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Nuclear Reactions

Demonized by some, revered by others, nuclear power is a topic that draws very little fence-sitting from the public. Responses to Canadian Geographic's feature story "Nuclear resurrection" (May/June 2005) told us that informed readers have something to say on this issue. So we want your take on Ontario's issues regarding its nuclear future. Should nuclear stations get a second life in order to supply Ontarians with "clean" energy, or should these great monoliths fade into the annals of our energy-rich past? And if nuclear power is not the answer to our energy needs, then what is? Tell us what you think.

NAME	COMMENTS
Dwayne Ellis Submitted: Tuesday, August 09, 2005	As a small cog in the giant OPG wheel, I have some insight into nuclear energy that I have never seen published. The CANDU reactor design is wonderfull! Given it's age, it has proven itself in the face of the steep learning curve that accompanies any new industry. One can always compare our industry death record with all other large industries and we come out very well. What really happened around 1992 or 93 when we suddenly began to be attacked in the common press? I can remeber that Ontario supplied a tremendous amount of cheap energy to Michigan on extremely short notice. Suddenly, it was like the Americans shook themselves awake and wanted a share of our pie. The planning and future-look ability of Ontario Hydro which put us in fine shape for energy security in 1992 was deified and slaughtered in the press. American nuclear experts were suddenly parachuted in to tell us what a terrible job we had done! The emergency shutdown of eight (8), yes eight of our nuclear reactors was rammed down our throats and we started funneling millions of dollars to the american experts that were here to save the day. Well, they appear to have saved it very well for american contractors and american companies. Billions have been sent across the border. Now every warm or cold front that passes through Ontario brings pleas for belt tightening and energy conservation from our politicians. We are nearly 2000 megawatts short of power to meet the peak requirements. Wait! Isn't that the very same amount of production that our american-lead management took off line in the early 1990's? Aren't we getting rid of Ontario nuclear workers and bringing in american nuclear workers fast enough? And what happens when the american nuclear industry ratchets back up to take care of the new demand which is just on the horizon? My bet is the american contract workers will head back home and we will be left to fill the vacuum ourselves again; just like we did in between 1945 and 1992. Will we do it? I am sure that we can. However we will have carried the americans through their nuclear doldrums. We will have given american managers billions of dollars in retirement income. We will have gutted most of our independent Canadian manufacturers. We will also probably send some of our current political leadership south as well with plush, money ligned pockets and american directorships or teaching positions in american universities.
Jeremy Whitlock Submitted: Wednesday, August 03, 2005	I couldn't agree more with Gordon Edwards' comment about the future oversight of nuclear waste needing to be managed by professionals whose "training will be focused, in large part, on the biological and environmental sciences, rather than just the physical and engineering sciences that have dominated the nuclear enterprise until now." This is, in fact, the current situation, as Canada's long-term nuclear used-fuel management program has had, and will continue to have, the required input from all disciplines of science and engineering, including (very importantly) social. Surely Mr. Edwards doesn't think reactor physicists have been put in charge of designing a safe repository! What's even more exciting, albeit missing from the CG article, is the prospect of recycling used nuclear fuel to extract some of the 99% remaining energy potential that it retains after leaving the reactor. This extends this valuable clean-air energy resource many times over, while destroying the long- lived toxic waste products. The potential for future societies to elect to pursue this route has been entrenched in the proposed program of Canada's Nuclear Waste Management Organization, now in draft review.
Donald Jones Submitted: Monday, August 01, 2005	In the letter from Joseph DeMare (July/August 2005 edition) commenting on Ontario's nuclear program, he says that, "we have no right to curse our descendants with thousands of years of cancer and birth defects for the most fleeting of benefits, electricity". It is ridiculous to compare immediate certain catastrophe from climate change brought on by greenhouse gas emissions, and the depletion of the world's oil, gas and coal reserves, to some conjectural risk from nuclear waste thousands of years from now. The disposal of low-level waste and intermediate-level waste is already a mature practice. The radioactivity of all nuclear waste, and used fuel which is not waste, decays with time and after only 500 years even high- level solid waste, from the reprocessing of used nuclear fuel into fresh fuel, can be safely handled without protection from external radiation. The only concern in the long term is from the very weak radiation coming from the long lived isotopes, like plutonium, if they were ingested or inhaled, but even this would just increase the statistical risk, not the certainty, of cancer years in the future. Since these isotopes in the waste will be mixed into a special glass before being encapsulated and put into an engineered repository it is highly unlikely that this could really happen in any event. In the case of used fuel the plutonium is part of the ceramic matrix of the fuel itself. Many substances released directly to the environment today, and even some of the foods that we eat, give an increased risk of cancer, and, unlike radioactive waste, their toxicity remains for ever. Indeed, the stringent care that the highly regulated nuclear power industry has taken from its inception to safeguard the health of the public has itself given us an exaggerated fear of all things "nuclear" and this has been cleverly exploited by the anti-nuclear lobby to turn waste management into an insurmountable problem. It's not. The fact that the very small amounts of used fuel from nuclear power plants and the even smaller amounts of high- level waste from fuel reprocessing facilities can be safely stored and not released to the environment should be a major selling point of nuclear energy and not a detraction. Even the risk of radiation induced hereditary disease is very small since radiation exposures have never been demonstrated to cause hereditary effects in human populations. According to a U.N. report (United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation, UNSCEAR 2001 Report, Hereditary Effects of Radiation) there has been no genetic effects on the children of the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in the population around Chernobyl or in children whose parents have undergone radiation treatment. Nuclear energy can meet our requirement for massive amounts of dependable electricity for thousands of years without any deleterious effect on the population or the environment and will also help to protect our dwindling fossil fuel supplies to allow future generations to put them to their best use. We really do have to keep things in perspective if we want our planet to survive. Waste management is not a showstopper, it never was.
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Donald Jones Submitted: Monday, August 01, 2005	This is in response to the letter from Pat Ross-Ross in the July/August edition who said that,"nuclear plants cannot follow as the electrical load of the system rises and falls. They must run at 85 percent or higher, or they will shut themselves down". This is not correct. Due to the high capital cost and low operating cost of nuclear plants they are normally run continuously at full power day and night, baseload operation, to produce low cost electricity. However, in the future, for environmental reasons and due to depletion of natural gas supplies, the nuclear capacity of the electrical grids will have to increase and nuclear will not only have to supply baseload but intermediate and some of the peak loads as well, so called load following. This may not be economic but circumstances may demand it and plants will be designed to do it. CANDU reactors can do this by reducing output to around 60 percent of full power in the evening and ramping up power again over several hours in the morning. In some situations CANDU plant output can also be quickly decreased to zero by bypassing steam around the turbine- generator to the condenser and then rapidly increased hours later. Some CANDU units in the past have operated in load following mode. Due to the preponderance of nuclear generation on their electricity grids the light water reactors in France and Germany have practised load following for many years with French nuclear plants also being used for the primary and secondary frequency control of their grid. In Ontario frequency control of the grid could be done with some of the hydro plants to save wear and tear on the nuclear units. Depending on the nuclear capacity of the future grid, if load following is not employed any excess energy generated during the night can be exported, or used for hydrogen generation, pumped water storage or compressed air storage to help meet day time peak load demands in a clean way. In France nuclear supplies 80 percent of demand with most of the balance coming from hydro, a very Kyoto friendly approach.
Glenn P Davies Submitted: Thursday, June 30, 2005	I live in Calgary and buy wind energy from Enmax, but I realize that wind energy is not the solution - there isn't enough. The tar sands will produce lots of oil, but will need nearly as much in natural gas to cook the oil out of the dirt. There will not be enough long term gas to heat our homes and produce electricty. All the usable rivers have been dammed and the dams have destroyed fish habitats and ecosystems. Clean coal is a misnomer as the process to clean the coal before it is burned or capture everything in the stack after the burn will create a mess on its own. Fusion power is way off in the future, even with the start of construction on the first test plant. Fission power has some negatives in long term radioactivity, but doesn't do anything to the immediate surroundings other than add some waste heat. I don't have a problem with nuclear power and would support it out here in Alberta.
stephen ottridge Submitted: Monday, June 27, 2005	I have heard that coal fired power stations emit more radioactivity than a nuclear power plant of the same capacity. Why? Simply that there is uranium, in minuscule amounts of course, in the coal. When the coal is burned the radioactivity and uranium particles go up the chimney stack.