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Comment by arcticbull | Hacker News Reader

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...

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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)

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...

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

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