Wednesday Update – Japan

The Canadian Nuclear Association, which is monitoring events in Japan closely, reports the situation is fluid. International reaction regarding domestic nuclear programs is mixed, with some countries calling for temporary halts to new construction pending assessments of existing facilities.

Updates are also provided by the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission.

Seawater continues to be pumped into Fukushima Dai-ichi Units 1, 2, and 3. Partial melting of the reactor cores at Units 1 and 3 is feared as is potential meltdown at Unit 2. It is now thought that damage to the containment structures is likely at Units 2 and 3.

High levels of radiation from Unit 3 forced workers to retreat temporarily to a safe area of the complex, but work continued one the radiation spike subsided.

The Canadian government reports that radiation from the disaster poses no threat to Canadians.

Nuclear Crisis in Japan – Could It Happen in Canada?

While one can never say never; one can say that it would be very highly unlikely.

For one thing, Japan is situated on the most active part of the Ring of Fire, a 40,000-kilometre band circumscribing the Pacific Ocean from South America northward to the Aleutian Islands and southward to the Philippines. The Ring of Fire is defined by tectonic plate boundaries and the inherent volcano and earthquake activity. In fact, about 80 per cent of the world`s earthquakes occur along the ring.

And while Canada`s west coast is part of the Ring of Fire, Canada`s nuclear power plants are all on the other side of the country. Ontario has three plants with a total of 16 operating reactors, Quebec has one plant with one reactor and New Brunswick has one plant with one reactor, which is currently being refurbished.

Despite the fact that this area of the country is relatively stable geologically, all of Canada`s nuclear plants are designed to withstand the strongest earthquake likely to occur in 1,000 years. Case in point, the 2010 earthquake that stuck 60 kilometres north of Ottawa measured 5.0 on the Richter Scale, but had no effect on any of the nuclear plants in Canada.

As well, tsunamis are very unlikely to form in the Great Lakes.

Geography and geology aside, nuclear power plant reactors in Canada are all CANDU reactors, which are designed with numerous safety features, each equipped with independent back-up systems.

Nuclear Power In Canada – Facilities and Philosophies

One thing the provinces of Canada don’t share is consensus on nuclear power generation. Three provinces, British Columbia, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador have passed legislation prohibiting nuclear generation.

Despite Saskatchewan being the third largest producer of uranium in the world, providing more than 20 per cent of global supply, it has no plans for nuclear power, but it hasn’t banned it outright.

Future projects in Manitoba include three hydropower projects in early planning stages. Nuclear power is not part of the plan.

Prince Edward Island’s (1.4MB PDF) 2008 energy strategy focuses on renewable energy sources such as biomass, biofuels and wind as well as imported petroleum products. No mention is made of nuclear power going forward.

After appointing an expert panel and conducting public consultation, Alberta decided to treat nuclear power as it does all types of electricity projects. Because the province has a deregulated electricity system, any generation project proposed by private sector is considered on a case-by-case basis. The government does not have a position on nuclear power, nor does it subsidize any type of power. Once an application is submitted, the project is subject to a rigorous approval process which includes public consultation. The government essentially has no role until an application is submitted.

Nuclear power has been a fixture in Ontario‘s energy plan (660MB PDF) since the late 1950s when Ontario Hydro and Atomic Energy of Canada Limited began planning the Douglas Point Nuclear Generating Station. Douglas Point was the first commercial nuclear power station in Canada, and operated from 1968 to 1984 before being decommissioned.

The eight units at the Pickering Nuclear Power Station were put into service between 1971 and 1986. Pickering A consists of four 515-megawatt units, of which two are in safe storage. Pickering B consists of four 516-megawatt units, all of which are operational.

The eight units at the Bruce Nuclear Power Station were put into service between 1977 and 1986. Bruce A consists of four 750-megawatt units, of which two are being refurbished. Bruce B consists of one 790-megawatt unit, two 822-megawatt units and one 806-megawatt unit, all of which are operational.

The four units at Darlington Nuclear Power Station were put into service between 1982 and 1993. The facility consists of four 881-megawatt units, all of which are operational.

Nuclear power currently supplies about 57 per cent of Ontario’s total generation.

The Ontario government is committed to clean, reliable nuclear power remaining at approximately 50 per cent of the province’s electricity supply. To do so, units at the Darlington and Bruce sites will need to be modernized and the province will need two new nuclear units at Darlington. Investing in refurbishment and extending the life of the Pickering B station until 2020 will provide good value for Ontarians.

The first nuclear reactor built in Quebec, Gentilly-1, operated, somewhat problematically, from 1971 to 1977. Gentilly-2, a 635-megawatt CANDU reactor was put into service in 1983. It has operated since then, but is scheduled for refurbishment in 2012 to extend its operational life to 2035.

Gentilly-3 was planned, along with several other reactors, but a moratorium on further development was put in place in 1978 while Gentilly-2 was already under construction. The moratorium has since been lifted.

Nuclear power only provides less than three per cent of Quebec’s electricity, with hydropower providing about 97 per cent, so it has been argued that nuclear power could be replaced by renewables.

New Brunswick: The Point Lepreau Nuclear Power Station is New Brunswick’s first and only nuclear power facility. The unit is a 630-megawatt CANDU 6 reactor put into service in 1983. In recent years it generated up to 35 per cent of New Brunswick’s electricity.

Refurbishment of the reactor began in April 2008 and was expected to be completed by the end of September 2009, but is now scheduled for completion in May 2012. In the meantime, the province is investigating the feasibility of building a second reactor at Point Lepreau.

Opportunity Lost?

After a few years in the doldrums, the global nuclear power industry is alive and well once again. Nuclear power’s emissions-free electricity is driving a renaissance with 61 nuclear power plants currently under construction and another 158 in the planning stage.

Unfortunately Canada, a country with a long and successful nuclear history, may miss out.

The problem is the uncertain future of Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL). Between November 2007 and May 2009, AECL underwent a review by Natural Resources Canada to determine if “AECL’s structure as a Crown Corporation best equips it, its employees and ultimately the Canadian nuclear industry to participate fully in the expanding global nuclear market.”

The findings of the review were announced in May 2009 and in a statement, Lisa Raitt, Minister of Natural Resources at the time, said “AECL’s current mandate and structure hampers its success and development and does not maximize benefits for Canada.” As well, the review found that the CANDU division is “too small to establish a strong presence globally in the high-growth markets that are key to its success.” Subsequently, Minister Raitt, announced the CANDU division was up for sale.

Despite “significant private sector interest in AECL’s commercial operations”, after 15 months of being on the block, only two Canadian companies and no foreign companies have made bids. The Canadian bids were unsuccessful.

Meanwhile, because of AECL’s in-limbo status, interest in CANDU reactors from Ontario, Argentina and Romania aren’t being addressed.

Uranium Present and Past

The global uranium market has had three different drivers since the mineral’s commercial value was recognized in the early 1900s.

Demand for radium, an element often found with uranium, was the initial driver. Radium was used in the treatment of cancer. In 1931, uranium with radium was found near Echo Bay on the east shore of Great Bear Lake in the Northwest Territories. The Eldorado Mine at nearby Radium City, produced from 1933 to 1940.

From the 1940s until the mid-1960s, uranium demand was driven by the development of atomic weapons. The Eldorado mine re-opened in 1942 and mines were developed at Uranium City, Saskatchewan in 1952; Elliot Lake, Ontario in 1954; and Bancroft, Ontario in 1956. The Bancroft mines closed in 1964 when the military use of uranium declined.

In the late 1960s, use of uranium in nuclear power plants drove the market. Three mines at Bancroft reopened from 1972 to 1982. At its peak, Uranium City had more than 50 mines and open pits, but by 1983, the mines had all closed. Twelve mines at Elliot Lake produced a total of 550,000 tonnes of U₃O₈ from 1954 to 1996, when the ore ran out.

Currently, all Canadian production comes form three mines in north-central Saskatchewan. In 2009, this totalled 12,020 tonnes of U₃O₈, about 20 per cent of global production, second only to Kazakhstan.

Canada reserves of uranium totalled 287,350 tonnes of U₃O₈ in 2009, fifth largest in the world overall. However, Canadian is considered to have the largest reserves of high-grade natural uranium.

Image: esask.uregina.ca

Nuclear Power – It’s the New Black, Again

The idea for using nuclear power to generate electricity was still fairly avant-garde in 1953 when President Eisenhower announced his “Atoms for Peace” program. Prior to the program, nuclear research had been primarily focused on weapons. And electricity was mainly fuelled by coal.

In 1954, the Russians were the first to go on line with nuclear powered electricity generation, using a  five-megawatt reactor at the Institute of Physics and Power Engineering in Obninsk. England built the first commercial-scale power plant at Calder Hall. The first of its four 50-megawatt reactors went online in 1956. Calder Hall provided electricity for 47 years and was shut down in 2003.

Another seven reactors began generating electricity in the late 1950s. Suddenly, nuclear power was all the rage. The United States was the pace setter with 85 reactors by the end of the 1970s. Canada (CNA 1960-2010, 2.5MB PDF) built 20 in Ontario, and one each in Quebec and New Brunswick. World-wide, 42 new reactors came on line in 1985 alone.

But by the 1990s, the number of reactors being built had dropped significantly. Some blame the accidents at Three Mile Island in 1979 and Chernobyl in 1986 but, because it takes up to 15 years to plan and build a nuclear power plant, decisions regarding the future of nuclear power were actually made in the mid-1970s. The primary concerns focused on reactor safety, accumulating nuclear waste and proliferation of nuclear weapons. Nuclear power became soooo passé.

Angst, like fashion, changes with time. Fears of nuclear Armageddon and atomic waste gave way to concerns about climate change and greenhouse gasses. But electricity generation from nuclear power doesn’t emit GHGs. By 2000, nuclear power was chic once again.

Sort of. It all depends on where you are. Of the 61 nuclear power plants currently under construction, 27 are in China, 10 are in Russia and six are in India. Only three are in the Western Hemisphere. Of the 158 in the planning stage, 50 are in China, 18 are in India, 14 are in Russia and nine are in the United States. The west is no longer the trend setter.

New, New Brunswick

On the heels of Ontario’s public consultation to determine its own Long-Term Energy Plan, New Brunswick recently appointed  a commission tasked with developing a long-term plan for the province’s energy. The commission comes after a September election in which the governing Liberals were replaced by the Progressive Conservatives.

Under the Liberals, New Brunswick had only begun to formulate an energy plan, notwithstanding the province’s complementary Climate Change Action Plan. Appropriately, the election that ousted provincial government hinged on energy — the (ultimately aborted) sale of NB Power to Hydro Quebec. Now the province will try to determine its 10-year plan.

As opposition leader, David Alaward had maintained that he would wait six months before making any major decisions on a provincial energy plan. Seems like a while? Consider: that the commission will face a task that was called “immense” by the co-authors of the report that forms the basis for the government’s consultation, The Path Forward – Shaping New Brunswick’s Energy Future.

And the provincial energy strategy isn’t the only energy-related news from New Brunswick. One day before, NB Power announced that the $1.4-billion refurbishment of the Point Lepreau nuclear plant has been delayed until the fall of 2012, when the facility will go back online.  Leave it to a coastal province to make waves.

Sorry, Gentilly

CANDU nuclear reactors have been operating in Canada for more than 48 years, beginning in 1962 with the Nuclear Power Demonstration (NPD), in Rolphton, Ontario. Since then the country has had a long history with nuclear power, and its total installed capacity has grown to 12,612 megawatts.

With a long history, though, it’s no surprise that the country’s five nuclear plants have to get a little work done every now and then to keep them in ship shape. But as with a lot of work, it doesn’t always happen on the chosen schedule. Quebec, for example, recently announced that its only nuclear power plant would have to wait a year for its planned refurbishment.

Hydro-Québec has decided to postpone the start of refurbishing work at the 25-year-old Gentilly-2 nuclear generating station from 2011 until 2012. According to Hydro-Québec’s press release, the delayed refurbishment is due to other similar projects currently underway in New Brunswick (Point Lepreau generating station)  and Wolsong, South Korea. According to Atomic Energy of Canada Limited, there are currently 48 reactors based on the CANDU design in operation, under construction, or under refurbishment worldwide.

Gentilly-2 is still the only nuclear facility in Quebec, and because of Quebec’s heavy reliance on hydropower, don’t expect the shutdown of a 675-MW plant to cripple the la belle province — Gentilly-2 only represents about 3 per cent of the province’s electricity generation. The remaining 97 per cent comes virtually entirely from hydroelectric dams. So, while the refurbishment might have hit a slight hiccup, it’s hardly the end of the world. The old girl needs work, but she can wait another year.

Check out The Canadian Centre for Energy Information’s main page for a complete list of Canada’s nuclear power facilities.

A Nuclear Neighbourhood

Canada is still wrangling with its own nuclear future. For example, while Alberta has said that it will evaluate all private nuclear projects on a case-by-case basis, British Columbia has a standing policy of no nuclear power plants in the province. Federally regulated by the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, there hasn’t actually been a new nuclear plant built in Canada in decades, and Bruce Power recently folded its own plans for a pair of new reactors in Ontario. At present, Ontario, New Brunswick and Quebec are the only three provinces to produce electricity from nuclear power.

But imagine if it didn’t take millions of dollars to create a nuclear reactor. Imagine if they could be built right in our own backyards. That’s exactly what a group of 37 hobbyists in the United States have done — creating fusion reactors the size of air conditioners — with the most recent being built in Manhattan.

Fuelled by deuterium gas, the reactor itself actually contains no fissile materials (so there’s no danger of a Three Mile Island-style meltdown). But more important to the future of electricity generation, the reactor still isn’t at the break-even point, requiring more energy to run than it ends up producing. Still, its creator, Mark Suppes, is optimistic that one day he’ll be able to create a prototype that will at least break even. After that, who knows?

Decentralized power is definitely one of the most talked-about changes that we’re likely to see in our energy systems. One day, all our homes will be capable of generating their own electricity and selling it back to the grid. But it tends to be a lot easier to sell that concept to consumers when we’re talking about wind and solar. There’s always been something about nuclear power in our backyards that makes people a little more cautious.

Via Popular Science

Nuclear power: In the crosshairs at a crossroads?

Natural Resources Minister Lisa Raitt evidently worries that Atomic Energy of Canada Limited, a global pioneer in power reactor technology, is vulnerable.

“When it comes to the nuclear industry, I’m like a lot of Canadians – I’m proud of it,” she told an Economic Club of Canada audience recently. But that pride hasn’t blinded her to the reality that AECL, “is struggling” in an intensely challenging global market where 48 AECL-designed Candu reactors have an unrivalled safety record.

While convinced of the potential of the industry overall, Raitt said there is a critical need to reposition AECL to play a key role in meeting the growing demand for “emissions-free base load power” at home and abroad.

“The reality is, the nuclear industry is at a crossroads. In fact, it arrived here some time ago, and if we don’t adapt to global realities, the Canadian nuclear industry will move from the crossroads into the crosshairs.” Without new business models and structures, there was a serious risk of Canada’s nuclear power potential being eroded, even lost.

“Failure is not an option,” she said, explaining that current government policy has three objectives: meeting clean energy needs economically, safely and reliably; maximizing the return on Canada’s multi-billion-dollar investment in nuclear energy; and positioning the industry for growth.

“There’s new demand for clean energy, but there’s also new and very well-financed competition. Going forward, AECL needs to have a strong commercial base and access to new sources of capital, innovation, and marketing – the tools it needs to succeed.” Restructuring, she explained, means developing new partnerships which would bring additional financial, managerial, entrepreneurial and technological capacity to the industry.

“Right now, 30,000 Canadians are employed directly and indirectly in the nuclear industry, and a lot of those are highly skilled, well-paying jobs. Canada needs these jobs and I can assure you, we are determined to position the Canadian nuclear industry so these jobs are retained and more just like them are created.”

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