Land of the Horizontal Snow Ontarios West Coast | Peter, in the interest of full disclosure, I host wind turbines in the Enbridge Wind Farm ( 110 Vestas 1.65 turbines ), Enbridge is paid 8.2 cents per kwh by the IEP. I also live 4 miles as the crow flies from Bruce Power ( 8 reactors, largest nuclear power station in the world), I have 3 kids that play hockey and most of the parents of the other players work at Bruce Power, most of them are engineers ( hockeys an expensive sport and its really only engineers and farmers that can afford to have their kids play ;) ), recently a conference was held in Toronto that looked at present electrical costs and future projections ( not the kind of conference that would have any reporters at it ). As told to me, by one of the participants, 68 % of rate increases are directly due to nuclear and natural gas, 18% of the increase was attributable to renewables and the rest was infrastructure upgrades. He also told me the future projections would almost make you puke, Ontario has 10 reactors ( 4 at Darlington and 6 at the Bruce) that need to be totally refurbished in the next 10 years. The first 2 reactors that Bruce Power refurbed took almost twice as long as projected and were just a kick in the pants off 100% over budget! I've always said cost projections by the nuclear industry are like the old Bob and Doug McKenzie skit about converting Celsius to Fahrenheit, you know, just double it and add 30 will get you pretty close.
Having said all that I am a supporter of nuclear, for base load there is nothing else viable, its just that we have never paid the real cost of it in Ontario, let alone the future costs ( a whole other story).
I also believe that the green energy act was really a convenient divergence for the Liberals. The ice storm that devastated eastern Ontario and Quebec ( I think it was 1999), the terror attacks of 911 and the black out of august 2003, gave some gut wrenching credibility to the apocalyptic thinkers that spend part of their work day, curled up rocking in the dark, in the fetal position. The government faced the reality that we had some very big eggs ( the nukes) in a fairly small basket, if you look closely at some of the operating and proposed green energy projects they are strategically placed and the government moved heaven and earth in some cases to make them happen at fairly hefty political expense! Just as a tidbit, when the reactors go off line they have very small reserve electrical generation capability and before you restart a nuke you need electrical power. The biggest problem at the Fukushima plant was they didn't have electricity to run pumps to dump water on the reactors. Oh, and they also didn't have a way to connect simple hoses into the pumps so they could douse the reactors, slight oversight!
Sorry for the length, I have learned a lot form your posts!
|
Some Realities for Renewables
