"If our goal is to double our grid and build a low-carbon economy in less than 25 years, there is no credible plan to do that without nuclear energy and the clean, reliable baseload power it provides,"
Reduction in burning carbon and producing greenhouses is the number one concern of environmentalists and is a major driver of the increased acceptability of nuclear power production, especially if safety concerns are met. Also from the article:
> Unlike most other nuclear reactors, Candu reactors don't require enriched uranium. Ottawa says Western allies are turning away from Russia, one of the world's key suppliers of enriched uranium.
The problem of course is that safety has costs and people cut corners, leading to events like Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima.
Reduction in burning carbon and producing greenhouses is the number one concern of environmentalists
Is it?
Nothing is more environmentally friendly than hydroelectric dams. In Canada, there are endless rivers to dam, while also leaving endless rivers undammed. Further, damming a river doesn't destroy nature, it does however turn a river into a lake. Over the years it takes to build and complete the project, including the initial flooding, some species leave, new species take their place, and a healthy ecosystem remains.
Yet dams are attacked with a ferocity in this country, as if somehow having a dam is worse than a coal power plant. And while nuclear is great, we're therefore left with nuclear power, and all the outcome if that goes wrong, because using 0.0000001% of our rivers to build a few more dams, is "bad" for the environment.
Canada is massive.
I'm sure someone will want to reply with how horrible dams are, the concrete and carbon cost of concrete. Yet what's really the problem is that some want nothing ever built. Not a single method of new power generation, ever.
And so? This is what we end up with. Nuclear it is.
The concrete is a small part of the problem. Flooding gigantic areas and stopping the natural water flow have serious consequences for widelife, but most people don't care enough.
Actually, I addressed that in my comment. There are no real serious consequences for wildlife, instead, the local ecosystem changes and different wildlife moves in.
You do realise that rivers are constantly shifting, disappearing, lakes forming and disappearing, that none of this is static, yes?
I do. There is quite the delta between a immense & sudden reservoir and a meandering river shifting its (otherwise similarly sized, and unintterrupted) bed over decades.
I'm not even touching on the human concerns regarding population displacement.
> Reduction in burning carbon and producing greenhouses is the number one concern of environmentalists and is a major driver of the increased acceptability of nuclear power production
Right, and that's my point. The ability to make clean energy with nuclear is not a new idea, that was the argument for nuclear all along.
No, that was not your point. I refuted your claim "the general opinion on nuclear swing so far from environmental and safety concerns" -- it hasn't swung.
> The ability to make clean energy with nuclear is not a new idea, that was the argument for nuclear all along.
It was one argument at some point but hardly "the" argument "all along", nor the major argument, nor the primary motivating argument. The initial arguments were about "atoms for peace", electricity "too cheap to meter", and independence from foreign oil. Global warming wasn't even an issue until James Hanson's Congressional testimony in 1988.
"If our goal is to double our grid and build a low-carbon economy in less than 25 years, there is no credible plan to do that without nuclear energy and the clean, reliable baseload power it provides,"
Reduction in burning carbon and producing greenhouses is the number one concern of environmentalists and is a major driver of the increased acceptability of nuclear power production, especially if safety concerns are met. Also from the article:
> Unlike most other nuclear reactors, Candu reactors don't require enriched uranium. Ottawa says Western allies are turning away from Russia, one of the world's key suppliers of enriched uranium.
The problem of course is that safety has costs and people cut corners, leading to events like Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima.