So the government of Ontario has decided that the future lies with nuclear power and that it will built two reactors alongside the existing plants in Darlington. Don't be surprised if the proposals that come from AECL, Westinghouse and Areva demand that four and not two reactors are built -- since Darlington has four already.
Given the history of Darlington -- a series of reactors that wound up costing six times the original projection -- I'm not sure that the site is entirely the best choice. Given the options for siting I would have picked Kincardine. Plants there along with improvements to the transmission lines from there would have been way less expensive. But the fact is regardless of where the reactors are nuclear power in itself is a real bogeyman both in terms of operating costs as well as what to do with all the waste material.
Right now, the Canadian government is considering burying all the waste somewhere in Saskatchewan -- not unlike the proposed Yucca Mountain project outside of Las Vegas. Two words: Terrorists, earthquakes.
Nuclear should be the second to last option, so-called "clean coal" being the very last. Conservation measures as well as renewable energy should have been at the top of the list. I'm very disappointed today.
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1 comment:
Whooee! Dumbass Ginty made the decision to go nuke a coupla years ago. The only big question has been where would the new reactors go. There was (still is) some discussion of utilizing the transmission corridor from Nanticoke and putting a new nuke here in my backyard. There's some grassroots opposition but they got piddly-all by way of resources compared to the billions in subsidies we give away to the nuke industry. Then, the nuke industry uses our own money to lobby Ginty and his buncha flunkies.
The worst part of the whole thing is that it robs money from real, practical, quickly-implementable green solutions. Tens of billions going into nuke development makes the same size headlines as a paltry few million going into alternatives.
JB
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