Comment Re:Bye bye gas turbines... maybe (Score 1) 148
GHG went up because of all the gas turbines deployed in a rush during the wind/solar rollout blitz. But it should not be ignored that making the cement for both the nukes and the wind turbines generates huge amounts of GHG. Why I excluded the material fabrication emissions in the discussion. Sadly, no free lunch.
Nuclear cannot replacce gas turbines. Gas turbines are dispatchable power, nuclear is not. A nuclear plant takes hours to ramp up and ramp down production - so it works the opposite of solar and wind, which are also non-dispatchable power sources.
Dispatchable power sources accommodate changes in load instantly (within minutes) - battery, hydro, and gas turbines are dispatchable as they can be brought online and their output adapted within minutes (or in battery, seconds).
Nuclear is called "base load" because they can only run below demand - if demand suddenly drops below a nuclear plant's output, disaster will happen because there will be too much power.
Of course, the problem is using gas turbines for base load power - that is polluting and expensive.
Where Canada has an advantage though, is that they've been able to deliver new nuclear reactors on time, on budget. Canadian built reactors are coming online on time or early, on budget or less. Canada has a demonstrated capability for this - all other nuclear projects are late, really late, and way over budget.