As for refining oil in Canada, I’m with you there. Unfortunately, the feds aren’t. I think that that might bear a re-examination if Northern Gateway runs into problems similar to Keystone.

And SMRs — of course that’s a great development. But let’s remember that lots of anti-nukes love SMRs because they don’t think they will ever be deployed. And let’s also remember that PTAC (oil research lobby) is a member of the NGNP alliance, and NGNP is the nuclear technology that will transform the transportation energy economy.

This is an incredibly good outcome for Canadian Patriots as the oil can now be refined and used in Canada to replace foreign imports greatly improving Canada’s national security.

Obama’s new SMR announcement will create many thousands more man years of work in the US than Keystone ever would.

Other people are interested in applying nuclear heat to industrial processes. In particular, Jim Holm at Coal2Nuclear wants to use reactors running at about 700 Celsius to repower coal fired power plants, salvaging virtually all of the existing infrastructure, licenses and permits, and operator skills in the process. Now he’s added converting the coal that would have been burned in the plant to gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel as well, using the empty coal yards to build the new facilities. The coal infrastructure is there; he wants to use it.

I think it’s important to focus on the value of high temperature heat and think as broadly as possible about repowering our industrial heat use with nuclear. Cal Abel, who I encountered on Rod Adams’s AtomicInsights blog, has a patent pending for a high temperature heat pump using supercritical CO2 as the working fluid that could extend the use of nuclear heat beyond the 700 Celsius range as well.

Jim Holm has his favorite reactor, the liquid fluoride thorium reactor (LFTR), the NGNP group have theirs, and Brave New Climate likes the integral fast reactor (IFR). I think it’s time to acknowledge there’s room for all the reactors (and more!) and focus on the benefits and opportunities. Think of all the ways to use industrial heat, produced in compact, high powered, inherently safe, low footprint, mass produced nuclear reactors. The industry players in NGNP get the point; it’s time to spread the message further.

“those who complain… advocate the replacement of Ontario’s nuclear fleet with natural gas-fired plants”

Ontario’s nuclear fleet provides base load power.

Therefore, replacing them with NG would require a number of NG plants operating as base load.

So in response, I posted the current price of base load power from NG turbines. That’s apples-to-apples.

You don’t like my figure, fine. So you quote another one. However, as the very article you quote notes:

“except in Ontario where low capacity factors at private gas generators demand contracts at much higher levels. Those capacity factors are low because the gas plants are there to supplement the grid only during the daily peaks”

So you’re comparing baseload nuclear to peaker NG. That’s apples-to-oranges.

Throw in the cost of “renewables” by which I mean wind and solar, and the cost of that pair—renewables and gas—heads north of ten cents.

And, to repeat, we haven’t even begun to factor in the cost of CO2.

Meanwhile, we’re fretting over 0.7 cents per kWh.

Ahh yes, “these people” – why might “these people” support such a thing? Well, maybe they didn’t forget to consider the base cost of the power?

That’s because the base cost is 3.9 cents/kWh (latest numbers from NA, as quoted in the Vancouver Sun) for NG instead of 5.5 for U (the number you quote here on the blog).

Here, let me do the math for you:

3.9 + 0.8 = 4.7
5.5 + 0.7 = 6.2

4.7 < 6.2

"Then gas-fired power would cost an extra 1.6 cents per kWh"

3.9 + 1.6 = 5.5
5.5 + 0.7 = 6.2

5.5 < 6.2

That’s an odd mixture of units and conditions. Using basic inflation adjustments, they all come out around $3.50/W. For instance:

Cordoba was $420 million in 1973, and required a $130 million write-down in 1978. Applying the Bank of Canada inflation rates to those numbers gives you $1,860 and $415, for a total of $2,275 for a single 600 MWe plant. That’s about $3.8/W

Cernavoda-1 can use the 1991 number of $2.2 billion for the first 700 MWe, or about $3.2 inflation adjusted for about $4.60/W. Cernavoda-2 added another $1.2 billion ($750 CAD, $250 USD) in 2000 (this is a bit confusing, I see two sets of numbers for this), so another $1.5 billion. That brings it down to $3.25/W.

Wolsong-1 was $576.5 million in 1975, or $2,300 today, at around $3.85/W. Wolsong-2 was $1.2 billion in 1990, or about $1.8 billion today, for a 680 MWe plant at about $2.67/W combined. I can’t find pricing on 3 & 4.

Finally there’s Qinshan 1&2: $4 billion in 1996, $5.4 today, for 2x 725′s or about $3.75/W.

So the price seems pretty steady when you inflation-adjust, at around $3.50 a watt. Let’s also not forget that cost-of-capital and decommissioning (etc) roughly doubles this, which explains the $8.25/W price for Darlington-2. This is in-line with Moody’s latest numbers of ~$7/W.