Globe and Mail columnist Jeffrey Simpson.The Globe and Mail
An average-sized nuclear plant produces roughly the same amount of electricity from 4,000 wind turbines. So reports the International Energy Agency.
A few dozen windmills, let alone a few hundred, can often be counted on to create a public furor in the area where they are built. Just ask the mayors in eastern Ontario where the provincial government is approving windmills over furious local objections.
Or check out the angry public reaction in and around Kingston, to the windmills the government approved on nearby islands. Imagine the backlash in southern British Columbia if huge windmills – and they would have to be huge – were constructed along the Georgia Strait or among the Gulf Islands, in the heartland of the green movement.
Green technologies in this age of concern about climate change are great, up to a point. "Social licence," that most elastic and political of phrases, doesn't always come easily for certain of those technologies.
"Social licence" certainly isn't accorded in most of Canada (except Ontario) to an energy source – nuclear power – that is among the best at curbing greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change.
Nuclear power in Canada accounts for 10 per cent of the country's energy, and the National Energy Board forecasts the share will tumble to 6 per cent by 2040. Ontario, which depends on nuclear for 57 per cent of its electrical energy, is refurbishing plants at Bruce and Darlington. The work will start in 2017 and continue until 2031. The costs will be huge.
So would costs for other sources. Imagine where else Ontario could replace that 57 per cent of its energy needs. Conservation would go some way, sure. Tens and tens of thousands of windmills. Not bloody likely. Thousands and thousands of additional solar panels. Again, sure, but they would produce only a fraction of what's required. Imported hydro from Quebec? Very expensive and long distance. More hydro from Ontario sources. Sorry, most of it is already tapped out.
It's curious, or perhaps revealing, that Ontarians (some environmentalists notwithstanding) don't get upset about nuclear. You can see the Pickering nuclear station from the Toronto shoreline. Torontonians have grown accustomed to living near nuclear, and no one quakes at the proximity.
And yet, across Canada, nuclear power has a bad name, despite what it can contribute to lowering GHGs. With a few exceptions, environmentalists who love renewables but are unwilling to confront their limitations, hate nuclear energy, largely because of the radioactive waste it produces – waste that can be safely stored in deep underground places in a country that has more rock than anywhere in the world, except maybe Russia.
Governments are therefore nervous about the fury of environmentalists and the nervousness of citizens – and of the cost overruns that have plagued the nuclear industry here and abroad. In this sense, nuclear has been its own worst enemy. The National Energy Board, in its latest report, predicts that to 2040 "no nuclear units are anticipated to be built in any province during the projection period."
Not so in other parts of the world. In 2015, according to the International Energy Agency, 72 reactors were being built – the largest number in 25 years. Eighteen per cent of energy produced in OECD countries comes from nuclear; 11 per cent worldwide.
China is going gangbusters for nuclear (and wind and solar and also coal, by the way); Japan, after the Fukushima nuclear disaster caused by the massive 2011 tsunami, still has most of its reactors inoperative – at great cost to the country that must import energy sources from elsewhere.
After the Japanese tsunami, Germany announced it would not, as promised, prolong the life of its reactors. It would become a non-nuclear country, unlike neighbouring France, that depends on nuclear for the vast majority of its electrical power. Germany's drive for renewables has produced very high energy prices, which in turn created a new demand for coal, the cheapest and dirtiest source.
Canada was an early world leader in nuclear energy with its CANDU technology, but that technology began to lose favour in competition with others. The business of CANDU now lies mostly in refurbishing its reactors.
Today, belatedly, Canada is trying to figure out how to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. Some very expensive and half-baked schemes are being hatched (watch the Ontario government). New nuclear energy is not part of the national equation.