Good news, for a change.

The Alberta Electric System Operator currently has applications from several companies to generate a total 10,500 megawatts of wind power. Given that the AESO is forecasting the need for an additional 5,000 megawatts of power over the next 10 years, this is excellent news! Kudos to the Stelmach government for finally lifting Alberta's asinine wind power cap last year.

This begs the question, why do we need nuclear in Alberta? Especially given the latest news from Bruce Power.

Comments

[Kyle]

Its great that we have applications for that much wind power! The problem still is that every MW of wind power requires a base load MW of power somewhere else on the grid ready to substitute it.

In Alberta, the reason there was a cap is that wind was being generated mostly in one region, where either it would all be generating or not. Nothing I have seen has shown that this won't continue to be the case.

As for the need for nuclear power, the price overruns in Ontario have no effect here in Alberta. Why?
*The government of Alberta does not provide subsidies to power plants to be built (besides wind power)
*The price of power is based on market forces in Alberta
*Rebuilding a reactor is perversely more expensive than building a new one, and has many more variables, so suppliers won't bid on it as a fixed cost contract
*The last 4 reactors AECL built were under budget and completed ahead of schedule, leading the marketing coalition to offer fixed cost contracts

More power, especially reliable baseload power means lower prices. Once a nuclear plant is built, it has almost no variable costs, so if there is over supply in electricity a coal plant will be force to shut down by market forces.

[eh]

Kyle:

I appreciate your comments on Alberta's energy landscape. However, I have to question the rosy picture you paint of nuclear in this province. First, the cost overruns in Ontario are the result of rising fuel prices and construction materials and I question the idea that Alberta will be immune to these same costs.

Second, the government of Alberta may not currently subsidize nuclear projects but given the latest throne speech and recent attempts to paint nuclear in a 'green' light, I wouldn't be surprised if this changes.

Third, its been 25 years since the last nuclear reactor was built in Canada. Thus, your arguments regarding AECL's track record may not be as relevant to the current economic context.

I'm still not convinced that this province needs nuclear. But, I'm sure this debate will rage on for quite sometime.

[Kyle]

Rebuilding plants is a completely different can of worms compared to building one.

In refurbishing a plant, you cut a hole in the containment wall big enough for a robot to get in to do the precision work and big enough to remove the single biggest pieces that you can possibly remove (steam generators).

Then, the parts of the reactor that age (the fuel channel pipes) are removed and replaced using robots. This is very hard. This is why building a new plant could end up being cheaper than refurbishing an old plant. Why - no radiation hazard when building it, you can build the large components off site instead of assembling them onsite, you don't have to work around the containment building.

Who knows if Alberta will be immune to the costs, all I know is the consortium has continually said it will go forward with a fixed cost contract. Remember, they haven't offered fixed costs on refurbishment, because you don't know what you need to replace until you start taking it apart.

In Alberta all the costs will be on the private sector, and if the plant they build can't produce power at or below the marginal cost of power for other producers in the province then it won't contribute power to the grid. All the risk here is born by the private sector, the consumers have no risk here.

There is already in fact a subsidy for the nuclear plant, it will not have to pay into the 'technology fund' for its GHG emissions as it will have near to none, compared to a comparable output coal plant. To generated a similar amount of power using coal lets say it would produce 30 megatonnes of GHGs (current coal power produces 150 MT of GHGs a year in the province). At a technology fund fee of $15/tonne the amount saved is equal to $450 million dollars (a year). If a federal carbon tax also is enacted, at lets say $30 dollars a tonne, the plant will have a huge cost advantage of $1.5 billion a year!