Conclutions About Our Province's Nuclear Power

           Nuclear power is the only source of electricity that is emission free and powerful enough to be the main energy source in Ontario.  Reducing the needs for oil and coal-fired plants.  With eight new reactors they can cut the fossil fuel industry by 70% including all of the coal-fired plants.  That would take care of 50% of carbon dioxide emissions.  Nuclear power is already responsible for 50% of Ontario’s power consumption.  If the OPG were to build eight more reactors, that would make nuclear responsible for 65% of power in Ontario.  Nuclear power is up for that kind of challenge. The only way that we can keep going the way we are going; when it comes to population and industry; is that of eliminating the need for fossil fuels that expel carbon dioxide.  The cars in Ontario already produce enough emissions as it is.  Nuclear reactors are designed to meet very strict specifications that are always being changed to meet with new state of the art technologies of the present and future.  So the generating plants are literally as safe as they possibly could be at this point in time.  Nuclear power is the future in Ontario.

How Nuclear Power Prevents Harmful Emissions

“By all means, let us use the small input from renewables sensibly, but only one immediately available source does not cause global warming, and that is nuclear energy.” (Lovelock, 2004). Nuclear generating stations do produce waste.  However 95.6% of the nuclear waste they produce is class-C low-level waste (which is paper towels, mop heads, etc.) that is packed up in plastic bags and then sent to Western Waste Management Facility (WWMF) located on the properties of all generating stations. 

The Ontario Power Generation (OPG) is in the works of building a “Deep Geologic Repository” (DGR) next year (2012) to store all of the nuclear waste produced by the generating stations.  The DGR will be 680 meters below the surface in the Municipality of Kincardine and will be a permanent solution to low to mid level waste for years to come (OPG, 2009, The Deep Geologic Repository). 

Nuclear power does not produce any emissions harmful to the environment (does not burn anything to produce energy so no carbon dioxide is emitted).  Nuclear power prevents as much emissions as 51 million cars produce per year in Ontario.  In a study the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) did it showed that in “generating 1 million kilowatt-hours of electricity produces: 996 metrics tons of carbon dioxide from coal-fired generating plants, 809 metric tons from oil-fired plants and 476 metric tons from natural gas-fired plants.  Nuclear power produces no emissions what so ever.”  If OPG were to build eight more CANDU reactors, that would produce enough energy that they could shutdown four of their five plants (including the Nanticoke Station which is the largest coal-fired plant in North America).  If four of those plants were to close; that is approximately 80% of fossil fuel power in Ontario.  This means that 80% less fossil fuels will be used, and then that means 80% of fossil fuel emissions will be eliminated. 

Nuclear power generation is able to produce no emissions because the only energy source it uses is water.  A form of splitting an atom of uranium with a neutron called “fission” produces heat, the heat then turns to steam which is then pushed into the turbines at the station.  The steam passes through causing the turbine to spin and produce electrical energy.  The steam is the cooled and turned back into water the water is cleaned out and then returned back into the lake.  95% of waste produced by nuclear power generation is that of the class-C low-level waste.  The waste which is soon going to be put 680 meters below the surface in protective containers is virtually harmless to the people and the environment.

The Power of Nuclear Power

There is five nuclear generating stations in Ontario: Darlington, Pickering A and B, and Bruce A and B.  The Darlington Generating Station has four CANDU reactors with a total output of 3,524MW.  That can support enough electrical power for a city of two million people (Versace, 2008).  The Darlington Station is undergoing an expansion of four new reactors to be ready in 2018.  The Pickering A and B Generating Station is one of the largest stations in the world having eight CANDU Reactors, however two of the reactors have been out of commission due to cost issues surrounding safety and reconstruction of their cores.  The six other reactors on the site can produce a total output of 3,100MW.  On Dec. 31^st 1997 there was a partial shutdown of the “A” plant for not meeting safety standards.  Bruce Nuclear Generating Station is the largest plant in North America with a total output of 6,232MW.  However that is with all eight of the CANDU Reactors working at full power, there are only six of the reactors working producing 4,640MW. 

There is only 16 CANDU Reactors operating in Ontario and still they are producing enough energy to support approximately six million people.  Ontario has a population of 12 million people.  Nuclear power already supports 50% of Ontario’s needs of electricity.  The OPG should go through and build the four CANDU Reactors planned on the Darlington site and then build four more on another new site.  The eight new reactors could produce approximately 6,000MW going on that each CANDU Reactor can produce approximately 740MW (AECL, 2008).  Fossil fuel-fired plants produce approximately 8,500MW.  That means that with eight new reactors we can replace 70% of fossil fuel consumption.  Four of the five fossil fuel plants in Ontario could be put out of commission and that includes all of the coal-fired plants.  The other fossil fuel plant is a duel natural gas and oil-fired generating station.  This station can produce 2,120MW.

The OPG could potentially make coal-fired plants obsolete in Ontario.  Doing this would take time though and would have to be done in steps to not go over the budget fast.  In the long run Ontario needs to look at Nuclear power as a permanent alternative to fossil fuels because it can produce enough energy to meet the power needs of approximately 65% of Ontario with the construction of eight new reactors.

Safety at the Plants

The safety in a nuclear plant should not even be questioned.  In 2001 the Paul Scherrer Institute (a Switzerland based organization which specializes in natural science research) did a study of deaths from generating electricity in one year and this is how it went: Coal-fired plants (includes the mining and transportation aspects) had 342 deaths, hydro-electric plants (includes dams collapsing) had 885 deaths, the Natural gas plants had 85 deaths, and Nuclear power had the least amount at 8 deaths.  This study was done in nearly every country (Hick, 2006). 

The only devastating non-natural disastor caused nuclear meltdown in history was at the Chernobyl Generating Station in Ukraine on April 26, 1986.  The reactors on the site had “design flaws” and the technicians were “under qualified” (West, n.d.).  The operator was trying to test out and see if the reactor could produce enough energy to keep the cooling pumps running in case of a power outage.  That is when an unexpected power surge caused an explosion inside the reactor; melting the fuel rods, exploding the graphite shell of the reactor, and then released a cloud of radiation into the air.  The explosion killed 30 people and injured hundreds.  That is the only nuclear meltdown in history causing direct death to people.  There has only been three nuclear meltdowns in history, the Chernobyl plant, Three Mile Island Generating Station in Pennsylvania and the most recent Fukushima Daiichi meltdown in Japan.  There was no one killed at the last two mentioned; in fact at the Three Mile Island meltdown, there was not even a single injury. However, there is still a lot to be done about the Japanese meltdown which is truely unfortunate.

The reactors in Canada are all of the CANDU type.  The CANDU Reactor is built so that a meltdown is virtually impossible.  It has four emergency shutdown stages  each to ensure the safest conditions possible if a meltdown were to happen.  The first stage controls the substance by shutting off the flow of water and closing all of the pipes leading in and out of the core chamber.  The second stage injects a high-pressure liquid poison into the moderator causing the explosion to stop.  The third stage is the Emergency Core Cooling System (ECCS) which re-establishes the core by spraying coolant onto all of the reactor heads, cooling them down gradually.  Then the Containment System comes in and brings the pressure back down through a giant vacuum, filtering the air as it flows through.  The filters are then put into waste barrels and stored in a dry storage on site.  A CANDU Reactor has never had a complete or partial meltdown.  Because of that the operators of the reactor have to be trained in a simulator like that of an airplane pilot.  CANDU Reactors have been around since the 60s, so that is over 40 years of a safe, reliable and powerful source of energy in Ontario.  That statistic by itself should be enough to prove how safe nuclear energy production is.

Ontario's Nuclear Plants

Ontario has five nuclear generating stations: Darlington, Pickering A and B, and Bruce A and B. There are four CANDU (CANada Deuterium Uranium) reactors at each plant. The Pickering and Bruce stations have eight reactors each on their properties, but are split up into two plants an "A" and "B" for safety reasons. If one of the reactors in plant "A" at Bruce where to meltdown, the reactors at plant "B" would be virtually unharmed even though they are right beside each other. Currently, all four reactors at the Darlington plant are operational. At the Pickering plant as you can see in the picture, only six reactors are operational and the other two are in long term layup because of how old they are. There are very strict laws about the reactors to ensure everyone is safe. Like the Pickering plant, Bruce only has six reactors up as well and the other two are being refurbished. In 2018 the Bruce generating station is getting four new CANDU reactors to make sure that it is the largest nuclear plant in North America.

Nuclear Power in Ontario

When it comes to nuclear power, most people get the wrong impression of it.  These people see huge mushroom clouds and nuclear meltdowns that cause whole cities to go into panic because of a radiation outburst.  But in actual fact nuclear power is one of the safest forms of producing power.  There have been no deaths in Ontario due to nuclear generating plants not working properly. 

Nuclear power produces no toxins harmful to the environment.  The only “smoke” it produces is actually just steam from the water the reactors need to work, not harmful to the atmosphere.  Nuclear power is also responsible for approximately 30% of Ontario’s power.  The five generating stations produce over 12,500MW of emission free power. 

Nuclear power should be used as a primary source of energy in Ontario because: it produces no emissions harmful to the environment, each generating station is capable of producing an enormous amount of power, and of course safety in the plants is top-notch and always improving to ensure the most safe working conditions possible.