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Comment by s0rce | Hacker News Reader

Canada has them. Pretty much the same situation

Canada is a very different case: electricity sources are 2/3 renewables, mainly hydro (~60%). Nuclear: ~15%

Canada is a big place. Depends on the area. Ontario, for instance, is almost 60% nuclear. [1] It has by far the lowest CO2 emissions per kWh in the country.

Remember, Ontario is 40% of Canada's population.

[1] https://www.cer-rec.gc.ca/en/data-analysis/energy-markets/pr...

https://www.cer-rec.gc.ca/en/data-analysis/energy-markets/pr... maybe?

Hydro is tough for a lot of reasons. It's pretty ecologically devastating, flooding large regions and turning fish into mulch. It can also produce as much climate impact as a fossil fuel plant - or more - largely due to methane and CO2 emissions from the newly flooded land. [1] I'm not 100% sure where the Quebec hydro mix actually lands due to the significant variability on a plant-by-plant basis, and I don't know if that's factored in or how it was amortized in the StatsCan link - this wholistic analysis is fairly new afaik.

I trust StatsCan though, so your point is well made.

[1] https://blogs.edf.org/energyexchange/2019/11/15/long-conside...

There are rules (releasing water...) and equipment aiming at reducing harm to aquatic life, even worst cases (migratory fishes). https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/national/habitat-conservation...

"the rate of emissions per unit of electric generation from hydropower (excluding tropical reservoirs) is much lower than for fossil fuel technologies." Source: https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML1209/ML12090A850.pdf

This is the study I was referring to re: GHG impact. It depends where and most importantly how long you run the plant. [1]

I'm not really opposed to hydro, I only responded because the impact of the creation of reservoirs is likely not factored into the headline numbers.

[1] https://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/acs.est.9b05083

Do you have a source hydro turbines “turning fish in to mulch”? I’ve been around lots of hydro projects and the main hazards for fish seemed to be either dewatering of habitat due to turbines reducing flows too quickly or I heard it is bad for them if the dam uses the spill way and makes the water all aerated

I was being a bit glib there, I just meant that it was bad for the fish. My understanding is the average mortality rate for fish passing through a dam is 1 in 5. [1]

[1] https://ec.europa.eu/research-and-innovation/en/horizon-maga...

Do people in Ontario use way less electricity than the rest of the country? If 40% of the people gets 60% of electricity from nuclear, I would expect the whole country to get at least 24% of electricity from nuclear.

Canada has a lot of mining industry, and presumably not in Ontario, perhaps it uses more energy than people?

And a fair bit of hugely energy intensive aluminum refining in Quebec (mostly hydro power)

As the comparison was set with Australia (as a whole nation), I considered Canada as such.

This is a little deceptive I think. Electricity only makes up about 17% of canada's energy use, with 75% or so of our total energy demand coming from carbon sources[1]. We mostly use natural gas for heating, while in many other places in the world it's more likely electricity is gonna be used for indoor climate control (AC, heat pumps, even resistive heating).

Yes, as electricity only globally provides at best about 25% of final energy all this is misleading when it comes to the 'big picture'.

Usage profiles are indeed pertinent: Australians probably don't need dissipate energy in order for heating as Canadians do, but even this perspective isn't easy to grasp: heating thanks to gridpower is a thing in some nations without really cold seasons, France being one.

However the subject here is a gridpower-producing nuclear reactor, this IMHO sets a perimeter.

Apart from the whole vastly-differing-amounts-of-water thing.

Nearly all of Australia's population centres are on the coast, Alice Springs being the most notable exception with a population of around 25k. And most of Australia's population is loosely clustered on or near the east coast, which already has a somewhat interconnected power grid (emphasis on sort of).

I'm aware of the population distribution.

Only WA+NT are not connected to the national grid.

The problem with having a nuclear power plant on the coast where there's sufficient reliable water is that nobody wants one in their back yard.

(Yes there's parts of the WA/NT/QLD/SA coastlines where population drops to bugger all, but they're generally less suitable for all sorts of reasons)

Putting them inland where they're still near major interstate grid connections runs into the water problem again.

Which is a problem Canada doesn't have.

The water is closed loop right? Can’t you pump or even deliver the water by truck?

(Sorry if this is really ignorant)

I'm not a Nuclear Power physicist, but you can Google up images of a whole lot of them.

There's at least one common feature that you see in all of them - the giant cooling towers, often pictured emitting large white fluffy steam clouds while they're operating.

They're also all on massive permanent rivers, lakes or the ocean.

Pumping/Delivering water for that purpose is basically not feasible.

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