for 14 million ontario people thats 1 trillion dollars buddy its not happening and we got one nuke plant perma shutting down that is 14% capacity in a few months then anoher needing that shut down for repair thats 28% of capcity offline with NOTHING to fookin replace it ford is FAIL and when people starve watch the riots
There should be no private utilities at all in Canada, especially power delivery. NS Power was sold by a conservative government and received a generous contribution to its election campaign fund. The first action was to fire all the line maintenance crews as an unacceptable cost. Now, after several hurricanes, the lack of maintenance led to massive power outages lasting weeks in some cases and Emera, the private owner that has a multimillion-dollar executive compensation fund, is charging the province for not doing the maintenance 🙄 The purpose of a utility is a service The purpose of a corporation is to make profits above everything else This is why all utilities must be publicly owned ONLY! When nsp was a crown corporation, it was really unusual for a power failure. Now, when we get weather, we assume the power will go out and wonder for how long.🤦♂️🤦🏿
Amen! Unfortunately our politicians would rather line their pockets than provide services to Canadians. We have now been sold out to the most corrupt bidder and we're all suffering for it.
We have 2 CANDU reactors in Romania, I hope that we can build 2 more in the same place (Cernavoda). It would be very little impact, Romania makes its own pellets, and already has the place set up for the two more reactors ever since they were planned in the first place, has the Danube to cool it so everything is in place to double the nuclear energy produced. Looks like things are on track and we will have that by 2030 and 2031.
It looks promising ever since they announced the refurbishment and finishing construction. I hope they succeed, it's really an interesting project that would diversify and help Romania's energy
I agree! Things are getting hot again. OPG and AR are getting ambitious. Fun fact I learned about that deal between our countries - the original deal was partially paid for with a massive shipment of Romanian jam as a barter in lieu of cash! LOL I friggen love that deal. Sheep for wood? No… Jam for Science? Yes. LOL ⚔️⚛️⚔️
@@myfirstseven Hmmm, we were part of the consortium in Canada that built the 2 Candu units for Romania. I never saw any trucks delivering jars of jam. Cold hard cash is what we got.
I attended the opening and inspection of one of the reactors with Canadian diplomats in the late 90's. Cernavoda was a world class operation back when Romania was just getting its first GSM network and I love that it has become a prime example of export nuclear done right.
they are a bit maintenance heavy to ensure that safety. plenty of areas where if things get out of spec due to poor maintenance, the safety redundancy starts to drop off a subsequent series of cliffs. that said, it would take some devastatingly inept oversight to overstep all the fail safes.
Saskatchewan should be as rich as norway, with a population of just 1M, and the worlds highest grade Uranium and Potash deposits, not to mention oil, grain, forestry, diamonds, and gold. Good to see they are accomadating the surge in demand for U308
Saskatchewan is PART OF A COUNTRY, it's just a PROVINCE... We all share and live together, OR you can try to vote for sovereignty and get swallowed up by the USA within a couple of years... Are you SURE that you aren't from Alberta??? NOBODY can survive as a country based on one or two resources.. OIL is on its way out, so Alberta is pretty dumb to think about going its own way for maybe 10 years and then have NOTHING else to sell except Beef, which the USA has plenty of... Saskatchewan is even LESS endowed with natural resources, and its grain fields are always at the mercy of the changing weather patterns... What makes CANADA, is all of its provinces (and territories) pulling together, instead of being little selfish idiots... With what is coming our way in the near future, keeping all of your local money for yourself, will just see you ALONE without a friend when you need others to share with you later on... In case you are history-ignorant, it's the EAST that built the Western provinces from scratch... You guys didn't just wake up one day in a populated prairie or West Coast... WE moved there, and WE funded it all... And frankly, there is NO WAY that a few million people can start a country now that everything is SO expensive... You'd have to sell yourselves out to get funding for infrastructure, no matter how much potash and uranium you sold, and then you'd be renting your land from a landlord... Quebec tried that idea, but we all realized that we are MUCH better off together than alone, so it didn't pass... And that was back in the 90s, when we COULD have survived on our own.. Today, we'd be eaten in a couple of years by the Americans.
@@TheJimprez I was born and raised in sask... First of all, you are way off... sask has the worlds biggest potash reserves, a critical component of fertilizer- food is pretty important these days! Also, it has the BEST grades of uranium on the planet with 1000s of lbs of reserves still in the ground. Plus vast forests, diamond, gold, and oil... did you do any research? 😂 Each province earns its own revenue which is then used for local projects and services.. just like any other jurisdiction. However, a large chunk of the revenue earned by the prosperous western provinces is then funneled to the eastern proinces (equalization payments) Alberta has the best infrastructure and services in canada by a wide margin due to its oil revenue, however it has begun to pivot to other sources. Im not sure what youre getting at. Its simple economics - if sask managed its resource extraction industries more effectively, it would benefit the citizens of that province greatly just like it did in Alberta.
Fax the government needs to nationalize these resources and stop selling them to greedy companies who dont give af abt Canada. This will also encourage newcomers to move to the prairie provinces instead of just flooding Toronto and Vancouver.
Hydroelectric is so common in Canada that in much of Canada people will call electricity "hydro", like "I have to pay my hydro bill" meaning paying the electricity bill.
I did a project on CANDU reactors in my nuclear physics course in my undergrad. It cemented my support for nuclear power. The multiple tube design of CANDU reactors was born out of industry limitations at the time. It's great technology, but there are a lot of promising alternatives today. What does concern me though is how are we going to replace our reactors that make medical isotopes? I have a friend work on an experimental particle accelerator to make them at Triumf, but that's still a long way off from replacing existing medical isotope production.
Following the closure of many isotope producing research reactors, Candu now produce a significant percentage of the world's isotopes. They will operate for many more decades post refurbishment.
Canada has started adding Thorium to their CANDU fuel. This helps bootstrap the thorium fuel cycle to supply newer designs, so CANDU has to continue until the demand for thorium is self sustaining.
I’m a Canadian so first let me apologize as I’m going to have to be a bit impolite and correct you. I’m an engineer who works in the nuclear industry in Canada so I feel I need to let everyone know that you’ve said a lot of misleading things in this video. First, you start this video out saying “Canada has taken a surprising lead in nuclear energy”. Canada has been a global leader in nuclear energy since the early 1940s so this statement makes no sense to anyone who knows the history of Canada’s nuclear industry. Second, Canada already abandoned the CANDU reactor design when it was sold off to SNC Lavalin in 2011. SNC Lavalin was involved in so many scandals for bribery it was blacklisted by the world bank for 10 years. To get away from their bad name, they just changed it to AtkinsRéalis, but a tiger can’t change its stripes. Since selling AECL’s commercial reactor division there has been very little development of the CANDU design. The “CANDU MONARK” is just an updated CANDU 6 design repackaged with a shiny new name. Third, stating that most Canadians heat their homes with electricity is not true. Most Canadians heat their homes with natural gas, oil and diesel. The exceptions are the maritimes, where it doesn't get very cold in winter, Quebec, where the province heavily subsidizes electricity, and BC where the government are a bit extreme left when it comes to climate change. The rest of the country can't afford to heat with electricity. Finally, and most importantly, stating that Canada’s nuclear workers and infrastructure is setup for CANDU and would need long and expensive modification and training for different reactors is completely wrong. Canada has a vast supply chain and huge number of highly skilled workers in the nuclear industry, not the CANDU industry. The supply chain and the skilled people in Canada’s nuclear industry already support and work with most nuclear technologies providing goods and services around the world, supporting all nuclear technology and designs. Your Zamboni example is absurd. Canada’s nuclear workers are not FORD mechanics, they are mechanics and can work on everything from chainsaws and lawn mowers to cars and trucks to tractor trailers and heavy equipment. Commercial power is only a part of what Canada’s nuclear industry does.
British Columbia doesn't use electricity for heating because the government are extreme left. 😂.It's because of all the rivers and hydroelectricity is the cheapest electricity. Nuclear is the most expensive. High-tech is high cost.
Being from quebec, I need to correct one thing. Electricity in quebec is not subsidized whatsoever. Hydro quebec is owned and run by the quebec government. And it makes billions in profit every year. Which is why we have very low Electricity bills in quebec. Our taxes paid to build hydro quebec and now we benefit with cheap Electricity.
@@dangal9366 Yes that’s all true except for the subsidy part. Hydro Quebec is a Crown Corporation wholly owned by the Government of Quebec and any dividends from profits are therefore payable to the Government of Quebec. Under sections 15.1 and 15.2 of the Hydro-Quebec Act, Hydro Quebec is not allowed to post dividends greater than 75% of its total operating costs in any year. This caps the profits of the company and the dividends payable to the Government. The result of this is that Hydro Quebec must often keep electricity rates lower than export market value rates to stay withing their legislated profit cap. This is a form of legislated price support at the financial expense of the Government and is one of the ways a government can subsidize and industry under the definitions of a subsidy. Therefore, under the Hydro-Quebec Act, Hydro Quebec is forced to subsidize electricity rates whenever it is profitable.
The CANDU refurbs should get more credit. Instead of throwing away tens of GW of output, Darlington, Bruce, and now Pickering - are all being (or have been) refurbished. It is a wonderful thing and even though "expensive" up front, it is a great investment which will pay off for decades, both in power and medical isotopes. Thanks to those reactors, Ontario hasn't burned coal for over 10 years for power. Amazing. Looking forward to seeing more Canadian reactors built!
Nuclear is a Hot Topic in Australia. The opposition wants to remove the nuclear ban and build seven nuclear reactors. One will be in my area (Loy Yang, Latrobe Valley Victoria). Could you do a video on CANDU suitability for Australia vs PWRs like the AP1000. 👍
My father has been working for Cameco (Canada's largest producer of uranium) for 35 years and bought $150,000 worth of stock in 2019. Insane return so far.
This is NOT news. One of my uncles was a Nuclear Engineer who worked overseas for the Federal government to build CANDU reactors. In 1989, he called my mom from Romania during the revolution. He was stuck in his hotel and waiting to get the Dodge out of there and just wanted to tell us he was doing fine... From what he told me, the role of those CANDU reactors was to provide SAFE nuclear energy to countries that couldn't be relied upon to do it safely by themselves. The soviet block reactors were NOT reliable, and the thinking was that it would be better for all concerned if they had something that couldn't kill us all. Plus. the CANDU reactors used NATURAL URANIUM, instead of enriched material, so NO weapons-grade material manufacture was possible.
CANDU technology is world beating and in upgraded form would still have a great future in a post GHG world. Australia could certainly use four Darlington scale plants and will likely buy into Canada's program. However, this won't be before we have had a few extended nation wide blackouts to clearly demonstrate failure of its current plan that prohibits nuclear on ideological grounds.
6:00 This is not true. Most Canadians heat their homes with natural gas, oil and diesel. The exceptions are the maritimes where it doesn't get very cold in winter, Quebec, where the province heavily subsidizes electricity, and BC where the government are a bit extreme left when it comes to climate change. The rest of the country can't afford to heat with electricity.
correction in quebec we decided to use hydroelectricity because we have the right topographie to build large enough dam for the electricity. If I'm not mistaken we are also the place in the country that have to most natural uranium in the ground.
@@corriveau21 Yes, Quebec has huge hydroelectric generating capacity, but that’s not what we were talking about. We were talking about heating sources for residential buildings. Quebec is unique in that a lot of residential buildings in Quebec are heated with electric resistance heating. This is because the Government of Quebec heavily subsidizes the electricity rates for consumers and electric resistance heating is actually an economically viable option. Unlike the rest of Canada, which pays much higher electricity rates that prohibit the use of electric resistance heating. Also, the largest uranium deposits in Canada are in northern Saskatchewan, not Quebec.
Interesting. I'm most optimistic about Terrestrial Energy which is a Canadian company designing a small molten salt reactor using Uranium (not thorium), but like all SMR's, it's difficult to know how long it will take before it's certified and actually produces power.
I have been following them as well. Seems to be a solid MSR burner design. I think we really need to finally build out some MSR designs like this to rack up the experience of working with molten salts. MSR breeder designs operating in either the fast or thermal neutron spectrum would be an obvious next step, and then thorium, fuel waste, and depleted Uranium can become possible fuel sources.
CANDU will not be abondoned. The population growth in Canada ensures that large core, well understood reactors will be built. Bruce Power is already looking at adding another large core or two. The micro reactors are good for Canada's North. SMRs are speculative, as true modularity depends on VOLUME - ie to make parts modular and cheap in a factory. ..all of Canada has to buy in on the same design along with foreign export. Half the cost is in civil construction. Very hard to make that "modular". Wind and Solar is not cheap. Ontario spent $64 billion on its FIT program to get 5% of it needs. Meanwhile, Ontario spent $55 billion on nuclear that provides 65 to 70%. Ontario produces 40% of Canada's GDP. This is why government support is strong - they've already seen that Wind/Solar does not scale.
@quantummotion nuclear is 35% of Ontario's mix according to the IESO. Still way higher than wind and solar's combined 14%. If we could get nuclear up to 70% that would be fantastic.
Ontario has just announced 4 new plants on sites of old coal plants ... a full referb of Pickering & more... our power output needs to double in 50 years
Canada should be cautious of relying on foreign corporations for power generation. We currently have no means to enrich fuel and would have to rely on foreign help, which can be stopped at a moments notice. CANDU doesn’t need enriched fuel and has worked well for 50 plus years. CANDU technology has room for improvement as it has languished for 30 years since Darlington was built. Maybe it’s figurative wandering the desert will leave it ready for a renaissance. The ever increasing needs of electrical power may benefit CANDU technology as it can produce base load power reliably and in large quantities. Let’s hope it is picked up by Alberta or BC for once instead of being almost exclusively Ontario based.
As a Canadian I feel obligated to distinguish this myth that we are friendly. There is passive aggressiveness beyond belief, Canadians are just mean in other ways.
AT the 6:15 minute mark, you state most Canadians heat their homes with electricity. No we don't. Most of us use cheaper and more efficient gas fired forced air furnaces.
Canada really ought to be building more CANDUs. It would be a much better use of the money than SMRs (if they had to choose one or the other, both are great). The more I learn about CANDUs, the more I appreciate the design. It's probably the best solution available for rapidly ramping up nuclear generation on a large grid
One of the main reasons OPG is looking into SMRs so much is because of remote communities that can't be hooked up to the grid. SMRs would lower emissions by replacing diesel generators.
@@NickCharabaruk Ah, yes. I have heard of this. My understanding is that those are micro-reactors, not SMRs. SMRs are probably best suited for replacing individual coal plants one-for-one (using the same turbines and other equipment). They're too big for some applications. Anyways, here's my source for that: ua-cam.com/video/fRrPMBxZ31g/v-deo.htmlsi=himGVFSzpqQOYJ6B
As I understand it, Candu reactors are expensive to build compared to other designs. So while they have operational advantages, it takes a big hit on the wallet.
@@atomicblender Oh okay, I was hearing there was a pilot project happening in Nova Scotia or something, but it may have been shelved. Depends on who has the more recent information.
As a Canadian I am very curious where the stats this video is based on are coming from, particularly the source for the claim that most people heat [our] homes with electricity.
5 місяців тому
British Columbia has enormous hydro electric capacity and exports power to all the western states regularly, with the huge site C project coming online next year
Saw a very interesting video recently. This video was called The Big Lie About Nuclear Waste created by Cleo Abram. This video explores technology that was invented in the 1960s to reuse nuclear material several times rather than only using it once and then putting it into waste storage. What better way to utilize nuclear material and at the same time reduce its hazardous state. Something federal and provincial energy ministries could explore to utilize nuclear waste rather than having to put it into secure storage for centuries.
The problem with reprocessing used fuel is that it isn't cost effective. We have so much high purity uranium that it is far less complicated and expensive to just extract new uranium to make fuel pellets than it is to reprocess used fuel.
According to available information, Canada is widely considered to have the safest nuclear reactor safety record in the world, with many experts stating that their nuclear industry has an unmatched safety record compared to other countries.
Manitoba already produces more than they can use but exports that excess to the US as we don't have the grid infrastructure in place to spread it all out east/west. Its not easy though, transmission megaprojects take a decade to execute.
There is a lot that _should_ be getting done. Hydro is only one part of the equation. BC for instance builds a new dam that doubled in price (no surprise), but should also be looking at renewable options, which they are not, and storage/stabilization options such as pumped hydro, which they have only given a cursory glance at. To say that Canada should just keep building dams with no thought of other renewable technologies that don't cause as much ecological devastation is not the way forward. Take advantage of our geography for sure, but in a more balanced and sensible way. But politicians like the big, flashy projects.
*a lot of In Quebec the statement is true, yes, the farther west you go it becomes more natural gas. Compared to the US, which is about 0%, Canada does it _a lot_ more www.statcan.gc.ca/o1/en/plus/2717-heat-how-canadians-heat-their-home-during-winter
The Dominion of Canada ) (D.O.C.) created from the union of Ontario, Québec , New Brunswick and Nova Scotia on July 1rst 1867 is one huge ass country (only 2nd in the world) behind Russia). Which means British-Columbia aka (B.C.) (1871) is not Alberta (1905) , Alberta is not Saskatchewan (1905), Saskatchewan is not Manitoba, Manitoba (1870) is not Ontario, Ontario is not Québec, Québec is not New Brunswick, New Brunswick is not Prince Edward Island (1871) , Prince Edward Island is not Nova Scotia Nova Scotia is not Newfoundland and Labarador (1949). And get me started we the territories from Yukon(1870) to Nunavut (1999) passing by today the North-West Territories which include both Yukon and Nunavut in the past. If we have to qualified Canada as a province we should used the O.G. Canada i.e. next to the River of Canada aka the St-Lawrence River in today province of Québec. because of their cheap hydro-electricity their lack of oil field , Québecer use electricity and as their main source of power for heating. Is it wise ? or a waste of energy ! Because elsewhere in the Dominion of Canada we burn fuel to create electricity which is also a waste of energy.
@marcjampolsky5280 Forced air includes wood and electricity too. The source of the numbers is available on the page provided. The source can be modified to include the breakdown of the energy type. It can also summarize the energy type. Looking at just the totals by energy type, electricity is 44% steadily increasing since 2017 where natural gas (44%), oil (3%), and wood (2%) has decreased, and Propane (2%) has remained steady. It is safe to assume electricity will become the primary energy type within the next 5-10 years.
Rofl.... Forced air in Canada is almost entirely natural gas... And you didn't say IN THE FUTURE... Just accept that you made an error already because as of now, it seems more like it was a blatant lie
I would like to ask an honest question as someone who has no vested interest in any side of the argument: Why is nuclear energy presented as being ‘clean’ energy when the end result is nuclear waste that we can do nothing with aside from burying in a hole somewhere? There is a growing global stockpile of nuclear waste - definitely not something that by any metric could be considered ‘clean’. While claims of newer, more efficient technology is being developed, the reality of it likely being the costlier option means it likely won’t be the option that gets implemented. While there may not be air pollution coming out of a nuclear facility, the nuclear waste remains a huge, ignored problem that isn’t being discussed.
I mean it isn’t really a huge problem. The way nuclear waste is stored is incredibly safe and won’t leak, so the fact it just stays in place is great because we know exactly where it all is and how much. It also decays naturally over time so eventually becomes inert. I recommend watching Kyle Hill, he is a nuclear advocate and has done a video where he actually kisses a nuclear waste storage container!
Energy is not a federal jurisdiction in Canada. All the individual provinces have their own plan on how they want their energy sector to work, with different regulations in each province. A Canadian nuclear plan doesn’t mean anything in that context. Quebec for example is fairly opposed to nuclear power and decommissioned its only nuclear power plant after fukushima
Canada is also a major contributor to the geniva hand book. It is in all of our best intrest that hey have a good supply of beer and the hocky season runs long.
Bad pun. CANDU. "Can do". Congratulations, Canada. But going forward, I'm even wondering whether Canada would be a good place to test new reactor designs? Great place for startups. And then if it works out, propagate it to the rest of the world. Canada seems pretty nuclear friendly.
Having spent 20 years around Canadian nuclear from the time when everyone was screaming “ shut down the ‘A’ side ! “, to the time the site Vice President had to stand on a soapbox for an impromptu speech at the four corners reassuring everyone their jobs were going to be okay… Ahem.. The plan is and always was to spend billions on refurbishments and costly new builds which are uneconomical intentionally. Then, sell and sub-divide wholesale reactor by reactor the public asset to recover costs and interest on debt. All when they realize it’s not economical and act surprised. Just in time when everyone is forced to buy electric cars and trucks, and electricity costs many times what it does now. Unless you think that new Extra Staff Storage Building you are walking around is going to print money on its own… Or that decommissioning and pension liabilities are fully paid the next five decades…. also on their own… And there won’t be any problems along the way… On sale, everyone working there will find themselves switching hard hats and working for a private company which has yet to exist, with the hope that continued pension liabilities will be covered by the sale of the generation assets, this due to another financial collapse that has yet to happen which wipes out bundy… I really hope this is not the plan, and that it is not what is intended to happen in other countries. But since I predicted COVID and made personal business changes well in advance to avoid that, sadly, I have yet to be wrong. :((.
Canada dont need Much electricity. Canada dont do much of Any thing Canada only Produces 150 GW the Us produces over 1144 GW, the CEO of the TVA worked for Hydro Ontario and Ontario Power Systems and Worked with Small Nuclear Reactors. When they work the TVA will build them
There's also the factor that the vast majority of Canada's oil is exported to the US of A so there's no fossil fuel lobby fighting tooth and nail to keep gas plants the preferred technology
Could you please do a video on molten salt reactors? How do they work? Is the steam generated by them hotter than convetional nuclear reactors and if so, could you use the steam for high temperature electrolysis to make clean hydrogen cheaper? And if hydrogen production is viable, would it make the running of the nuclear power plant more economical? Could Germanys shut down nuclear power plants be converted to molten salt ones and thereby save some of the construction cost? If so how much could be saved?
Ukraine operates 4 nuclear power plants with 15 reactors, total capacity is over 13 GWe. In 2021, Ukraine's nuclear reactors produced 81 TWh - over 55% electricity 2nd-highest share (%-wise) in the world, behind only France. Ukraine is planning to build 4 more reactors, possibly 6. So yeah, Ukraine deserves a high slot on the leaderboard. Ukraine would be far further along if it weren't for the invasion.
@@factnotfiction5915 I'm sure the share is a lot lower now because ZNPP has been shutdown for 2 years now. I'm pretty worried it might have to be permanently shutdown after the war due to the shelling of the containment structures.
Minor nit pick- we get 15% of our power from Nuclear. Not 13%. Not sure where you got that stat but the Canada energy regulator makes stats like this publicly available and they also have super awesome graphs
If you don't apologize for getting to a door at the same time as someone else and then have a back and forth about who should go first, you're rude by Canadian standards. I'm not exaggerating, btw. We do that a dozen times a day.
Does a Candu reactor extract more or less energy per unit of uranium mined? They might be able to make use of more uranium without enriching it, but I can't imagine that it gives them more energy per unit of fuel. How efficiently does this system utilize our limited reserves of Uranium?
It can literally use reprocessed nuclear waste from pwr reactors; candu is not that picky about fuel. What it needs is heavy water and lots of it. Each reactor needs ~500 tonnes of heavy water costing. At $115k cad / tonne that is ~56 million dollars per reactor.
@@ccibinel Is that a one-time purchase or a yearly thing? Heavy water may be pricey, but it's also one of those things that we're not worried about running out of, considering how many billions of tons of it there are on Earth.
@@SerialSnowmanKiller it is not consumed but leaks happen and processes to minimize loss are needed. Another interesting thing of candu is our produces tritium which is critical to fusion research
From my perspective Canada has been better on nuclear power for at least the last 40 years. As far as I know though this has mostly ended. My buddy grew up in Deep River and his Dad (nuclear physicist) worked on CANDU, research and development ended a long time ago and has trended down ever since. Nuclear is extremely unpopular here among the general population. I don't see Canada's nuclear outlook being very good for the next 20 years, despite what you've said here. Bunch of other factual errors as well. Natural gas heating is common here, even in eastern Canada/Quebec. Electric heating is not cheaper, but is more common simply due to lower upfront cost.
I'd agree traditional nuclear in Canada has been on decline for a long time with not much active investment. That was why I included it in the video. However, I'd disagree on the other two points. Over half of Canadians surveyed last year supported nuclear www.ipsos.com/en-ca/over-half-canadians-support-using-nuclear-energy-to-generate-electricity And heating sources vary depending where people live. In Quebec, it is mostly electric. Elsewhere is mixed. But my point is compared to the US (basically 0%), it's way higher www.statcan.gc.ca/o1/en/plus/2717-heat-how-canadians-heat-their-home-during-winter
I would like to add that you are actually wrong, most people heat their houses with gas, I’m not sure how true it is but many people say that gas heating is better at dealing with the cold
The Great Lakes aren't much use for generating power, except Niagara. The big hydro projects are in the Canadian Shield up north, where the rivers have steep valleys and granite geology. A lot of smaller rivers have dams and hydro plants on them, too. The central Prairies have a few dams, but the rivers there are wide, shallow, and muddy.
Over all - a good video, but perhaps you should have been a little more open about the downsides of each reactor design. Nice as it is - the CANDU reactor does have a couple of problems. Its use of low-enrichment fuel means that an individual element only lasts a few weeks. The online refueling system was a necessity to operate for longer than a month at a time, not intentionally an innovation to outlast other designs. The low enrichment also means that they need to use Heavy Water (hence the DU in the name Canada deuterium [oxide] Uranium) which is not particularly cheap. And since you're burning through bundles quickly - you're producing high-level waste at a faster than usual clip.
Bundles are burned how quickly? ISTR that the life time of a Candu fuel bundle is about 1 year. The bundles are shuffled continuously and automatically in order to moderate the flux in the core. The reactor does not require shut down to accomplish this. Other reactor types seem to require complete shut down and refuelling every 3 years or so.
@@BasementEngineer Well that is the catch. The trade-off of a CANDU is that you run on a lower grade of fuel, and will need more of it - but you can skip the steps of refining it beforehand. Whether this saved money in the long run seems to vary depending on which agency is doing the accounting. As I understand - in most US designed BWR and PWR civil reactors you have you have fuel elements that are about thirty to forty feet long zirconium alloy tubes that in turn contain the pellets of sintered uranium powder (of around 3.5% enrichment) coated with hard ceramic. These long tubes are in square bundles of several dozen, have an optimal life of about thirteen to twenty months, and can then be shuffled around to ensure more optimal burn-up, for a usual operating life of three years to six years. (Fuel is still present, but is becoming more diffuse, along with a build of fission products, so efficiency drops off at that point, but with reprocessing everything could be recycled). Eia.gov claims: Typically, reactor operators change out about one-third of the reactor core (40 to 90 fuel assemblies) every 12 to 24 months. In a candu, your fuel bundles are much smaller - the fuel element is about 50 centimeters long and ten wide - with multiple elements in each pressure tube. Within these bundles the fuel pellets are similar to the pellets in a US reactor, but the enrichment level is 0.72% Naturally the working life of any singular fuel bundle is a few weeks. They can be fed through the reactor without stopping power production. A customer won't see a change in output, as elements are cycled through, but the plant needs to be delivered fuel every week, rather than once a year. Taken from Cna.ca: "A CANDU 6 reactor typically has 380 fuel channels. Each channel has 12 fuel bundles which means at any given time, a reactor has approximately 4,560 fuel bundles. Each week, approximately 60 new fuel bundles are put into the reactor. The fuel in the reactor is completely replaced roughly every 18 months." Just the fact that natural uranium contains less U-235 than processed material should indicate a lower life span. And its designed around an open fuel cycle, as opposed to having nuclear reprocessing to make new fuel from old. CANDU replaces the whole core in 18 months, a US BWR switches out 1/3 of its fuel in that time.
there are definitely places here where people use electricity to heat their homes but it certainly is not the norm. at .32/kwh its way too expensive in most places in canada.
Where do you pay $0.32/KWh? I live in Ontario and pay Hydro One rates. I use an air source heat pump to heat my house (uses electricity). It's a similar cost to Natural Gas and FAR less expensive than Propane or Diesel.
i just looked it up, your on-peak is not that different, 28.6 kwh, so averaged and weighted for different time brackets your looking at a normalised cost of ~21c/kwh. abit lower, but still quite high for normalised average when its clearly possible to drive cost below 10c/kwh pretty easily, there are even examples of sub 6c/kwh.... how do we have one of the best electricity infrastructures but pay some of the highest rates outside of Europe?
@@erikstephens34 also a heat pump is not the same as electric heating, look into how heat pumps work.... way more efficient than say electric furnace or base board..
@@3ddan148 I'm an engineer that works for a company that makes electric heating devices. I know exactly how they work. Yes a heat pump is more efficient (mostly moving heat instead of making it). But still uses electricity as its basis to make it work.
@@erikstephens34 difference is it moves heat, not necessarily produces heat, as a engineer you surely understand the difference. the only heat produced is technically waste heat by the pump itself, which is not nearly close to the total amount of heat a heat pump can move in or out of your house.
the nuclear industry has been technologically stagnate since its inception. It was preferable to go all in on an inappropriate design method than spend money on a better one. The old method was meant for a submarine, not a national power grid. Burning off spent fuel should be a more primary concern than producing weapon's grade material.
Rating the nuclear share a 4 based purely on how much nuclear power is generated seems asinine and stupid. For several provinces Hydropower makes the bulk as you mentioned, why is it bad that alternative carbon neutral sources are used? What you SHOULD be rating is how much share of LNG and fossil fuels could be replaced by Nuclear.
As a Canadian I can say that if you are heating with electricity you are going broke. The only reason rural and remote areas heat with electricity is because the gas network does not reach them.
There's not much wrong with the CANDU technology. All it really needs is to be modernized. Some of the newer technologies are de novo designs that haven't yet been tested enough. The other downside is that well-trained operators who are very experienced with CANDU technologies will have to be re-trained how to work with new reactor designs. Why re-invent the wheel?
Depends if you are in a province that pipes natural gas to your house. The rocky terrain of the maritimes does not make this an option and tanks/fuel/maintenance have historically meant wood/electric, but there is a recent push for electric heatpumps.
This is true, fortunately I live in the populated side of BC where electricity costs are comparatively lower than other parts of the country. But our northern rural population will likely be relying on natural gas for a while. BC btw is powered by 95% renewable energy, something like 80-90% of that being Hydro. Unrelated rant: And like any good Canadian crown corp, BC Hydro blows! They shut off our electricity without warning for no reason one day and we had to argue with them to turn it back on. Paying customers for 40 years my family is. Apparently that didn't matter to customer service and certainly not the machine that automatically did that LOL.
Correct, Stats Can says 25%, mostly Quebec and Maritimes. Quebec gets almost free electricity from Churchill Falls, Labrador. Quebec also has highest users of residential wood stoves.
I mean if we have nuclear fission technology and we can keep the chain reactions under control then why not just use it? Why go along with oil and gas lobby? As for radioactive waste I think dumping several meters deep underground and or just dumping it in the deepest ocean could solve the problem because eventually it will lose its radioactivity and will become stable… It might make the oceans a little radioactive but it will all stabilize eventually… Nuclear energy has its pros n cons but every energy does and for now nuclear energy by far is the most feasible…
Public opinion on big reactors is still not ideal, thats why they're chosing smr's. Because people vew it as less bad and more innovative, and they really need public support
Disappointing. I was hoping for something more substantial than a marketing video riddled with half and a few zero truths. I give it a 2.5, putting it a long way down the leader board.
Why Canada experienced nuclear stagnation is simple: we did not need more nukes. The fact is, we had a surplus of power that we sold off to the US. Now, we are in more demand of power as a nation. The reason Canada is uniquely positioned to lead nuclear energy is based on their refurbishment efforts. By the 2030s, Canada would have refurbished not less than 12 CANDU reactors, which will power Ontario into the late 2060s. More refurbishments in Ontario, and builds around the country, increase the country's greatest asset in the nuclear industry: experience. Leaders in design, engineering, and construction are being forged year-after-year and will position Canada as a top-notch nuclear expert for years to come. Yes, Canada will eventually abandon the CANDU for the SMR models, which are smaller and much faster to construct/assemble. Soon, nuclear energy will be from coast to coast to coast in Canada. Canada is a nuclear energy superpower and will go down in history as nuclear trailblazers.
How much are advantage of the can do reactor is fuel flexibility I can take thorium fuel as well as American used fuel. Nuclear should be used in Alberta for oil sands development how to replacement of coal fired power plants process heat can be used as well. Using natural gases expensive the long-term natural gas supply in Canada is not assured
wait a second....i maintenance needing to be done roughly every 20 YEARS really a problem for a plant that can practically refuel on the fly the entire time an actual problem or just something to complain about? all you have to do is build more (which is what they want to do anyway) and stagger maintenance periods, it would be nice if we could just fix the issue (green energy and increassing overall power generation) instead of experimenting during a "crisis"...... and i found out awhile back that Canada exported Nuclear tech but didn't know how far/wide.... i guess that the CANDU spirit 😅
There's regular maintenance that lasts a few weeks (inspections, overhauling pumps, valves, cleaning, etc.) done about once a year; and then every ~20 years there are refurbishments that last months (pressure tube replacement, other big component replacements)
As much as I love the CANDU design it has more flaws than just the unintentional extended downtime mentioned. For one the heavy water it uses is very expensive and produces a ton of tritium, a radioactive hydrogen isotope. Another is a slight positive power factor, meaning if the reactor gets hotter the reactivity goes up. For that reason it's not certified as safe in the US.
@@12pentaborane: The US would never certify anything that wasn't US-designed and built, no matter what. That said, US's lack of nodding approvals doesn't make CANDU reactors any worse than anybody else's designs.
@@josdesouza I agree but I only know of the CANDU and RBMK with positive feedback mechanisms like that. I think that for CANDU it happens towards the end of the fuel cycle on natural uranium. From what I've heard it's the reason they're switching to HALEU fuel, so they can run the fuel longer. Edit: I'm wrong on the last part, that was a company in the US getting approval to make Th+HALEU to use in CANDU.
Canada deferred the refinement of uranium 235 from the mostly uranium 238 mined to assure the US that Canada would not be a nuclear power without the US's involvement. It's like how we condemn the sale of commercial centrifuges to Iran because we don't want them to be able to refine weapons grade uranium on their own.
CANDU plants were originally projected to last over 40 years. However, on average, they have to be "refurbished" after only 23 years. During this procedure they are totally shut down - for up to a few years. Refurbishment costs are roughly equal to the original capital costs = several $ billion. Recent experience with New Brunswick's single CANDU reactor underlines these serious technological, unreliability, and economic issues.
Properly operated they are quite reliable. The high cost of refurbishing is due to the cost effectiveness of those power plants. The cost of refurbishing includes the cost of the replacement energy by other means.
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ya seen the bloody price tag of fords lil micro nuke plants and that 1 billion only serves 14000 or so people
its a massive massive waste a cash
for 14 million ontario people thats 1 trillion dollars buddy
its not happening
and we got one nuke plant perma shutting down that is 14% capacity in a few months
then anoher needing that shut down for repair
thats 28% of capcity offline with NOTHING to fookin replace it
ford is FAIL
and when people starve watch the riots
he needs 280 billion worth or about 260-280 o these micro nuke plants
thats just never happening
leave it to a conservative to be a complete failure
There should be no private utilities at all in Canada, especially power delivery.
NS Power was sold by a conservative government and received a generous contribution to its election campaign fund.
The first action was to fire all the line maintenance crews as an unacceptable cost.
Now, after several hurricanes, the lack of maintenance led to massive power outages lasting weeks in some cases and Emera, the private owner that has a multimillion-dollar executive compensation fund, is charging the province for not doing the maintenance 🙄
The purpose of a utility is a service
The purpose of a corporation is to make profits above everything else
This is why all utilities must be publicly owned ONLY!
When nsp was a crown corporation, it was really unusual for a power failure.
Now, when we get weather, we assume the power will go out and wonder for how long.🤦♂️🤦🏿
the huge privitization push was another right wing scam. Services are needs and should not be subject to the commercial drive for profit.
Amen! Unfortunately our politicians would rather line their pockets than provide services to Canadians. We have now been sold out to the most corrupt bidder and we're all suffering for it.
We have 2 CANDU reactors in Romania, I hope that we can build 2 more in the same place (Cernavoda). It would be very little impact, Romania makes its own pellets, and already has the place set up for the two more reactors ever since they were planned in the first place, has the Danube to cool it so everything is in place to double the nuclear energy produced. Looks like things are on track and we will have that by 2030 and 2031.
It looks promising ever since they announced the refurbishment and finishing construction. I hope they succeed, it's really an interesting project that would diversify and help Romania's energy
Yes - CANDU sounds like a fine technology with a fine track record. "Nuclear for the masses."
Long live CANDU.
I agree! Things are getting hot again. OPG and AR are getting ambitious.
Fun fact I learned about that deal between our countries - the original deal was partially paid for with a massive shipment of Romanian jam as a barter in lieu of cash! LOL I friggen love that deal.
Sheep for wood? No…
Jam for Science? Yes.
LOL
⚔️⚛️⚔️
@@myfirstseven Hmmm, we were part of the consortium in Canada that built the 2 Candu units for Romania.
I never saw any trucks delivering jars of jam. Cold hard cash is what we got.
I attended the opening and inspection of one of the reactors with Canadian diplomats in the late 90's. Cernavoda was a world class operation back when Romania was just getting its first GSM network and I love that it has become a prime example of export nuclear done right.
The biggest benefit to the CANDU design is its safety and redundancy. It's basically impossible for them to suffer a Chernobyl style failure.
they are a bit maintenance heavy to ensure that safety. plenty of areas where if things get out of spec due to poor maintenance, the safety redundancy starts to drop off a subsequent series of cliffs. that said, it would take some devastatingly inept oversight to overstep all the fail safes.
The long runtime and the fact the callandria isn't under pressure makes it ideal for making medical isotopes as well.
I still remember getting alert for Pickering powerplant faliure😂😂. Thankfully it was a mistake but oh boy was i shooked
Saskatchewan should be as rich as norway, with a population of just 1M, and the worlds highest grade Uranium and Potash deposits, not to mention oil, grain, forestry, diamonds, and gold.
Good to see they are accomadating the surge in demand for U308
Yes - CANDU sounds like a fine technology with a fine track record. "Nuclear for the masses."
Long live CANDU.
Saskatchewan is PART OF A COUNTRY, it's just a PROVINCE... We all share and live together, OR you can try to vote for sovereignty and get swallowed up by the USA within a couple of years... Are you SURE that you aren't from Alberta??? NOBODY can survive as a country based on one or two resources.. OIL is on its way out, so Alberta is pretty dumb to think about going its own way for maybe 10 years and then have NOTHING else to sell except Beef, which the USA has plenty of... Saskatchewan is even LESS endowed with natural resources, and its grain fields are always at the mercy of the changing weather patterns...
What makes CANADA, is all of its provinces (and territories) pulling together, instead of being little selfish idiots...
With what is coming our way in the near future, keeping all of your local money for yourself, will just see you ALONE without a friend when you need others to share with you later on... In case you are history-ignorant, it's the EAST that built the Western provinces from scratch... You guys didn't just wake up one day in a populated prairie or West Coast... WE moved there, and WE funded it all... And frankly, there is NO WAY that a few million people can start a country now that everything is SO expensive... You'd have to sell yourselves out to get funding for infrastructure, no matter how much potash and uranium you sold, and then you'd be renting your land from a landlord...
Quebec tried that idea, but we all realized that we are MUCH better off together than alone, so it didn't pass... And that was back in the 90s, when we COULD have survived on our own.. Today, we'd be eaten in a couple of years by the Americans.
@@TheJimprez I was born and raised in sask...
First of all, you are way off... sask has the worlds biggest potash reserves, a critical component of fertilizer- food is pretty important these days!
Also, it has the BEST grades of uranium on the planet with 1000s of lbs of reserves still in the ground. Plus vast forests, diamond, gold, and oil... did you do any research? 😂
Each province earns its own revenue which is then used for local projects and services.. just like any other jurisdiction. However, a large chunk of the revenue earned by the prosperous western provinces is then funneled to the eastern proinces (equalization payments)
Alberta has the best infrastructure and services in canada by a wide margin due to its oil revenue, however it has begun to pivot to other sources.
Im not sure what youre getting at. Its simple economics - if sask managed its resource extraction industries more effectively, it would benefit the citizens of that province greatly just like it did in Alberta.
We are being plundered by corporations.
Fax the government needs to nationalize these resources and stop selling them to greedy companies who dont give af abt Canada. This will also encourage newcomers to move to the prairie provinces instead of just flooding Toronto and Vancouver.
CANDU is the reactor to build if you are not interested in using your reactors to also produce nuclear weapon technology.
India did.
@@RuthBrown-tm2gtby redesigning it
It can be done with CANDU but it is extremely inefficient compared to other options.
@@hyperionhelios190 correct. India did it.
Hydroelectric is so common in Canada that in much of Canada people will call electricity "hydro", like "I have to pay my hydro bill" meaning paying the electricity bill.
As a British Columbian, I can say that your comment is 100% true. We pay our hydro bill.
@@Sc00terNut That's partly because we pay our bills to BC Hydro.
Yup, used to be why I called in when I lived in QC, which generates an absolute ton of it.
I did a project on CANDU reactors in my nuclear physics course in my undergrad. It cemented my support for nuclear power. The multiple tube design of CANDU reactors was born out of industry limitations at the time. It's great technology, but there are a lot of promising alternatives today. What does concern me though is how are we going to replace our reactors that make medical isotopes? I have a friend work on an experimental particle accelerator to make them at Triumf, but that's still a long way off from replacing existing medical isotope production.
Find me ONE SINGLE tree planted since 2011 that's growing normally... A LIE is a LIE no matter how smart you think you are...
Following the closure of many isotope producing research reactors, Candu now produce a significant percentage of the world's isotopes. They will operate for many more decades post refurbishment.
Canada has started adding Thorium to their CANDU fuel. This helps bootstrap the thorium fuel cycle to supply newer designs, so CANDU has to continue until the demand for thorium is self sustaining.
0:02 surprise lead?! CANADA has always been a leader in nuclear energy
The thing is, Canada could've exported more if they didn't stop themselfs
Canada is not allowed to be an energy superpower. Washington won't permit it.
Would love to see CANDU's in Australia. The rational for CANDU's seems to be mirrored in Australia.
Yes - CANDU sounds like a fine technology with a fine track record. "Nuclear for the masses."
Long live CANDU.
I’m a Canadian so first let me apologize as I’m going to have to be a bit impolite and correct you. I’m an engineer who works in the nuclear industry in Canada so I feel I need to let everyone know that you’ve said a lot of misleading things in this video.
First, you start this video out saying “Canada has taken a surprising lead in nuclear energy”. Canada has been a global leader in nuclear energy since the early 1940s so this statement makes no sense to anyone who knows the history of Canada’s nuclear industry.
Second, Canada already abandoned the CANDU reactor design when it was sold off to SNC Lavalin in 2011. SNC Lavalin was involved in so many scandals for bribery it was blacklisted by the world bank for 10 years. To get away from their bad name, they just changed it to AtkinsRéalis, but a tiger can’t change its stripes. Since selling AECL’s commercial reactor division there has been very little development of the CANDU design. The “CANDU MONARK” is just an updated CANDU 6 design repackaged with a shiny new name.
Third, stating that most Canadians heat their homes with electricity is not true. Most Canadians heat their homes with natural gas, oil and diesel. The exceptions are the maritimes, where it doesn't get very cold in winter, Quebec, where the province heavily subsidizes electricity, and BC where the government are a bit extreme left when it comes to climate change. The rest of the country can't afford to heat with electricity.
Finally, and most importantly, stating that Canada’s nuclear workers and infrastructure is setup for CANDU and would need long and expensive modification and training for different reactors is completely wrong. Canada has a vast supply chain and huge number of highly skilled workers in the nuclear industry, not the CANDU industry. The supply chain and the skilled people in Canada’s nuclear industry already support and work with most nuclear technologies providing goods and services around the world, supporting all nuclear technology and designs. Your Zamboni example is absurd. Canada’s nuclear workers are not FORD mechanics, they are mechanics and can work on everything from chainsaws and lawn mowers to cars and trucks to tractor trailers and heavy equipment. Commercial power is only a part of what Canada’s nuclear industry does.
British Columbia doesn't use electricity for heating because the government are extreme left. 😂.It's because of all the rivers and hydroelectricity is the cheapest electricity. Nuclear is the most expensive. High-tech is high cost.
@@philipclift7205 British Columbia dont support terrorism like usa and canada
Being from quebec, I need to correct one thing. Electricity in quebec is not subsidized whatsoever. Hydro quebec is owned and run by the quebec government. And it makes billions in profit every year. Which is why we have very low Electricity bills in quebec. Our taxes paid to build hydro quebec and now we benefit with cheap Electricity.
@@dangal9366 Yes that’s all true except for the subsidy part. Hydro Quebec is a Crown Corporation wholly owned by the Government of Quebec and any dividends from profits are therefore payable to the Government of Quebec. Under sections 15.1 and 15.2 of the Hydro-Quebec Act, Hydro Quebec is not allowed to post dividends greater than 75% of its total operating costs in any year. This caps the profits of the company and the dividends payable to the Government. The result of this is that Hydro Quebec must often keep electricity rates lower than export market value rates to stay withing their legislated profit cap. This is a form of legislated price support at the financial expense of the Government and is one of the ways a government can subsidize and industry under the definitions of a subsidy. Therefore, under the Hydro-Quebec Act, Hydro Quebec is forced to subsidize electricity rates whenever it is profitable.
@@JimmyJamesJ subsidized by the gov implies taxes are being used to lower the price of our electric bill. Which is not the case.
Yes - CANDU sounds like a fine technology with a fine track record. "Nuclear for the masses."
Long live CANDU.
Nova Scotia has uranium reserves similar to northern Saskatchewan, but mining it in the province is illegal
The CANDU refurbs should get more credit. Instead of throwing away tens of GW of output, Darlington, Bruce, and now Pickering - are all being (or have been) refurbished. It is a wonderful thing and even though "expensive" up front, it is a great investment which will pay off for decades, both in power and medical isotopes. Thanks to those reactors, Ontario hasn't burned coal for over 10 years for power. Amazing. Looking forward to seeing more Canadian reactors built!
Nuclear is a Hot Topic in Australia. The opposition wants to remove the nuclear ban and build seven nuclear reactors. One will be in my area (Loy Yang, Latrobe Valley Victoria). Could you do a video on CANDU suitability for Australia vs PWRs like the AP1000. 👍
CANDU might actually be pretty good for Australia if they wanted to avoid the trouble of enrichment. Good idea
My father has been working for Cameco (Canada's largest producer of uranium) for 35 years and bought $150,000 worth of stock in 2019. Insane return so far.
This is NOT news. One of my uncles was a Nuclear Engineer who worked overseas for the Federal government to build CANDU reactors.
In 1989, he called my mom from Romania during the revolution. He was stuck in his hotel and waiting to get the Dodge out of there and just wanted to tell us he was doing fine...
From what he told me, the role of those CANDU reactors was to provide SAFE nuclear energy to countries that couldn't be relied upon to do it safely by themselves. The soviet block reactors were NOT reliable, and the thinking was that it would be better for all concerned if they had something that couldn't kill us all.
Plus. the CANDU reactors used NATURAL URANIUM, instead of enriched material, so NO weapons-grade material manufacture was possible.
News flash: 99% of Canadians did not grow up with a father working in nuclear.
This is news to that percentage buddy.
Just like Australia except were not allowed to have nuclear power at all.
Yet! 😉👍
That is a shame. The eco zealots have control but no knowledge.
CANDU technology is world beating and in upgraded form would still have a great future in a post GHG world.
Australia could certainly use four Darlington scale plants and will likely buy into Canada's program. However, this won't be before we have had a few extended nation wide blackouts to clearly demonstrate failure of its current plan that prohibits nuclear on ideological grounds.
unless it comes in submarine form...
That’ll change soon, I hope. Canada and Australia would be great partners on this
6:00 This is not true. Most Canadians heat their homes with natural gas, oil and diesel. The exceptions are the maritimes where it doesn't get very cold in winter, Quebec, where the province heavily subsidizes electricity, and BC where the government are a bit extreme left when it comes to climate change. The rest of the country can't afford to heat with electricity.
*In several places in Canada
is perhaps more accurate. But you win the 'Technically Correct' award :-)
correction in quebec we decided to use hydroelectricity because we have the right topographie to build large enough dam for the electricity. If I'm not mistaken we are also the place in the country that have to most natural uranium in the ground.
Lol, the Maritimes get plenty cold in the winter.
@@corriveau21 Yes, Quebec has huge hydroelectric generating capacity, but that’s not what we were talking about. We were talking about heating sources for residential buildings. Quebec is unique in that a lot of residential buildings in Quebec are heated with electric resistance heating. This is because the Government of Quebec heavily subsidizes the electricity rates for consumers and electric resistance heating is actually an economically viable option. Unlike the rest of Canada, which pays much higher electricity rates that prohibit the use of electric resistance heating.
Also, the largest uranium deposits in Canada are in northern Saskatchewan, not Quebec.
@@atomicblenderby technically correct, you mean correct... Right?
25% electric and 51% gas furnace
It must be the Can Du attitude
Yes - CANDU sounds like a fine technology with a fine track record. "Nuclear for the masses."
Long live CANDU.
We're CANadians not Can'tnadians.
@@chefpat5838 Exactly! A positive attitude goes a long way;)
Canada is collaborating on nuclear reactors with the US at Oak Ridge Lab, and the UK at Culham outside of Oxford.
Interesting. I'm most optimistic about Terrestrial Energy which is a Canadian company designing a small molten salt reactor using Uranium (not thorium), but like all SMR's, it's difficult to know how long it will take before it's certified and actually produces power.
I have been following them as well. Seems to be a solid MSR burner design. I think we really need to finally build out some MSR designs like this to rack up the experience of working with molten salts. MSR breeder designs operating in either the fast or thermal neutron spectrum would be an obvious next step, and then thorium, fuel waste, and depleted Uranium can become possible fuel sources.
Terrestrial and Moltex are both promising Canadian designs.
@@nathanbanks2354 they’re my personal favourite as well.
@@almisami If the Moltex Wasteburner works so we can reprocess used fuel for it, that would be fantastic
i love your economics explained format. subscribed!
The east? The west bc produces more hydro power than it could consume and exports power to the states as well.
I worked a single fuel channel replacement at OPG Darlington. Working on the face of the reactor was pretty cool
Canada should not be tied to only CANDU reactors. We will be left behind.
Why. It's a good system. Besides, there are several companies in Canada working on Fusion reactors ( and yes, It's still years away)
there are many scopes for improvement for CANDU. Reprocessing should be right up there as well as new metal alloys that last longer.
Scrapping long-developed, nationally-designed and fully-mastered CANDU nuclear technology is dumb on every count.
The existing reactors will keep running. We’re just adopting a new technology. I trust you didn’t type your comment on a blackberry phone.
@@mhawang8204 May be adopting a new tech. Bruce Power hasn't determine what type of reactor they will use. The Monark is in the running still.
Omg I forgot Blackberry is a thing lmao
CANDU will not be abondoned. The population growth in Canada ensures that large core, well understood reactors will be built. Bruce Power is already looking at adding another large core or two. The micro reactors are good for Canada's North. SMRs are speculative, as true modularity depends on VOLUME - ie to make parts modular and cheap in a factory.
..all of Canada has to buy in on the same design along with foreign export. Half the cost is in civil construction. Very hard to make that "modular". Wind and Solar is not cheap. Ontario spent $64 billion on its FIT program to get 5% of it needs. Meanwhile, Ontario spent $55 billion on nuclear that provides 65 to 70%. Ontario produces 40% of Canada's GDP. This is why government support is strong - they've already seen that Wind/Solar does not scale.
@quantummotion nuclear is 35% of Ontario's mix according to the IESO. Still way higher than wind and solar's combined 14%. If we could get nuclear up to 70% that would be fantastic.
Ontario has just announced 4 new plants on sites of old coal plants ... a full referb of Pickering & more... our power output needs to double in 50 years
you forgot mention the huge cost of heavy water in the candu
Offset by uranium enrichment
Canada should be cautious of relying on foreign corporations for power generation. We currently have no means to enrich fuel and would have to rely on foreign help, which can be stopped at a moments notice. CANDU doesn’t need enriched fuel and has worked well for 50 plus years.
CANDU technology has room for improvement as it has languished for 30 years since Darlington was built. Maybe it’s figurative wandering the desert will leave it ready for a renaissance.
The ever increasing needs of electrical power may benefit CANDU technology as it can produce base load power reliably and in large quantities. Let’s hope it is picked up by Alberta or BC for once instead of being almost exclusively Ontario based.
As a Canadian I feel obligated to distinguish this myth that we are friendly. There is passive aggressiveness beyond belief, Canadians are just mean in other ways.
AT the 6:15 minute mark, you state most Canadians heat their homes with electricity. No we don't. Most of us use cheaper and more efficient gas fired forced air furnaces.
Canada really ought to be building more CANDUs. It would be a much better use of the money than SMRs (if they had to choose one or the other, both are great). The more I learn about CANDUs, the more I appreciate the design. It's probably the best solution available for rapidly ramping up nuclear generation on a large grid
One of the main reasons OPG is looking into SMRs so much is because of remote communities that can't be hooked up to the grid. SMRs would lower emissions by replacing diesel generators.
@@NickCharabaruk Ah, yes. I have heard of this. My understanding is that those are micro-reactors, not SMRs. SMRs are probably best suited for replacing individual coal plants one-for-one (using the same turbines and other equipment). They're too big for some applications. Anyways, here's my source for that:
ua-cam.com/video/fRrPMBxZ31g/v-deo.htmlsi=himGVFSzpqQOYJ6B
As I understand it, Candu reactors are expensive to build compared to other designs. So while they have operational advantages, it takes a big hit on the wallet.
Candu is also working on small nuclear power plants too. How does it compare to other small nuclear reactor designs?
Last I saw the CANDU SMR was essentially shelved a few years ago. But who knows, it could come back
@@atomicblender Oh okay, I was hearing there was a pilot project happening in Nova Scotia or something, but it may have been shelved. Depends on who has the more recent information.
As a Canadian I am very curious where the stats this video is based on are coming from, particularly the source for the claim that most people heat [our] homes with electricity.
British Columbia has enormous hydro electric capacity and exports power to all the western states regularly, with the huge site C project coming online next year
Saw a very interesting video recently. This video was called The Big Lie About Nuclear Waste created by Cleo Abram. This video explores technology that was invented in the 1960s to reuse nuclear material several times rather than only using it once and then putting it into waste storage. What better way to utilize nuclear material and at the same time reduce its hazardous state. Something federal and provincial energy ministries could explore to utilize nuclear waste rather than having to put it into secure storage for centuries.
The problem with reprocessing used fuel is that it isn't cost effective. We have so much high purity uranium that it is far less complicated and expensive to just extract new uranium to make fuel pellets than it is to reprocess used fuel.
This was true when I worked for the Westinghouse Atomic Power Division in 1974, and everyone I worked with knew it.
According to available information, Canada is widely considered to have the safest nuclear reactor safety record in the world, with many experts stating that their nuclear industry has an unmatched safety record compared to other countries.
No word on CANDU SMRs?!? Geeze! What a blindspot!!! We've got 2 SMR designs of CANDU in the pipeline, set to deploy in 2028.
The CANDU SMR hasn't been in active development in a decade. It could come back, but certainly not by 2028...
The wrong engineering firm now owns the CANDU Technology.
To be fair NPD and Douglas Point meet the "small" threshold of SMR. Those designs could be rebuilt, but they wouldn't I agree.
As a Canadian, I believe that we should prioritise our hydropower output because we have far more hydro potential than any other country.
Manitoba already produces more than they can use but exports that excess to the US as we don't have the grid infrastructure in place to spread it all out east/west. Its not easy though, transmission megaprojects take a decade to execute.
There is a lot that _should_ be getting done. Hydro is only one part of the equation. BC for instance builds a new dam that doubled in price (no surprise), but should also be looking at renewable options, which they are not, and storage/stabilization options such as pumped hydro, which they have only given a cursory glance at. To say that Canada should just keep building dams with no thought of other renewable technologies that don't cause as much ecological devastation is not the way forward. Take advantage of our geography for sure, but in a more balanced and sensible way. But politicians like the big, flashy projects.
Thank you for covering the CANDU reactor :)
Most Canadians heat their homes with natural gas, where did you get your information from?
*a lot of
In Quebec the statement is true, yes, the farther west you go it becomes more natural gas. Compared to the US, which is about 0%, Canada does it _a lot_ more
www.statcan.gc.ca/o1/en/plus/2717-heat-how-canadians-heat-their-home-during-winter
The Dominion of Canada ) (D.O.C.) created from the union of Ontario, Québec , New Brunswick and Nova Scotia on July 1rst 1867 is one huge ass country (only 2nd in the world) behind Russia).
Which means British-Columbia aka (B.C.) (1871) is not Alberta (1905) , Alberta is not Saskatchewan (1905), Saskatchewan is not Manitoba, Manitoba (1870) is not Ontario, Ontario is not Québec, Québec is not New Brunswick, New Brunswick is not Prince Edward Island (1871) , Prince Edward Island is not Nova Scotia Nova Scotia is not Newfoundland and Labarador (1949). And get me started we the territories from Yukon(1870) to Nunavut (1999) passing by today the North-West Territories which include both Yukon and Nunavut in the past.
If we have to qualified Canada as a province we should used the O.G. Canada i.e. next to the River of Canada aka the St-Lawrence River in today province of Québec. because of their cheap hydro-electricity their lack of oil field , Québecer use electricity and as their main source of power for heating. Is it wise ? or a waste of energy ! Because elsewhere in the Dominion of Canada we burn fuel to create electricity which is also a waste of energy.
@@atomicblenderuh... Your link confirms you're wrong.
It says only 25% uses electric heat... 51% is forced air... Aka gas furnace
@marcjampolsky5280 Forced air includes wood and electricity too. The source of the numbers is available on the page provided. The source can be modified to include the breakdown of the energy type. It can also summarize the energy type. Looking at just the totals by energy type, electricity is 44% steadily increasing since 2017 where natural gas (44%), oil (3%), and wood (2%) has decreased, and Propane (2%) has remained steady. It is safe to assume electricity will become the primary energy type within the next 5-10 years.
Rofl.... Forced air in Canada is almost entirely natural gas...
And you didn't say IN THE FUTURE... Just accept that you made an error already because as of now, it seems more like it was a blatant lie
Let's be honest, the whole western world is currently failing at leading. Western world's been talking a big game and slacking on for a long time
I hope you’re not comparing us, to increasingly coal burning China.
they are destroying our economies and we let them for the sake of environmentalism and the ''good guys'' image...
Good on you Canada
Bring this type of investment to Austraila
1000%
I would like to ask an honest question as someone who has no vested interest in any side of the argument:
Why is nuclear energy presented as being ‘clean’ energy when the end result is nuclear waste that we can do nothing with aside from burying in a hole somewhere?
There is a growing global stockpile of nuclear waste - definitely not something that by any metric could be considered ‘clean’.
While claims of newer, more efficient technology is being developed, the reality of it likely being the costlier option means it likely won’t be the option that gets implemented.
While there may not be air pollution coming out of a nuclear facility, the nuclear waste remains a huge, ignored problem that isn’t being discussed.
I mean it isn’t really a huge problem. The way nuclear waste is stored is incredibly safe and won’t leak, so the fact it just stays in place is great because we know exactly where it all is and how much. It also decays naturally over time so eventually becomes inert. I recommend watching Kyle Hill, he is a nuclear advocate and has done a video where he actually kisses a nuclear waste storage container!
Energy is not a federal jurisdiction in Canada. All the individual provinces have their own plan on how they want their energy sector to work, with different regulations in each province. A Canadian nuclear plan doesn’t mean anything in that context. Quebec for example is fairly opposed to nuclear power and decommissioned its only nuclear power plant after fukushima
RIP Gentilly-2
Maybe video about integral fast reactor that was canceled in 1990s?
Personally I think we should do district heating with nuclear
It’s because we don’t have laws in regards to zero recycling of nuclear material
Canada is also a major contributor to the geniva hand book. It is in all of our best intrest that hey have a good supply of beer and the hocky season runs long.
Bad pun. CANDU. "Can do". Congratulations, Canada. But going forward, I'm even wondering whether Canada would be a good place to test new reactor designs? Great place for startups. And then if it works out, propagate it to the rest of the world. Canada seems pretty nuclear friendly.
Chalk River lab is offering space for a few companies to test their designs, so they're open to it.
And you don't like my puns?! 🙃
Short for Canadian Duterium reactor.
how about a organically cooled heavy water moderated reactor?
An oil cooled reactor as test item was done in the past I recall. So possible in a werid way...
@@JarViKK_gaming yeah they had one in Canada and one in the US it used pcb's for oil lol
Having spent 20 years around Canadian nuclear from the time when everyone was screaming “ shut down the ‘A’ side ! “, to the time the site Vice President had to stand on a soapbox for an impromptu speech at the four corners reassuring everyone their jobs were going to be okay…
Ahem..
The plan is and always was to spend billions on refurbishments and costly new builds which are uneconomical intentionally. Then, sell and sub-divide wholesale reactor by reactor the public asset to recover costs and interest on debt. All when they realize it’s not economical and act surprised. Just in time when everyone is forced to buy electric cars and trucks, and electricity costs many times what it does now.
Unless you think that new Extra Staff Storage Building you are walking around is going to print money on its own…
Or that decommissioning and pension liabilities are fully paid the next five decades…. also on their own…
And there won’t be any problems along the way…
On sale, everyone working there will find themselves switching hard hats and working for a private company which has yet to exist, with the hope that continued pension liabilities will be covered by the sale of the generation assets, this due to another financial collapse that has yet to happen which wipes out bundy…
I really hope this is not the plan, and that it is not what is intended to happen in other countries. But since I predicted COVID and made personal business changes well in advance to avoid that, sadly, I have yet to be wrong. :((.
Canada dont need Much electricity. Canada dont do much of Any thing Canada only Produces 150 GW the Us produces over 1144 GW, the CEO of the TVA worked for Hydro Ontario and Ontario Power Systems and Worked with Small Nuclear Reactors. When they work the TVA will build them
There's also the factor that the vast majority of Canada's oil is exported to the US of A so there's no fossil fuel lobby fighting tooth and nail to keep gas plants the preferred technology
The Alberta government IS the fossil fuel lobby
As a canadian i can say, NO most of use use natural gas for heat!
glad the place where i live know where it's at
Canada has NO enrichment technology. That means unlike with CANDU the fuel would need to be imported from the US or France.
Im Canadian, but ill say this without apologizing, too many ads.
Could we put one of these reactors in a home grown nuclear powered submarine for our Royal Canadian Navy? If yes then let’s get on with it.
Could you please do a video on molten salt reactors? How do they work? Is the steam generated by them hotter than convetional nuclear reactors and if so, could you use the steam for high temperature electrolysis to make clean hydrogen cheaper? And if hydrogen production is viable, would it make the running of the nuclear power plant more economical? Could Germanys shut down nuclear power plants be converted to molten salt ones and thereby save some of the construction cost? If so how much could be saved?
Ukraine in nuclear energy leaderboard? Not USA, France and Russia, but Ukraine?
Just haven't made those videos yet. Stay tuned!
Ukraine operates 4 nuclear power plants with 15 reactors, total capacity is over 13 GWe. In 2021, Ukraine's nuclear reactors produced 81 TWh - over 55% electricity 2nd-highest share (%-wise) in the world, behind only France. Ukraine is planning to build 4 more reactors, possibly 6.
So yeah, Ukraine deserves a high slot on the leaderboard.
Ukraine would be far further along if it weren't for the invasion.
@@factnotfiction5915 I'm sure the share is a lot lower now because ZNPP has been shutdown for 2 years now. I'm pretty worried it might have to be permanently shutdown after the war due to the shelling of the containment structures.
Alberta is going to build SMRs to use in the oil sands to produce steam to extract oil and cause environmentalists to have a total mental breakdown.
Polite??? Here, we give zero tabernacs...trust me, we're not as polite as it seems.
Minor nit pick- we get 15% of our power from Nuclear. Not 13%. Not sure where you got that stat but the Canada energy regulator makes stats like this publicly available and they also have super awesome graphs
How can you be overly polite? Are Americans overly rude?
If you don't apologize for getting to a door at the same time as someone else and then have a back and forth about who should go first, you're rude by Canadian standards. I'm not exaggerating, btw. We do that a dozen times a day.
Does a Candu reactor extract more or less energy per unit of uranium mined? They might be able to make use of more uranium without enriching it, but I can't imagine that it gives them more energy per unit of fuel. How efficiently does this system utilize our limited reserves of Uranium?
It can literally use reprocessed nuclear waste from pwr reactors; candu is not that picky about fuel. What it needs is heavy water and lots of it. Each reactor needs ~500 tonnes of heavy water costing. At $115k cad / tonne that is ~56 million dollars per reactor.
@@ccibinel Is that a one-time purchase or a yearly thing? Heavy water may be pricey, but it's also one of those things that we're not worried about running out of, considering how many billions of tons of it there are on Earth.
@@SerialSnowmanKiller it is not consumed but leaks happen and processes to minimize loss are needed. Another interesting thing of candu is our produces tritium which is critical to fusion research
Candu reactors can use thorium too
From my perspective Canada has been better on nuclear power for at least the last 40 years. As far as I know though this has mostly ended. My buddy grew up in Deep River and his Dad (nuclear physicist) worked on CANDU, research and development ended a long time ago and has trended down ever since.
Nuclear is extremely unpopular here among the general population. I don't see Canada's nuclear outlook being very good for the next 20 years, despite what you've said here.
Bunch of other factual errors as well. Natural gas heating is common here, even in eastern Canada/Quebec. Electric heating is not cheaper, but is more common simply due to lower upfront cost.
I'd agree traditional nuclear in Canada has been on decline for a long time with not much active investment. That was why I included it in the video.
However, I'd disagree on the other two points. Over half of Canadians surveyed last year supported nuclear www.ipsos.com/en-ca/over-half-canadians-support-using-nuclear-energy-to-generate-electricity
And heating sources vary depending where people live. In Quebec, it is mostly electric. Elsewhere is mixed. But my point is compared to the US (basically 0%), it's way higher
www.statcan.gc.ca/o1/en/plus/2717-heat-how-canadians-heat-their-home-during-winter
I would like to add that you are actually wrong, most people heat their houses with gas, I’m not sure how true it is but many people say that gas heating is better at dealing with the cold
I mean can you blame a country with access to the st lawrence and great lakes for using hydro power?
The Great Lakes aren't much use for generating power, except Niagara. The big hydro projects are in the Canadian Shield up north, where the rivers have steep valleys and granite geology. A lot of smaller rivers have dams and hydro plants on them, too. The central Prairies have a few dams, but the rivers there are wide, shallow, and muddy.
Over all - a good video, but perhaps you should have been a little more open about the downsides of each reactor design. Nice as it is - the CANDU reactor does have a couple of problems. Its use of low-enrichment fuel means that an individual element only lasts a few weeks. The online refueling system was a necessity to operate for longer than a month at a time, not intentionally an innovation to outlast other designs. The low enrichment also means that they need to use Heavy Water (hence the DU in the name Canada deuterium [oxide] Uranium) which is not particularly cheap. And since you're burning through bundles quickly - you're producing high-level waste at a faster than usual clip.
Bundles are burned how quickly? ISTR that the life time of a Candu fuel bundle is about 1 year. The bundles are shuffled continuously and automatically in order to moderate the flux in the core. The reactor does not require shut down to accomplish this.
Other reactor types seem to require complete shut down and refuelling every 3 years or so.
@@BasementEngineer Well that is the catch. The trade-off of a CANDU is that you run on a lower grade of fuel, and will need more of it - but you can skip the steps of refining it beforehand. Whether this saved money in the long run seems to vary depending on which agency is doing the accounting.
As I understand - in most US designed BWR and PWR civil reactors you have you have fuel elements that are about thirty to forty feet long zirconium alloy tubes that in turn contain the pellets of sintered uranium powder (of around 3.5% enrichment) coated with hard ceramic. These long tubes are in square bundles of several dozen, have an optimal life of about thirteen to twenty months, and can then be shuffled around to ensure more optimal burn-up, for a usual operating life of three years to six years. (Fuel is still present, but is becoming more diffuse, along with a build of fission products, so efficiency drops off at that point, but with reprocessing everything could be recycled). Eia.gov claims: Typically, reactor operators change out about one-third of the reactor core (40 to 90 fuel assemblies) every 12 to 24 months.
In a candu, your fuel bundles are much smaller - the fuel element is about 50 centimeters long and ten wide - with multiple elements in each pressure tube. Within these bundles the fuel pellets are similar to the pellets in a US reactor, but the enrichment level is 0.72% Naturally the working life of any singular fuel bundle is a few weeks. They can be fed through the reactor without stopping power production. A customer won't see a change in output, as elements are cycled through, but the plant needs to be delivered fuel every week, rather than once a year.
Taken from Cna.ca:
"A CANDU 6 reactor typically has 380 fuel channels. Each channel has 12 fuel bundles which means at any given time, a reactor has approximately 4,560 fuel bundles.
Each week, approximately 60 new fuel bundles are put into the reactor. The fuel in the reactor is completely replaced roughly every 18 months."
Just the fact that natural uranium contains less U-235 than processed material should indicate a lower life span. And its designed around an open fuel cycle, as opposed to having nuclear reprocessing to make new fuel from old. CANDU replaces the whole core in 18 months, a US BWR switches out 1/3 of its fuel in that time.
there are definitely places here where people use electricity to heat their homes but it certainly is not the norm. at .32/kwh its way too expensive in most places in canada.
Where do you pay $0.32/KWh? I live in Ontario and pay Hydro One rates. I use an air source heat pump to heat my house (uses electricity). It's a similar cost to Natural Gas and FAR less expensive than Propane or Diesel.
i just looked it up, your on-peak is not that different, 28.6 kwh, so averaged and weighted for different time brackets your looking at a normalised cost of ~21c/kwh. abit lower, but still quite high for normalised average when its clearly possible to drive cost below 10c/kwh pretty easily, there are even examples of sub 6c/kwh.... how do we have one of the best electricity infrastructures but pay some of the highest rates outside of Europe?
@@erikstephens34 also a heat pump is not the same as electric heating, look into how heat pumps work.... way more efficient than say electric furnace or base board..
@@3ddan148 I'm an engineer that works for a company that makes electric heating devices. I know exactly how they work. Yes a heat pump is more efficient (mostly moving heat instead of making it). But still uses electricity as its basis to make it work.
@@erikstephens34 difference is it moves heat, not necessarily produces heat, as a engineer you surely understand the difference. the only heat produced is technically waste heat by the pump itself, which is not nearly close to the total amount of heat a heat pump can move in or out of your house.
the nuclear industry has been technologically stagnate since its inception. It was preferable to go all in on an inappropriate design method than spend money on a better one. The old method was meant for a submarine, not a national power grid. Burning off spent fuel should be a more primary concern than producing weapon's grade material.
Where have all the insects gone?
Rating the nuclear share a 4 based purely on how much nuclear power is generated seems asinine and stupid. For several provinces Hydropower makes the bulk as you mentioned, why is it bad that alternative carbon neutral sources are used? What you SHOULD be rating is how much share of LNG and fossil fuels could be replaced by Nuclear.
As a Canadian I can say that if you are heating with electricity you are going broke. The only reason rural and remote areas heat with electricity is because the gas network does not reach them.
Canada has been a pioneer in nuclear power since the inception of nuclear energy, essentially helping to invent it.
Not invent, but develop.
We even had the world's first nuclear reactor accident, at Chalk River in 1952.
Whoaaaaa! Go easy on the maple syrup dude. You have work your way to that much maple syrup at a time.
Did you do some research at all?
There's not much wrong with the CANDU technology. All it really needs is to be modernized. Some of the newer technologies are de novo designs that haven't yet been tested enough.
The other downside is that well-trained operators who are very experienced with CANDU technologies will have to be re-trained how to work with new reactor designs.
Why re-invent the wheel?
most Canadians do not heat their homes with electricity far too expensive we use natural gas the most.
You really need to do better research. Natural gas is way cheaper to heat a home than electricity in Canada.
Depends on your local electricity cost
Depends if you are in a province that pipes natural gas to your house. The rocky terrain of the maritimes does not make this an option and tanks/fuel/maintenance have historically meant wood/electric, but there is a recent push for electric heatpumps.
This is true, fortunately I live in the populated side of BC where electricity costs are comparatively lower than other parts of the country. But our northern rural population will likely be relying on natural gas for a while.
BC btw is powered by 95% renewable energy, something like 80-90% of that being Hydro.
Unrelated rant:
And like any good Canadian crown corp, BC Hydro blows! They shut off our electricity without warning for no reason one day and we had to argue with them to turn it back on. Paying customers for 40 years my family is. Apparently that didn't matter to customer service and certainly not the machine that automatically did that LOL.
Correct, Stats Can says 25%, mostly Quebec and Maritimes. Quebec gets almost free electricity from Churchill Falls, Labrador. Quebec also has highest users of residential wood stoves.
Yet America imports the most amount of Oil from Canada...
Cando reactor awesome 👍
Elizabeth Tsurkov still in captive by Iran
I mean if we have nuclear fission technology and we can keep the chain reactions under control then why not just use it?
Why go along with oil and gas lobby?
As for radioactive waste I think dumping several meters deep underground and or just dumping it in the deepest ocean could solve the problem because eventually it will lose its radioactivity and will become stable… It might make the oceans a little radioactive but it will all stabilize eventually…
Nuclear energy has its pros n cons but every energy does and for now nuclear energy by far is the most feasible…
CANDU can do. One of the best nuclear power technologies available.
Public opinion on big reactors is still not ideal, thats why they're chosing smr's. Because people vew it as less bad and more innovative, and they really need public support
So you are telling me Canada can have nukes??
When are we going to show an example of "sorry, not sorry" to our adversaries?
Disappointing. I was hoping for something more substantial than a marketing video riddled with half and a few zero truths. I give it a 2.5, putting it a long way down the leader board.
You failed to really look at SNRs and Thorium MSRs. So this review is very narrow .
Why Canada experienced nuclear stagnation is simple: we did not need more nukes. The fact is, we had a surplus of power that we sold off to the US. Now, we are in more demand of power as a nation.
The reason Canada is uniquely positioned to lead nuclear energy is based on their refurbishment efforts. By the 2030s, Canada would have refurbished not less than 12 CANDU reactors, which will power Ontario into the late 2060s. More refurbishments in Ontario, and builds around the country, increase the country's greatest asset in the nuclear industry: experience. Leaders in design, engineering, and construction are being forged year-after-year and will position Canada as a top-notch nuclear expert for years to come.
Yes, Canada will eventually abandon the CANDU for the SMR models, which are smaller and much faster to construct/assemble. Soon, nuclear energy will be from coast to coast to coast in Canada.
Canada is a nuclear energy superpower and will go down in history as nuclear trailblazers.
How much are advantage of the can do reactor is fuel flexibility I can take thorium fuel as well as American used fuel. Nuclear should be used in Alberta for oil sands development how to replacement of coal fired power plants process heat can be used as well. Using natural gases expensive the long-term natural gas supply in Canada is not assured
wait a second....i maintenance needing to be done roughly every 20 YEARS really a problem for a plant that can practically refuel on the fly the entire time an actual problem or just something to complain about? all you have to do is build more (which is what they want to do anyway) and stagger maintenance periods, it would be nice if we could just fix the issue (green energy and increassing overall power generation) instead of experimenting during a "crisis"...... and i found out awhile back that Canada exported Nuclear tech but didn't know how far/wide.... i guess that the CANDU spirit 😅
There's regular maintenance that lasts a few weeks (inspections, overhauling pumps, valves, cleaning, etc.) done about once a year; and then every ~20 years there are refurbishments that last months (pressure tube replacement, other big component replacements)
Abandoning your domestic technology for foreign imported technology is insane. This is what happens when you're not a sovereign nation
Yes, this is sad. IMO, politicians should never be in charge with managing any industry (e.g. nuclear, medicine, etc.).
As much as I love the CANDU design it has more flaws than just the unintentional extended downtime mentioned. For one the heavy water it uses is very expensive and produces a ton of tritium, a radioactive hydrogen isotope. Another is a slight positive power factor, meaning if the reactor gets hotter the reactivity goes up. For that reason it's not certified as safe in the US.
@@12pentaborane: The US would never certify anything that wasn't US-designed and built, no matter what. That said, US's lack of nodding approvals doesn't make CANDU reactors any worse than anybody else's designs.
@@josdesouza I agree but I only know of the CANDU and RBMK with positive feedback mechanisms like that. I think that for CANDU it happens towards the end of the fuel cycle on natural uranium. From what I've heard it's the reason they're switching to HALEU fuel, so they can run the fuel longer.
Edit: I'm wrong on the last part, that was a company in the US getting approval to make Th+HALEU to use in CANDU.
Canada deferred the refinement of uranium 235 from the mostly uranium 238 mined to assure the US that Canada would not be a nuclear power without the US's involvement. It's like how we condemn the sale of commercial centrifuges to Iran because we don't want them to be able to refine weapons grade uranium on their own.
CANDU plants were originally projected to last over 40 years. However, on average, they have to be "refurbished" after only 23 years. During this procedure they are totally shut down - for up to a few years. Refurbishment costs are roughly equal to the original capital costs = several $ billion. Recent experience with New Brunswick's single CANDU reactor underlines these serious technological, unreliability, and economic issues.
Properly operated they are quite reliable.
The high cost of refurbishing is due to the cost effectiveness of those power plants. The cost of refurbishing includes the cost of the replacement energy by other means.