Hacker News Reader

Comment by cmrdporcupine | Hacker News Reader

Nuclear is appreciated here but there is definitely controversy about the usual: cost overruns and waste disposal.

e.g. refurbishement of Darlington was hundreds of millions over budget: https://globalnews.ca/news/3795801/darlington-refurbishment-...

I just came back from a few days up in Grey-Bruce and there are signs all over the place angry about the proposed NWMO waste diposal site up in Teeswater there. Very divided community about the issue. (Then again the same rough area or just east of it was extremely bitter about wind turbines some years ago, too, so can't please everyone...)

View on HN

Waste disposal is being handled. We're going to dispose of it in very deep tunnels in very geologically stable Canadian Shield rock formations.

https://www.nwmo.ca/en/Site-selection/Study-Areas

Thanks for that link. Just got back from Ontario, I'm really surprised that wind generation is so low, they have a lot of wind turbines in south western Ontario. On my hour long drive to the beach I could almost always see one. I saw lots of solar as well.

Yeah, southern Ontario is super flat and mostly farmland. It's a great place for wind to set up. Solar as well, but solar takes up so much land that would be better used as farmland.

Unfortunately, a lot of the local communities consider the wind turbines eyesores and the current Premier is against them for that reason.

there are too many wind turbines concentrated in a small area in Chatham-Kent. I agree with the community’s sentiment though i am in the pro-renewable energy camp. They look horrible because there are too many of them.

Here's a Google street view of a wind farm in Chatham-Kent:

https://www.google.ca/maps/@42.2920464,-82.2696581,3a,75y,14...

Personally, I find the overhead power lines to be far uglier. The wind turbines look cool, but are barely visible from the road.

> solar takes up so much land that would be better used as farmland.

Agrivoltaics:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agrivoltaics

Good for you. Other countries are less lucky with their search for suitable places to put their nuclear waste: https://www.dw.com/en/germany-launches-new-search-for-perman...

This article is specifically about Canadian provinces installing these reactors. Having a good solution to the waste problem is a large part of that decision.

The calculus will surely be different for somewhere else that doesn't have those solutions in place.

Exactly.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com