Apolitical Staples

Don’t be quite so broad with your brushes. The “green movement” is hardly a single monolithic unit. Some are anti-nuclear, and some are not. I’ve voted Green, but I’ve disagreed with the hysteria that goes on around nuclear power. Nuclear power has yet to kill anybody over the course of normal operation, whereas coal-fired power plants have contributed to the death of thousands.

On the other hand, I cannot help but be startled by how much nuclear power costs. How many power plants have overrun their construction budgets by billions? A far cry from back in the fifties when they thought the power would be too cheap to meter.

James, you can’t blame the overrun of costs on the fact it is a nuclear plant, you have to blame the overrun on the way contractors bid public projects. If it was me, I would penalize every contractor that low balls a bid and then demands an increase by firing their ass and making them pay an indemnity and then hiring the next bidder in line to complete the project.

Nuclear power is a viable alternative and makes sense.

Its the same ‘green movement’ that advocates us throwing garbage in big pits instead of using high efficiency incineration. They do this in order to punish us for not recycling even though these pits cause environmental damage through leakage, not to mention the smell and the cost of trucking the garbage further out of the city. On top of that, these big steaming piles of garbage produce methane which is also a green house gas.

Don’t be quite so broad with your brushes.

Without an all powerful boogeyman to blame, conservative arguments fall apart. The anti-nuclear lobby is like six people who meet in a basement once a month. There isn’t now, nor has there ever been any widespread public opposition to building nuclear power plants; except by conservatives who shriek about the cost to taxpayers.

The real reason nuclear stalled in Ontario was because Harris pinned his hopes on the free market to provide new plants when he deregulated hydro. How’d that work out? Not so good, eh.

For sure, the left and environmental movement is far from united on this issue. I’m NDP and pro-nuke. Though I am fairly biased since my dad works at the Pickering nuclear power plant.

It certainly makes sense for a jurisdiction like Ontario to have nuclear capacity for energy. Though, every province’s needs are different. Certainly, Manitoba, Quebec, and BC, don’t need nuclear power with their hydro capacities.

Though, it may make sense for a place with energy needs like Alberta.

It’s not just important to have an energy balance in Ontario and the rest of Canada, but we need an energy surplus. When Ontario imports from the US it is taking up from a grid supported by coal.

Much of the smog we experience comes from the US. If we can sell over the border low-GHG hydro, wind, solar, tidal and nuclear and restrict our high-GHG production to gas-fired emergency generation and waste-energy, closing all coal plants that can’t be guaranteed as clean as gas (good luck with that) we can significantly improve air quality in border areas not just of COx/NOx/SOx but coal-produced particulates, mercury and radioisotopes also.

It is especially important that First Nations and other rural communities are urgently converted from diesel generators to cleaner power sources as part of programmes to improve their living conditions.

Re: Construction costs. Contractors lowball estimates because they know they can get closer to the true cost when the scope of the project they bid is changed after they have been engaged to build it. That’s the secret. Skydome likely could have been built for $150 million until they decided to add a hotel etc etc. They had already given the project to Ellis Don so were basically required to pay what ED told them it would cost to build based on this new idea. The gun registry fell victim to this also because the Gov kept changing the specs.

James, that why I put “green movement” in quotes. It tends to be the entrenched interests (Sierra Club, etc.) who are so anti-nuke.

The only problem that AECL/Candu solves is, “how can we waste billions of dollars on a 40 year old, nanny-state, make-work, white-elephant megaproject with no regard for normal business practices and no accountability to taxpayers.”

Look at AECL’s justification for the Darlington fiasco:

Some people point to cost overruns in the construction of the Darlington Nuclear Generating Station (NGS) as typifying all nuclear construction projects, particularly CANDU projects. But the fact is that construction cost overruns and schedule delays at the Darlington plant were caused by an unfortunate combination of economic forces and politics, not the CANDU reactor design.

“Economic forces and politics”. No effing kidding. If anyone needs this translated, it means that commie central planning doesn’t work, never worked, never will work - because the moral hazard inherent in the spending of other people’s money is far too great for anyone to resist, least of all by people who are (a) convinced of their own intellectual and moral superiority, and (b) scared to death of having to prove it by working and competing in a free market.

Harper and his gang just dropped another notch in my estimation. By cranking up the Kandu Karousel is he, like George Bush, trying to double up (or triple up or quadruple up) in a feeble attempt to recoup on past losses?

Naw, he’s just trying to use other people’s money to buy votes from two groups simultaneously: the global warming munchkins, and the AECL/Ontario Power Generation pork constituency.

I have a request for global warming crowd, AECL, OPG, Stephen Harper, Gary Lunn and rest of the CPC: if Candu reactors are your dream technology then buy it with your own money and get out there and sell it.

The Niagara Falls Generating Station was grossly over budget. Let’s abandon hydroelectric power!

Good technology is no cover for bad management.

Mike Harris’ government is only partially to blame for the lack of any real investment in electricity. Peterson, Rae, Eves, and McGuinty can all take an equal share of the blame for different reasons.

The Peterson government micromanaged Darlington into 13 billion boondoggle which gave Nuclear a bad name in the province. It undid all the good of the other stations. Rae brought in a nuclear moratorium and Maurice Strong who gutted nuclear and closed Ontario Hydro construction.

Harris brought in a rate cap freeze that also froze investment. His half way privatization just brought uncertainity.

EVes did nothing until an election.

McGuinty killed Pickering Units 2 & 3 and hasn’t committed to anything despite the obvious need.