The biggest clean-energy news in nearly seven years broke late yesterday, when Bruce Power announced it is making steam again at Unit 2. The heat to make Unit 2′s steam comes from a 750-megawatt CANDU reactor. This machine “burns” tiny amounts of natural uranium fuel, and is one of the most efficient ways on...
Bruce Power
Three years of cheap gas spells NO RELIEF for Ontario electricity consumers
The price of North American natural gas has been ridiculously low since before the recession of 2008. In that time, the fossil component of the Ontario electricity supply essentially shifted from coal-fired power generation to gas-fired. The provincial grid still supplied mostly with nuclear, but the fossil supply is now mostly gas. As I...
Ontario’s CANDUs can be more flexible than natural gas-fired generation and hydro generation
There is a widely held belief that commercial nuclear-electric plants are only capable of baseload operation when in fact they can be more flexible than a natural gas-fired generating station. This belief has led the Ontario government to restrict nuclear generation to 50 percent of total demand, in its Long-Term Energy Plan, to avoid...
CANDU back in the game: what now?
After months of excruciating uncertainty, the CANDU situation has been resolved somewhat. As everyone predicted, SNC-Lavalin has agreed to purchase the CANDU reactor part of Atomic Energy Canada Ltd. I won’t go into the ins and outs of the deal. I’ll just focus on what needs to happen now. Assuming the deal is indeed...
Guest post by Donald Jones: “An alternative Long Term Energy Plan for Ontario—an 80/20 nuclear/hydro generation mix by 2045”
When planning Ontario’s future electricity supply mix we have to answer the question, what should we be aiming for 35 to 40 years from now, and how are we going to get there? 35-40 years because that’s when our 10,000 MW of “to be refurbished” nuclear will be decommissioned and new generation would have...
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