The CEO of carbon removal developer Deep Sky, Damien Steel recently stated “We are long past the point of picking and choosing which solutions we use to fight climate change. We have to use it all.”
Including nuclear power. France delivers 70 per cent of its electricity using nuclear (Ontario — 60 per cent) and has been for over 40 years. What does France know that we don’t?
Nuclear energy will drive the acceleration to meet net-zero targets by 2050. All energy sources have their pros and cons, including nuclear energy. Those who are opposed to nuclear energy often site radioactivity. We need to put radiation into perspective. For example, the very popular beach in Guarapari, Brazil, in some places has radiation readings about equal to the centre of the Chornobyl evacuation zone in 1987. A 1930s fiestaware plate is slightly more radioactive than spent nuclear fuel dry cast storage.
Fukushima, 29 days after the accident, had the same background radiation levels as Winnipeg does today.
Oklo (NYSE: OKLO) successfully completed the first end-to-end demonstration of the key stages of its advanced fuel recycling process, in collaboration with Argonne National Laboratory and Idaho National Laboratory. Supported by an award from ARPA-E and the Department of Energy, this milestone marks a significant step forward in Oklo’s efforts to scale up its fuel recycling capabilities and deploy a commercial-scale recycling facility to increase advanced reactor fuel supplies, and enhance fuel cost effectiveness.
Additional important information can be found in our press release.Press releaseICYMI
It appears that Manitoba is going with StarCore Nuclear for the Pinawa Demonstration site. I found the StarCore web site very marketing heavy, a bit like a bad sales job. Personally, I think the technology from Oklo is far better and I especially like their plans to reuse existing nuclear waste. Their web site is extremely minimalist and you have to do a bit of digging to find out more about them.
The Oklo Aurora SMR is a very exciting development! I’d put this in my neighbourhood.
Unfortunately, nuclear has a lots of stigma attached to it thanks to Three Mile Island, Fukushima & Chernobyl. Of course, nothing is absolutely safe. Cars are not safe, lots of people die every year in car fatalities and yet we still drive. Fatalities related to nuclear incidents are infinitesimal when compared to car deaths, but we’re in-sensitized to car deaths and just accept the risks. Nuclear accidents are sensationalized to the max. Movies are made about the accidents and fear is pushed (sold?) to the general public.
We, the planet, needs to reduce the use and reliance on fossil fuels. The urgency of how fast this needs to happen, if at all, is quite controversial. However, to me it seems that solar and wind, while getting al the attention, won’t do the job soon enough. Bringing solar & wind technologies to the scale to impact the use of fossil fuels is much farther away than the use of nuclear. Countries around the world, like Germany, that were shutting down their nuclear efforts are quietly extending they nuclear programs in country to get their quicker and reduce their dependency on fossil fuels from other countries, like Russia, that are becoming increasingly expensive and unreliable. France on the other hand never backed away from nuclear and gets 70% of it’s energy from nuclear and is building 6 new reactors and considering 8 more.
Until solar, wind and fusion can do the job at scale, nuclear energy is the way to go if we want to meet all these aggressive climate change goals by reducing or eliminating fossil fuel usage
