Numerous downsides make nuclear a terrible option for energy
By Lethbridge Herald on September 6, 2025.
Editor,
In “Nuclear power vital to future of clean energy” (Lethbridge Herald, August 28), authors Kishawy and Ali argue that climate change is an urgent problem that Canada needs to address. They advocate for more nuclear energy, particularly Small Modular Reactors (SMRs).
Addressing climate change is urgent, but any consideration of future energy technology depends on two important parameters: cost and time. Nuclear energy fails on both counts. It is more costly than wind and solar. And it is slow.
SMRs take a decade to come online at a time when we need to move quickly on reducing our carbon emissions and implementing our 2050 net-zero carbon reductions target. Worldwide, only China and Russia have an operational SMR.
SMRs are also extremely expensive. The first SMR project in the U.S. was cancelled in late 2023 when potential customers learned that the price for electricity from the project would rise by over 50 per cent.
While transparency requirements in the U.S. forced this disclosure, such requirements don’t exist in Canada.
Another huge problem with nuclear energy is the high-level nuclear waste it produces, which remains extremely radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years. In Canada, over 64,000 tonnes of spent nuclear fuel are currently stored at sites where it is produced.
Deep geological burial of nuclear waste has been studied by many countries, but none has actually built, approved, and begun to use such a facility. In Canada, an environmental assessment in 1998 concluded that the burial concept has not been demonstrated to be safe and acceptable.
While Canada’s CANDU reactors run on natural uranium, SMRs require enriched uranium. Since Canada does not have domestic uranium enrichment facilities, it would have to be imported from the U.S. or France. Transportation of enriched nuclear fuel introduces dangers of accidents that could severely impact human and environmental health.
There is also a danger of theft by terrorists seeking nuclear material to use in a crude nuclear bomb.
Clearly, nuclear energy is too slow to address the climate crisis, much more expensive compared to renewable energy and energy efficiency, and fraught with the problems of nuclear waste.
Anne Morris
Lethbridge
14-13
So what is your solution? If you watch or know anything about the grid you must know that additional wind and solar isn’t a solution due to its unreliability and we need to not only replace our natural gas generation but build additional baseload generation. Additional hydro is as hard to build as nuclear and storage of any kind is also incredibly expensive and in the case of batteries simply not practical in any size needed by a grid. Right now as I write this approximately 20% of our generation is from wind and solar, and that’s pretty good, although for some reason we’re exporting half of it instead of cranking down other generation. When the sun goes down though it’ll obviously drop significantly and chances are the wind will drop too so very little will be coming from those two sources and what do we do then if we don’t have reliable baseload generation?
The notion of ‘baseload’ is a relic of the fossil fuel age. Grids are being well managed for flexible and reliable delivery relying on a combination of renewable technologies, improving storage capabilities and demand management. (https://www.nrdc.org/bio/kevin-steinberger/debunking-three-myths-about-baseload). Decentralized and flexible electricity delivery is the most cost effective and secure approach into the future.
Choosing electricity generation like grid-scale nuclear with long lead times, long term liabilies like radioactive waste, and siting problems (i.e. cooling water) ignores the urgency of reducing ghg emissions in the near term.
By the way, solar and wind generation is highly ‘reliable’. You probably mean intermittent, which is very predictable for grid management.
What are you talking about, we’re in the fossil fuel age, deep in the middle of it, and baseload power will always be necessary. What improving storage capabilities, batteries? Do you understand in any meaningful way how massive the storage has to be to power our grid for even one minute, let along the several hours which would be needed everyday, not just with the Alberta grid but most around the world? Even with 10x or 100x additional wind and solar they still both drop to zero or close to it regularly, solar every night obviously and wind almost daily. And when it’s not windy in Alberta it’s also typically not windy in our surrounding provinces and states if you’re thinking we’ll simply import it. I’m sorry but wind and solar is unreliable because you can’t rely on it, pretty simple concept. Your quoted article is 8 years old and it shows it. Since it was written the amount of wind and solar power has grown exponentially yet our grids have become less reliable not more, and the need for baseload power is every bit as necessary and urgent. If you actually want to learn something about our grid and others follow https://x.com/ReliableAB he shows informative graphs and info straight from the source, the AESO, updated every couple hours. The AESO itself updates this site http://ets.aeso.ca/ets_web/ip/Market/Reports/CSDReportServlet every couple minutes. Facts, not dogma or propaganda.
Apparently you have never been to Europe and talked to the people about how well it works?
Why has a friend who took my father’s( a power plant engineer)advise in 1975 and put solar panels on his roof and made thousands of dollars by selling his surplus after Klein deregulated it and screwed the people out of their money.
Dad was furious with what Klein did to the people and the conservative MLAs we knew were also. Dad knew all houses in southern Alberta should have solar panels on their roofs because of the large number of hours of sun we enjoy. Even Alaskans are finding that it works for them with their long hours.
Ask anyone who had grandparents, aunts, uncles, parents, siblings, or cousins, who were around in the 1930s, when the Great Depression was happening, and they will tell you that farms and ranches had to contend with bad drought. My parents, aunts and uncles, as well as my grandparents, were around at that time. It’s much worse now with the drought. We are seeing more wildfires too. Outside, it is very smoky. The UCP won’t care about the environment.
I am 82 years old and 7 of my friends are in their 90s and none of us have ever seen drought like we are seeing recently. My American relatives had never seen 150 tornadoes in one day and now they have.
Nor have we ever seen the wildfires and flooding like we have seen happening around the world, yet these idiots calling themselves conservatives continue to support these phoney conservatives, Reformers, and believe every lie they feed them.
Poilievre and his Axe the Tax stupidity couldn’t have been any dumber, showing no respect for what Global Warming is doing to the planet and what our children and grandkids could face in the future. That’s how stupid he is.
People in Ottawa did us a favour by kicking him out yet the idiots in Rural Alberta are so stupid they see nothing wrong with the oil industry being allowed to pollute their farmland with abandoned oil wells that must be cleaned up before they can sell their land when they want to retire. You can’t be any dumber than these idiots can you?
While some parts of Alaska receive many daylight hours in the summer, they have very few in the winter. Solar power alone is not a viable year-round energy source for a location with such extreme seasonal variation in daylight. Alaskan power grids have to rely on a mix of fossil fuels, hydropower, and some wind.
So while you’re paying the highest power bills in Canada thanks to what these Reformers have done to you along with the highest vehicle registration fees, the highest vehicle insurance premiums, seniors are paying the highest long term health care fees , new drivers are paying the highest prices for a drivers licence, and we are even paying the highest prices for liquor.
Yet here you are making up excuses to convince yourself that the production of power using wind and solar power is so unsustainable we shouldn’t consider it, and the people who were smart enough to use it are saving money, making you look rather foolish?
How foolish are you? Of course some use of natural gas maybe needed until these solar fields are in full production that’s a no -brainer, why wouldn’t that be true?
By the way Klein looked at bringing Nuclear Power to Alberta yet the idea was scrapped when they found that it required too much water and Alberta didn’t have it.
So explain why so many Albertans are furious with Smith for deliberately destroying a $33 billion investment in Alberta for wind and solar power along with 24,000 jobs when they know it’s the future and Albertans will be in a terrible mess if they don’t have the power to keep up with the rest of the world. Why have billions been spent all over Alberta in building solar farms like the Travers Solar Project if it doesn’t work? Even Shell Oil is using it to power a oil Refinery in Scotford Alberta.
First off, Ralph Klein deregulated electricity in Alberta, which made matters worse. Power prices spiked after he did this, even though Ralph Klein and Steve West said that it would make prices of power go down. If power prices were already lower to begin with, what would deregulation of electricity do? A very foolish and costly mistake, which cost Albertans well over $30 billion.
In 2010-11, TransAlta was manipulating power prices in Alberta, and in 2015, they were found guilty and were given a $56 million fine, which they have only passed onto the power consumers in Alberta.
The UCP removed the NDP’s cap on power prices in Alberta, which increased power prices even more. In 2019, the UCP switched back to an energy only system for power, from a capacity based power system, which caused these power blackouts in Alberta in the spring and winter of 2024. The UCP also blew billions of dollars on various voter bribery schemes, including making it look like they were reducing power prices for Albertans, but this was merely a loan to the power companies in Alberta, which power consumers must now pay back on their power bills. The UCP also cost Albertans well over $150 billion, since June of 2020, with their economic witholding, power price gouging debacle.
I remember reading about former Alberta PC MLAs who were in power before Ralph Klein became premier. They said that electricity deregulation was a very foolish thing to do. Were they ever right!
One the former Conservative MLAs said to me “Deregulation of Electricity was the dirtiest trick Klein could have payed on the Alberta people. This will cost us billions of dollars. Just think what it will do to our education and healthcare costs. Schools and hospitals use a lot of power”. That’s exactly what it did. It was so profitable that even one of the richest men in the U.S. Warren Buffet got involved.
He hadn’t seen the Klein trick of dumping the oil well cleanup mess on our backs. The $260 billion cost will soon be $500 billion we are told, yet these Reformers and their supporters don’t care do they?
You would have to accept the science of climate change and the risks we (human civilization) are taking by ignoring them: If you see no need to transition from fossil fuels to low ghg generation, then why not stick with belching coal? The pro-nuclear, eye-rolling-renewables position is a bizarre contradiction. Why would we waste gobs of money and take so many risks with nuclear fuel and waste unless it was to eliminate the burning of fossil fuels?
You seem confident, r89, about your position, but it seems to me to be twenty years out of date.
The “Bizarre Contradiction” Claim:
The idea that a pro-nuclear stance contradicts a belief in climate change mitigation is based on a misunderstanding of how many energy experts view the solution. It’s not an either/or situation. Many proponents of nuclear energy do not “eye-roll” at renewables; instead, they see them as essential partners. The argument is that while renewables like solar and wind are critical, they are intermittent sources of power. Nuclear power, on the other hand, provides a constant, reliable baseload of carbon-free electricity that can stabilize the grid and ensure a consistent power supply.
Therefore, a complete decarbonization strategy often relies on a mix of technologies:
Renewables for clean power when the sun is shining or the wind is blowing.
Nuclear for a steady, reliable source of power that can operate 24/7
Energy storage (like batteries) to store excess renewable energy for later use. This combined approach avoids the need to fall back on fossil fuels to make up for the variability of renewable sources, which would indeed be a contradiction.
Is the Position “Twenty Years Out of Date”?
On the contrary, the view that nuclear energy is a vital component of climate change mitigation is supported by some of the world’s most recent and authoritative climate reports. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which provides the scientific basis for global climate policy, includes a significant role for nuclear power in its pathways to limit global warming to 1.5°C.
The IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report (AR6), published in 2022, found that most scenarios that successfully limit warming to well below 2°C require a substantial increase in nuclear energy alongside other low-carbon sources.The International Energy Agency (IEA) has also stated that reaching net-zero emissions by 2050 would be “virtually impossible” without a major contribution from nuclear power.Far from being outdated, the renewed focus on nuclear energy is a response to the urgency of climate change and the recognition that a diverse, robust, and reliable clean energy portfolio is needed. The position you mentioned, therefore, is not a bizarre contradiction but a practical and evidence-based approach to a complex global problem.
As I am typing this, there is a lot of smoke outside from wildfires. It was a CPC environment minister, Jim Prentice, who said in 2010, that coal fired power plants in Alberta must be decommissioned by the earlier part of this decade, because they are a major contribution to GHG emissions and overall reduced air quality.
Jim Prentice was the last Alberta PC premier, and he wanted coal fired power plants in Alberta decommissioned for the same reasons, while wanting more wind and solar power for Alberta. Alberta already has wind power, because the Alberta PCs put it there in 1993. In the 2015 provincial election in Alberta, all the political parties in Alberta were campaigning on closing down coal fired power plants in this province, and they were all campaigning on getting into more green energy sources.
Nuclear is too hot to handle and always will be. No magic there, just hard science.
Go green, we can do it.
There are incorrect or misleading statements from both SophieR and the author, Anne Morris.
SophieR’s Inaccuracies:
SophieR’s claim that “baseload” is a relic of the fossil fuel age is misleading.
While the grid is evolving to become more flexible, a constant, reliable power supply is still crucial for stability. Intermittent renewables like wind and solar can’t provide this on their own without significant and currently impractical storage solutions.
Her suggestion that grids are “well managed” with a combination of renewables, storage, and demand management overstates the current state of technology. While these technologies are in development, they haven’t been implemented at a sufficient scale to fully replace traditional baseload power in most grids, including Alberta’s. Furthermore, SophieR’s statement that solar and wind are “highly ‘reliable'” is a misleading play on words. While their intermittency is predictable, the word “reliable” in the context of power generation refers to the ability to provide power on demand, which they cannot.
Anne Morris’s Inaccuracies:
The author, Anne Morris, makes several inaccurate claims. Her statement that Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) take a “decade to come online” is an oversimplification. While initial SMR projects can have long development timelines due to regulatory processes, subsequent deployments of the same SMR design are expected to be much faster. She is also factually incorrect in stating that only China and Russia have an operational SMR. While both countries do have operational SMRs, this overlooks the fact that several other countries, including the US, Canada, and the UK, are actively building or licensing SMRs. The author’s assertion that a US SMR project was canceled solely due to a price increase of “over 50 per cent” is also misleading, as the cancellation was a result of multiple factors, including rising construction costs and a lack of new subscribers.
Morris also makes a misleading statement about nuclear waste disposal. Her claim that “no country has actually built, approved, and begun to use” a deep geological repository for high-level nuclear waste is not entirely accurate. While none are yet in use, countries like Finland have constructed a repository and are in the final licensing phase, demonstrating significant progress.
Finally, her claim that SMRs require enriched uranium that must be imported from the U.S. or France is a partial truth. This overlooks that some SMRs, such as the CANDU SMR, are designed to use natural uranium, thus ignoring the diversity in SMR technology.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change acknowledge and include nuclear energy as a viable option to mitigate climate change.