A Nuclear look at Nuclear

The UCP recently announced that they plan to get Alberta involved in developing nuclear energy. Is this a good idea? If you’re just looking for the Coles Notes answer, it’s a GOOD LORD, PLEASE NO. This blog post takes a nuclear look at nuclear.

What is nuclear power?

Nuclear has to do with the atomic nucleus, which is the “heart of the atom” (ah, la romance!). This atomic “heart” is made up of neutrons and protons, which are in turn made up of even smaller particles known as quarks, which will forever make me think of this terrifying Start Trek character.

Interesting-but-not-relevant-to-this-conversation side-note: Quarks actually pre-date Star Trek by more than 20 years and have a delightfully literary history which involves its creator (physicist Murray Gell-Mann) reading James Joyce’s book Finnegans Wake, which frankly, I find highly suspicious because surely nobody has ever actually read the famously “unreadable” Finnegans Wake?

Back to the romantic “heart of the atom”. Specifically, here we’re talking about the heart of a very heavy element called uranium, because its cute ‘lil dense nucleus of neutrons and protons has the unique (inst)ability to get easily torn apart if you throw a random neutron into the mix. It’s like there’s an (unstable) heavy metal band called Uranium, and then a friend drops some real drama on them, and you know the band is going to split up. Again. THAT (multiplied by a million) is what happens with uranium in the process known as nuclear fission.

Okay, just one more unrelated but interesting side-note: did you know that uranium was named after the planet Uranus, which had been discovered a handful of years beforehand (1789 and 1781, respectively)? ALSO, did you know that the goddess Aphrodite was formed from the SEVERED TESTICLES of the Greek god Uranus??! I sure didn’t.

Here are the nuclear magician’s secrets: Splitting apart even a small bit of uranium creates a large amount of heat. This heat is used to convert water into steam, and then the steam is used to rotate a turbine, which spins a generator, which generates electricity. Ta-da! Your lights now turn on.

Sounds like perfectly harmless magic, right? Not so fast. There is a dangerous Hyde to this science magician’s Jekyll. Although most of the heat from nuclear fission is released quickly (and used to create energy as described above) it also continues to release heat slowly. Very slowly. Like tens of thousands of years slowly. This “afterglow heat” is what we call nuclear waste and it’s highly radioactive. What does “highly radioactive” mean? Well, it means that if you stood close to it without protective gear it would only take a few seconds for you to absorb a lethal dose. Yikes yikes yikes.

To summarize: nuclear reactors use the process of nuclear fission (which splits apart uranium) to produce energy. This process also creates deadly radioactive waste. All clear so far?

The good news is that over time, this radioactive waste becomes less toxic. The bad news is, this process takes thousands of years. So, what do we do with this stuff in the meantime?

How to “safely” store nuclear waste

For the first 7-10 years of its retired life, radioactive waste is shielded in “fuel pools” of water known as wet storage. For the next 50-100 years (a shelf-life range which seems worrisomly vague) it might live in various different types of concrete canisters (lined with steel and lead) known collectively as dry storage. Given that the world’s first nuclear power plant opened in 1954 (66 years ago), and the first Canadian nuclear power plant prototype became operational in 1962 (only 58 years ago), clearly the 100-year longevity of any canister is what I’d call a hopeful hypothetical.

But, of course, radioactive waste has barely begun its long life at the 100-year mark. What do we do with it for the rest of its possibly-million-year-long life? Why, just like any resourceful child in a sandbox: we bury it, of course! What could possibly go wrong, after all? To make it sound a little more adult and impressive, scientists call it a deep geological repository, and it involves burying used radioactive fuel at a depth of at least 500 metres (which is about the height of the Taipei 101 skyscraper) where it will be stored for the remainder of its 100,000+ years of dangerous life. The World Nuclear Association assures us that these underground storage facilities will have “multiple layers of protection”. Jesus Christ. I would goddamn hope so.

Interestingly, these geological repositories don’t actually exist in Canada yet. Yup, you read that right. The Saugeen Ojibway Nation (in Ontario) turned down an offer to have it on their land earlier this year (I can’t imagine why!). The Canadian Government is currently searching for another burial site for the long-term storage of all Canadian nuclear waste, but describe it as being in the “very early stages” with no site being chosen (or even shortlisted) yet. Coooooool cool cool cool cool.

In reality, the situation is much, much funnier (or worse, depending on the level of your current delight in existential satire). Obviously, my first question after realizing that Canada didn’t have a geological repository built for our nuclear waste, was – well, who does? I literally laughed out-loud when I finally managed to uncover the answer, hidden under a mound of internet articles and nuclear organizations waxing poetic about nuclear “safety”, economic viability, blah, blah, blah.

The answer is: no one. Not one country has an existing, functional, long-term repository for high-level nuclear waste. The closest we’ve got is that Finland plans to have a facility complete sometime in the next 5 years. Let that radioactive realization sink into and destroy your brain.

Soooo… what exactly is Canada (and the rest of the world) currently doing for long-term storage of radioactive waste?

According to the NWMO’s most recent plan, Canada hopes to have a geological repository site operational by 2040. Seems reeeeally optimistic given that we don’t even have a potential site. In the meantime, it looks like we (and the other 50+ countries producing nuclear waste) will just keep stacking up our dry storage canisters at nuclear power plants and shallow storage sites, and transferring radioactive waste from old canisters to new ones as they start to wear out. There’s also possibly a problem with materials degrading faster than anyone had anticipated.

Great. I mean, really, gold-star planning by all. Slow. Hand. Clap.

Nuclear and Canada: surprisingly, BFFs?

Did you know that Canada is the 2nd largest producer of uranium in the world? The Athabasca Basin (on the border between Saskatchewan and Alberta) is where most of that uranium is sourced, and it’s then processed in Ontario, home to the largest uranium refining facility in the world. There are currently 6 nuclear power plants in Canada (five in Ontario and one in New Brunswick) and nuclear power provides around 15% of Canada’s electricity. Small potatoes for now, but according to the Canadian Nuclear Association’s Vision 2050 document, they hope to have a “fleet of nuclear reactors across the country” by 2050. Small, portable reactors seems to be a big part of this plan.

These cute, small modular reactors (SMRs) are apparently “small enough to be transported on a truck, ship or train”, which sounds like a GREAT idea: I can’t think of anything safer than shipments of radioactive content hurtling down our roads! SMRs are also (according to this article) “designed to produce less nuclear waste than larger reactors”, the logic of which (at least on the surface) sounds laughable – like seriously explaining to someone that a mini chocolate bar has less calories than a regular chocolate bar, and then proceeding to eat 4 mini chocolate bars: if you just don’t add up the calories then it’s less, right?

More nuclear? More problems.

Mini-sized or regular, a big problem with nuclear (if the unsolved long-term storage of its radioactive waste wasn’t enough for you) is the cost. The Canadian Small Modular Reactor (SMR) Roadmap claims “the potential value for SMRs in Canada at $5.3B between 2025 and 2040” and that it “represents a large potential export market for Canada” (they estimate $150 billion market for their ‘lil SMRs). Apparently, nuclear energy currently contributes $6 billion to the Canadian GDP. But from everything I’ve read, nuclear seems to cost a whole lot more than it brings in.

For starters, building a long-term storage solution for radioactive waste will be very expensive: in fact, no one even knows how expensive, considering it’s never been done. The still-incomplete Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository famously cost the US government $19 billion before it was defunded in 2010. The estimated cost for building a deep geologic repository in Canada is priced at $23 billion. One only has to think of the delays and unexpected costs of almost every large-scale construction project (like, for example, Edmonton’s Walterdale Bridge) to imagine how this cost might balloon when dealing with a 500-meter deep underground radioactive waste disposal facility.

Canada seems to think that nuclear could be a lucrative export business for us: meanwhile, many countries are moving away from nuclear energy. Countries like Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, and Italy are ending their nuclear programs because of its danger and high cost – this Yale School of the Environment article says that “more than a third of U.S. nuclear plants are now unprofitable or scheduled to close”.

Then, there’s the fact that the cost of building and running a nuclear plant has actually gone up by 23% over the past decade, now costing between $112-$189 per megawatt hour (MWh). Other types of renewable energy (like wind and solar)? Their costs are going down. Wind and solar are both cheaper and faster at reducing emissions than nuclear. And we’re not talking a little bit cheaper: they are less than half the cost of nuclear ($36-$44/MWh for solar and $29–$56/MWh for wind, respectively). Particularly in Alberta, nuclear seems to be a weird investment given that we have some of the best wind and solar resources in Canada.

And, of course, there’s the possible cost of a disaster: the cost of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear meltdown is now estimated at $202.5 billion, with clean-up costs possibly reaching $660 billion. Not to mention the death toll. You think Canada is more meticulous (or safe from natural disasters) than Japan? Do you think we are free from the bureaucracy, planning flaws, and poor training that led to the Chernobyl disaster (particularly if we have small reactors scattered across our province, with multiple handling teams)? HA.

Nuclear is “affordable” and “safe” in the same way the oilsands are “sustainable”: in that, they’re not.

If you’re looking for a nice overview on nuclear, this article on “How Nuclear Power Works” was a useful read! Want to get even more scared by reading about how American nuclear weapon waste is leaking into the Columbia River and scientists are worried about waste sitting in containers for decades longer than intended? Read this recent 2020 article.