[throw0101c]

> Do you trust that any of today's politicians will not be poor at nuclear reactor design and management?

As someone who lives in Ontario, Canada, where 50% of all electricity currently comes from nuclear power:

* https://www.ieso.ca/power-data?type=supply

I have no problem with getting more CANDU reactors (which is the current plan).

[bryanlarsen]

As an Ontarian, I love CANDU.

As an Ontarian, the thought of spending $500B on a couple of reactors makes me furious. Ontario is not going to become competitive again with the most expensive electricity in the world.

[throw0101c]

Ontario nuclear is cheaper than Ontario solar and wind (Table 2):

* https://fao-on.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Nuclear-Refurb...

Until a few years ago it was cheaper than methane/natural gas:

* https://www.oeb.ca/sites/default/files/rpp-price-report-2023...

At least when it comes to refurbishment, the independent (reports to provincial parliament) FAO found:

> Overall, despite near-term Nuclear Price increases, the Plan is projected to provide ratepayers with a long-term supply of relatively low-cost, low emissions electricity.

* https://fao-on.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Nuclear-Refurb...

Their projections go to 2064.

New-nuclear is worthy of discussion, but given we have stood up supply chains via the refurbishment process, there's a lot of knowledge out there. My current largest complaint with the new-nuclear plans is the SMRs.

[bryanlarsen]

Your documents are from 2017. The numbers for solar will be almost an order of magnitude wrong.

[Moldoteck]

not in case of CFD's

[bryanlarsen]

That's some impressive financial engineering to go from $500B for a few gigawatts of power to "reasonably priced".

[throw0101c]

Can you provide a citation for the $500B? Because Carney has mentioned federal money in that amount for projects Canada-wide that include "energy" generally, but not nuclear specifically.

I did find this (potential?) $100B number on Ontario nuclear energy:

* https://archive.is/https://www.thestar.com/politics/provinci...

but if you take that number and 'ammortize' it over the average 40-year life span of reactors, it comes to $2.5B/year (in capex), which is about ~1% of the provincial budget. I'm not sure how much raw GW capacity that would add, or how many GWh would be generated annually, to do the math on the per-kWh (capex?) cost.

The article goes over the pros and cons of various points in the energy mix debate.

[bryanlarsen]

It was "only" $400B:

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/commentary/article-...