Re: Canada nuc plants

[Bob Flood <bflood@SLAC.Stanford.EDU>]

At 10:30 AM 8/14/97 -0500, you wrote:
>THERE IS NO FREE LUNCH
>
>According to today's bylined account in the New York Times, "The
>environmental group Greenpeace Canada said today (8/13) that Hydro's
>decision to switch to fossil fuels will increase greenhouse gases and other
>emissions by as much as 100 percent. Another concern is that burning coal
>and oil would increase the danger of acid rain".
>
It is generally overlooked that, in northern climates, the major cause of
damage to lakes and ponds from acid precipitation comes from acid snow, not
acid rain. In the northeast, the rainfall isn't hard enough to harm lakes -
it soaks in rather than running off. Thus, the overwhelming majority of
water entering a lake in that part of the country in a year's time comes
from snowmelt.

AND THAT'S WHAT KILLED THOSE FAMOUS LAKES IN UPSTATE NEW YORK! Everyone
kept using them as an example of what acid rain is doing, but the reality
is, acid snow caused the problem. And the majority of the snow comes from
the Great Lake effect, a snowbelt downwind of the lakes. So, as the air
flows across the lakes and eastern Canada, it acquires some moisture and a
humongus amount of sulfur from Sudbury, Ontario (largest smelter in the
world, I'm told) and dumps it out on northern New York and New England.

Now, are we glad to see Ontario closing down its nuclear capability and
increasing the output of its dirt-burners?

>In the same account, Farlinger is quoted as saying "The nuclear unit was
>operated over all those early years as some soft of special nuclear cult and
>that "Senior management didn't dig into what was going on in this special
>unit to the extent that we must now say they should have".
>
The same thing has existed here as well. The utility management that
decided (years ago) to install nuclear capacity had no experience with it,
and didn't really understand the technology. They created a nuclear arm of
the company and turned it loose to build and operate the plants, with a lot
of inattention from the top company management and board. Only when the
nuclear program got in trouble did someone pay attention.

I can't help but wonder: is the Ontario program being shut down as a
failure because nuclear was the wrong way to go, or was the heavy water
reactor the wrong way to go? Might a light water system have succeeded?


Bob Flood
Stanford Linear Accelerator Center
(415) 926-3793     bflood@slac.stanford.edu
Unless otherwise noted, all opinions are mine alone.