The $26B Ontario nuclear deal was reported in The Toronto Star, for example, as if to imply that was the cost of the reactors. That is NOT TRUE. That cost is the SIXTY YEAR levelized cost, plus balance of plant, not the cost of the reactors alone. The sixty year cost includes all fuel, maintenance and decommissioning. So, pointing to that number and saying “OOOOh, look how expensive nuclear is” is utterly dishonest without putting the number in proper context.

The levelized cost per kWh is 5-6 cents.

To compare like things, lets look at some facts for context. The recently completed Wolfe Island wind project in eastern Ontario involves 86 turbines of 200MW nameplate capacity for $478M to build. The capacity factor of that site is running around 23%. Lets be generous and call it 25% (and it is a good site on Lake Ontario). That means Wolfe Island is going to produce on average only 50MW. For $478M. That means a mean output of .581MW/turbine, and a build cost of $9.56M/continuous MW delivered. This means to provide the equivalent of 2400MW of juice at 90% capacity factor, i.e. a steady 2160MW, to match the nuclear plants, you would need approx. 3700 turbines costing $20.6B. That is to build. Now you have to maintain them for 60 years. From the Danish Wind Industry Association, the rule-of-thumb for maintenance is up to 2.0% per year of capital cost. That's $400M/year to maintain 3700 turbines. Thats another $24B for 60 years. Now, what about all the grid tie-in infrastructure for 3700 distributed turbines (FORTY-THREE Wolfe Islands)? I don't know, but that won't be cheap, possibly itself running in the billions. To keep the grid stable when the wind stops you'll need backup. How much does that cost to build / maintain? So, our total cost for a wind project to deliver the same amount of ENERGY over the same period of time would cost something close to double the supposedly “too expensive” nuclear project.

Wind cost to the consumer: 19 cents per kWh. Hmmmm.

Wind is also expensive in terms of material and construction resources. It takes 5-10 times more “stuff” (concrete and steel) per mean MW delivered than nuclear. That all has carbon costs. So, what is the environmental footprint of 3700 turbines vs. a couple of extra reactors? Not only is the cost going to be nearly double, but the net life-cycle environmental cost will be more than the nuclear option that delivers the same amount of energy over the same period of time.

One more thing: Ontario's peak usage is ~25,000MW. That would be an order of magnitude bigger problem. If wind had to do it alone: 37000 turbines on 430 Wolfe Islands? The province would have to be literally paved with wind turbines. Environmental impact… off the charts! Scale is a big problem.

In Asia, nuclear builds have been ongoing: on time and on budget, and costing a lot less per MW than this supposedly horrific Ontario number. What of the future? There is a movement now toward factory built / mass produced modular “cartridge” mini nuclear reactors (0.025-0.10GW) with fuel cycles ranging from 5 to 30 years and intrinsic passive safety, with some designs being “walk-away safe”. These reactors are to be shipped whole to the construction site and dropped into place with underground siting. This approach promises to turn the “too expensive”, and “takes too long to build”, “too much uncertainty / risk” arguments completely upside-down. Nuclear in such a form is completely scalable. It can be engineered to be inexpensive, so long as you keep 5-10 year permitting processes away and don't try to build them with lawyers. With energy density FIFTY MILLION TIMES greater than carbon (on atom-to-atom basis), the environmental impact per kWh of energy produced including material to be mined and waste to be dealt with scale accordingly, and is the smallest possible by many orders of magnitude of the nearest alternative as a result- much like going from vacuum tubes to micro-processors. That is an immutable fact borne of the physics and that is why many leading environmentalists are backing nuclear power, especially in new forms, not the technology of 3-4 decades ago (see James Hansen, James Lovelock, Stewart Brand for a start).

Wind power and other renewables are very expensive diversions that won't scale to the extent of meeting the ultimate goal of ridding the world of burning fossil fuels. As a result, we should be getting our heads around how to do nuclear better, faster, cheaper, not how to get rid of it. Its the only practical, scalable, emissions free, and environmentally low-impact option we have to do the job of GETTING RID OF fossil fuels between now and 2050. All the rest will be, ultimately, window dressing, fiddling around the edges or dangerous delusions because the size of the problem is just so incredibly big, not just here but in places like China and India.

If Ontario is smart, it will sieze this opportunity and lead in next generation nuclear tech rather than be a victim of green groupthink and orthodoxy because clean, intrinsically safe, modular nuclear that can be mass produced is the only thing that has the power to save the world from coal, oil and gas. This will be to the 21st century what rail was to the 19th century, or oil to the 20th century. It would be unwise to ignore something with a 50,000,000:1 potential advantage.

Wow. That's too high.
Wait, you mean one year , right ?