Quote:
Originally Posted by bodaggin
Yes. Should note, I'm talking about building the industry, not building domestic power stations. The machine that builds the machine. The point of SMR is modularity, to ship abroad. Create an export manufacturing market to boost GDP. Factory produced reactors can hopefully beat the time and cost problems with nuclear (13yrs average to build at $0.20/kwh LCOE).
On solar, commenters are mostly right here. Solar will power 80% of the world that is nearby high sunshine hours. Canada unfortunately isn't. So solar is virtually a no-go in Nordic nations. But for most of the world, it will dominate. Especially since solar panel prices have plunged to $0.10/watt.
On that note, how about Canada getting rid of that 154% Chinese Solar panel tariff. Plz. |
I have been out of the nuclear industry for some years. However, I still follow some of what happens.
Ontario is going to have the first of the GE Hitachi SMR to come online anywhere in the world. That design borrows a lot from what GE does for submarines and aircraft carriers in the US. However this is the first civilian design. They setup an office in Toronto to do the detailed design on it. SNC Lavalin (now called AtkinsRéalis) is doing the balance of plant for that project. Ontario is encouraging that project team to use Canadian (Ontario) supply chains.
This is a very conservative industry. So the next one that gets built somewhere in the world will to the greatest extent possible use the same supply chain and get parts from the same source. No one is rewarded in this industry to take on the extra risk that comes from changing the supplier of a given part that is know to work.
So yes, Canada being first is well positioned to have follow on work even if the OEM is the US division of a Japanese company.
The problem with the SMR is it is small. It would be a good fir to Alberta or Saskatchewan. Ontario would be better served with a few larger CANDU like reactors that fields full of a large number of SMR reactors. Ontario is now talking about doing an RFP for 4 larger reactors on the scale of the CANDU.
The current CANDU design is the result of history. During the Manhattan project Canada was focused on experimenting with Heavy Water (deuterium). As a result the CANDU design is a heavy water reactor and does not require any enrichment of its fuel. The Americans were focused on enrichment and they also wanted smaller more compact cores. They ended up with light water reactors.
Domestically we can product fuel rods for CANDU reactors. We would be dependent on the US or France if we do something other than CANDU for enrichment.
Canada has a stock pile of deuterium and the infrastructure to produce more of it. Something most other countries do not have.
The other options that is "interesting" CANDU reactors can in principle support advanced fuel cycles. That is where you take spent fuel from a light water reactor (what France and US have) reprocess it and use it as fuel in a CANDU.
The light water reactors are far less flexible. You shutdown the reactor, load new fuel, then run. At the end you talk all the spent fuel out and start over again with new fuel. All the CANDUs have fueling robotics that allow you to replace fuel while the reactor is still running. In fact during operation they will move fuel around to optimize the operation.
The one problem is these are extremely expensive to build with a payback over decades. Solar and wind are cheap.
All the reactors being proposed in Ontario at this stage are on existing sites that already have nuclear reactors. The licensing is simpler in that regard.
Prev
Linear Mode
