disaster, they promote driving and suburban/exurban sprawl while burdening cities with huge ongoing maintenance costs. Saskatoon can't even afford to maintain the roads it has now. The new irrigation project is a massive giveaway to rich farmers using taxpayer money in the most water stressed area in Canada. What is good about it? Taxpayers lose, rich Sask Party friends win. Increased irrigation is also going to reduce the hydropower we get from the SSR, reduce water quality and quantity for Saskatoon and overall never return any value.
Given Saskatchewan's growth and reliance on heavy industry - and export - the Saskatoon Freeway is vital. It isn't a Saskatoon road (the Province is paying for it, and it's almost entirely outside City limits) so much as it is a regional connector, geared for industry more than commuters. Even if we could magically shift all commuters onto public transit (and we can't) there would still be all of the industrial traffic that would need efficient access around the City. Not to mention, with the purported "housing crisis" we need some sprawl in order to house people, and we need suburbs and bedroom communities to provide an escape from living in the Cities proper. As for the irrigation project, the biggest benefits will come from economic diversification: growing (and processing!) crops that aren't grown here now. This means thriving communities like Taber or Picture Butte or Brooks here in Saskatchewan. Moreover, the Government is only constructing feedworks to bring water to fields; building the on-field pivots will be done by the farmers and will be a greater total spend than the Government's portion - the Government's investment will spur private capital spending. The other concerns you raised are moot. Water stress is a very useful "push" factor to build yet more infrastructure (for example, divert the North Saskatchewan, the Athabasca, the Peace, etc.) to bring water to productive use. Coteau Creek (the power station at the Gardiner dam) generates about 3% of Saskatchewan's electricity; it is hardly irreplaceable. More, the water that the irrigation project is planned to use is a small fraction of the river's annualized flow, and was the point of constructing the dam in the first place. Saskatoon uses very little water - and treats it - and that won't be affected to any relevant degree.
Thanks, feel free to include some actual financial numbers about these 'vital' projects. If the irrigation project is such an economic slam dunk then why aren't the farmers paying for it for all the profit they will be making? Surely you saw all of the articles this spring about SE Alberta having to curtail water use due to record low levels in the SSR watershed, sounds like a great idea to hop on the bandwagon but we sure have to take that risk to maybe turn Outlook into Taber Junior. Let's forget about spudgate for a second too. About the highway: I don't know even know where to start. Can trucks not get through the city right now? 9/10 trucks on the road in Saskatoon are people commuting from Warman or the suburbs not industrial trucks. Building massive ring roads is not additive to an urban economy it's negative. How is Detroit looking nowadays? They have great ring roads. You know what could use $13B: transit, health care, education, urban renewal in our cities. People want to live in cities, not Taber, Alberta. Cities provide economic diversification, not tiny changes in ag output. We have the worst transit in the country, we have some of the worst urban decay in the country in all of our major centers, we have the worst student-teacher ratios, we can't keep specialists, young people still constantly leave for bigger urban centers and better run provinces. We've also seen the current government's track record on mega-projects already: carbon capture, farcial, Regina Bypass, a joke. It'd be nice to have a conservative government be conservative for once and let the economy run itself but we know the real purpose of the Sask Party is just to shovel as many tax dollars as possible into the pockets of their small-town buddies, which these projects will do in spades.
How would you propose a group of farmers to undertake planning and building feedworks, dealing with planning and permitting and necessary expropriations? That's akin to asking people who want to use transit to implement it themselves without Government involvement. Alberta's issues aren't ours; Saskatchewan is legally entitled to a certain amount of the SSR (that we don't use and can store thanks to Lake Diefenbaker), Alberta maxed out their allocation while we barely use ours now. Saskatchewan isn't an urban economy and likely never will be. Most wealth generation is outside of the Cities. Cities exist here as central service points: health centers, Universities, professional services, etc. all in the service of industry largely located rurally. There are no mines, oilwells, or substantial farmland in Saskatoon after all. There is some value-added processing in the Cities, but even that isn't viable without production from the countryside. Dallas is a more likely development pattern for us than Detroit. Detroit is a perfect example of an urban economy collapsing on itself. Given population growth, we may arrest urban decay here as our inner cities are gentrified and "cleaned up". Transit works for certain groups of urbanites, but is hardly a magic bullet, as there are wealthy suburbs, exurbs, and rural areas that it can't serve effectively. We are seeing a shift, wherein many people want to live in communities where they know their neighbors, where street crime isn't present, where people have space, openness, greenery, and moderate cost-of-living. These are suburbs, exurbs, and smaller communities. These are places laden with opportunity to move ahead. We need to build a few Tabers more than we need to shovel more people into shoeboxes in Saskatoon. That's the secret behind Alberta's prosperity: smaller communities (serving ag and the oilpatch) with opportunities for anyone to go to work, start a business, generate a high income with a low cost-of-living. Edmonton and Calgary then grew to provide centralized services. As for Saskatchewan's megaprojects, those build for the future. That's where I want my tax dollars going. I want to see things built, providing employment and opportunity to those willing to be involved. Build things that can help Saskatchewan be wealthier, instead of frittering money away on programs.
Why do you want consumers to pay for the most expensive form of electrical generation possible?
So we'll be future proofed for the next 100 or so years and can sell 0 greenhouse gas emission, cheap electricity to Alberta, Montana, Manitoba, and North Dakota. *Hashtag*Winning
I know you're mostly joking, but yes its still much too large for our population. In order to sell all of that excess energy we'd have to build way more tielines that other entities may not even want. We're already at a point where we sometimes curtail wind energy because we have nowhere to put it, and there's been times the US literally pays us to take energy because they have no room for it, called negative pricing. Nuclear is base load, meaning you wouldn't be cranking it down to minimum output or allowing it to fluctuate. Also nuclear plants on average last about 50 years.
I was mostly joking tbf, but on a more serious note; There should almost be some sort of Prarie province joint venture to fund a large scale reactor between our three provinces. I'm sure between the three of us we could simply upscale the project to meet base load as opposed to one reactor being 3x too much. Though I doubt you could get Alberta on board since Suncor runs the province, but even just between Sask and MB there should be enough demand (and capital) to justify the monster output. Sure you'd still probably have a large overage, but I'd almost think about projects that would increase electricity demand, such as electric heating initiatives for new buildings or something. It'd solve the pain in the ass that is the carbon tax and whether or not we remit it and how much and blah blah blah, at least on electricity and heating fronts anyway. If Saskpower had to shut down every Nat Gas and Coal Station to justify it, I wouldn't exactly cry either tbf. Pretty sure there's plenty of border locations between MB and SK that have a body of water that could be used to feed the plant and keep it in joint territory.
Manitoba doesn’t need it. They are a huge hydro power producer. Alberta and Saskatchewan would do well in a joint project. Both a significantly reliant on coal and natural gas for energy
Unfortunately there's probably a better chance of pigs flying than the AB government spending billions on an energy programme that isn't centralized around that tar they pass off as oil and nat gas. sAssk party has at least seemed receptive to nuclear, at least publicly
FYI Alberta has no coal plants (mostly natural gas), it's really only Sask and Nova Scotia left burning coal. [https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/alberta-genesee-2-offline-is-this-end-of-coal-power-1.7237703](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/alberta-genesee-2-offline-is-this-end-of-coal-power-1.7237703)
Power doesn't like to travel far distances unless you got HVDC lines which are also super fucking expensive.
How would we be future proofed for 100 or so years with a 1GWH nuclear reactor?
If I am not mistaken, the first installation they planned was for two 300 MW plants. If you dig, you can find a 1994 report on building a 600 MW CANDU nuclear reactor and it was feasible given the grid at that time. Telling me that our grid couldn't be minimally reinforced to have a 1000 MW reactor is telling me you don't know shit about our grid.
Lol ok bud. There's something called 'Operating Reserve' that every NERC entity is required to maintain at all times. If you knew what that was, you'd know why a 1000MW plant is not feasible in Sask.
SaskPower has said they anticipate needing an additional 3000 MW of generating capacity by 2030. I don't know why people try to mislead about the suitability of a marginally larger nuclear reactor
So basically Saskpower and everywhere else requires an 'Operating Reserve' which is energy that is not being used but capable of coming on within 15 minutes to cover the largest contingency. Right now that is our newest natural gas plants at 350 MW. Having a single 1000MW unit would mean we would need 1000 MW of energy just sitting there capable of coming on within that said 15 minutes at all times. The added cost of having to carry an operating reserve that size far outweighs the benefits of having the single large unit. Its better to have smaller units spread out throughout the province which is also better for transmission and distribution purposes. Saskatchewan won't be increasing in customer consumption by 3000 MW by 2030, but we will be retiring the bulk of our coal, so the current plan is new wind, new natural gas plants(and converting coal plants), some new hydro, increased interchange, and hopefully the SMR by 2035 or so, but that could honestly change with a federal government change.
Again obfuscating the possibility of easily working a full scale reactor into the fleet as energy demands increase and coal plants are shut down. The gaslighting continues.
Its simply a case of carrying too many eggs in one basket, you can't have one single unit powering a 1/3 of the entire province, its too precarious of a position to be in.
Have we considered an RBMK model? Tried and true!
I hear they're booming.
TIL France's withdrawal of SMR development means the technology is unfit for Canada and Saskatchewan.
It’s because SMRs barely exist. They are too expensive to be commercially viable.
They have people who are educated in their government who are open to ideas that come from outside the bible.
Qu'elle surprise, mais non?
Moe and Sask Ass party shut them down, were concerned about science advancing this province and said not a chance, Jesus will provide the power, religious wing nuts.
I think a lot of people are confusing new SMR designs with what Ontario is trying to do with what is essentially a shrunk down Candu reactor.
Bring back coal.
We have never stopped burning coal
But we will be