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.
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.
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.
Nuclear is too hot to handle and always will be. No magic there, just hard science.
Go green, we can do it.