via CBC.
1. The article says that the plant will be a two-unit 2200-megawatt CANDU, which almost certainly means an ACR-1000.
2. Chernobyl did of course melt down, but the meltdown was incidental to the major accident, which was a burst cooling system caused by a power spike. The heat produced by the power spike burst the metal cladding around Chernobyl’s fuel rods, allowing some of the lighter already-split atoms to get into the destroyed cooling system and out into the environment. As that power spike is impossible (not improbable, but actually physically impossible) in an ACR-1000, Chernobyl isn’t relevant to the discussion.
Also not mentioned in the article is the fact that Chernobyl was designed to produce weapons-grade plutonium; no civilian reactor would be designed like that. The Chernobyl-type reactors weren’t even a “thing of the past;” they don’t belong lumped in with nuclear power plants. In most places (read: everywhere but the Soviet Union) building them was never allowed–for example, they were banned in the United States in 1950, when the first American nuclear power plant started up in 1957.
3. It really should not cost $6.2 billion. They should be able to get 12 units for that amount of money, and would be able to if someone would get going on an IFR or MSR.
4. “Nuclear has been around” for 50 years, not 30. The excellent safety record mentioned in the article also applies for 50 years, as well.
5. The Chernobyl accident killed not “countless” people, but between 50 and 4,000, according to the UN. Greenpeace’s estimate of 250,000 was obtained by drawing a line on a graph from the Japanese atomic bomb survivors’ radiation exposure and cancer rate down to zero, taking the amount of radioactive material in the reactor and, assuming that it all got out (which it didn’t) and all got to people (which it most certainly didn’t), finding that amount of radiation exposure on their graph. Voila: 250,000 deaths–which is more than the total number of people who have died in the area since, of all causes.
6. They will be applying for the Canadian equivalent of a construction permit on June 15.
7. Why the Sierra Club needs to worry about how much environmental protection will cost–and how much not killing people with coal fumes cost Ontario in terms of nuclear power plant construction costs–is beyond me.
8. Nuclear waste does not have a half-life of 50,000 years. The actual waste decays to the radioactivity of the original uranium in about 500 years; that assumes an intelligent waste policy that separates the waste from unused and half-used fuel–the half-used fuel posing the greatest long-term threat. Plus, the term “half-life” is meaningless in this context: since it is a combination of many different radioactive materials, each with its own half-life (that combination depending on the composition of the fuel and the amount of time it spends in the reactor), it can’t really be said that nuclear waste has one definite half-life.
9. No, it’s not a “quick fix” (their term). Would you rather have a quick fix or something that works? And dare I mention that suing to stop the project sort of disqualifies one from complaining about how long the project is taking?
More from Rod Adams.
Filed under Chernobyl, Economics, Environment, Financing, Health, Industry Performance, International, New Build, Physics, Politics and Regulation, Radiation, Safety
