Ontario Power Generation recently signed up with the companies that are going to build its first small modular reactor. One of them is SNC-Lavalin.
And for those who don’t remember, SNC-Lavalin built the Boundary Dam 3 Carbon Capture Project. That didn’t work out as well as hoped. But we might not much choice in the matter.
Well done. You’re in good hands.
Yah Harper sold off Canada’s Candu to SC Lavalin. But left us with the evironmental clean up’s and operating expense’s.
Storage and disposal of nuclear waste, insurance because no nuclear power generating company is insurable.
Nuclear power generation is a huge scam. Only industry in the world i know off that all their expenses and liabilities are paid by the tax payer.
Sorry, but AECL was sold because politicians before Harper were too gutless to tell the public and ignore the chicken littles that nuclear was the way to go. None of the provinces having authority over power generation wanted to be seen expanding nuclear. Hydro Quebec closed their nuke to appease the Québécois business royalty under the guise of greenwashing (all while continuing to discharge Montreal’s sewage into the St. Lawrence). As a result AECL was an unviable business and was sold to SNC for a song.
The business’ current role is to support the surviving CANDU nuclear plants in Ontario and New Brunswick. There is a glimmer of SMRs but that is yet to be seen. Just because OPG has signed up contractors doesn’t mean the thing will be allowed to be built unless politicians grow gonads which is a laughable expectation.
As far disposal of waste, again politicians do not have the backbone to get deep repository done. The Lieberals have sitting on their thumbs since 2015 coming with a never ending referrals to yet more consultations. Don’t give me the bull shit that it could maybe contaminate the Great Lakes. The prime location would be well underground in a layer that has been stable for hundreds of millions of years.
If one doesn’t want nuclear, stop charging your cell phones, turn off the instant on channel selectors, unplug the appliances, turn off the lights and freeze in the dark. Oh yes, and forget about charging your glorified golf carts. Windmill and solar panel subsidy farms won’t keep the lights on in the absence of nuclear when you shut down the gas powered generation plants.
Nukes provide more than 60% of Ontario’s power demand and will continue to do so for another 40 years. Wind turbines and solar panels aren’t even coming close surviving their initial promised lifetimes let alone supply the promised power all while sucking subsidies out of the government.
A few SMRs in Alberta and Saskatchewan would benefit those provinces.
Why should it be up to tax payers to pay for their garbsge disposal. No other industry gets to use the taxpayer to clean up their mess and store their toxic waste. And no other industry gets to put the bill on the taxpayer for their insurance because no insurance company will touch them. And no other industry gets to have the tax payer dismantle and dispose of the worn out radioactive reactors and waste for hundreds of years. The UK taxpayers are faced with billions in clean up and disposal of worn out reactors.
Nuclear reactors in the west were we have abundant oil and coal is total BS.
You maybe have a vested interest but the nuclear industry as it stands is a total scam on the taxpayers.
They are welfare bums and do not and never have existed without bleeding the tax payer.
They can not stand on their own as a viable business.
Yes on the oil, gas and coal.
However those resources are getting much harder to get at.
Nuclear is the way to go if you have large and growing populations.
Regardless what it costs to cleanup it is still the superior Gorilla in the room, able to supply massive amounts of power when needed in the dead of winter, reliably.
One day it will become much cleaner with the use of fusion and dare say perhaps Thorium molten salts for fission, maybe 100, 200 or 500 years into the future but it will happen.
We have abundant radioactive minerals to fuel current reactors, why not use them up first and save our fossil fuels for other uses in manufacturing beyond burning them.
“They can not stand on their own as a viable business.”
Yes, but enough about wind and solar…
Be careful how you word your arguments there, Young Watcher. You say ‘No other industry is… taxpayers… radioactive waste’ (or words to that effect).
Is that possibly because the vast majority of radioactive waste in the power generation game comes from… the nuclear industry?
It is a bit like saying no other nation in the world but Australia is forced to use taxpayer money to remove dead roos from the middle of highways.
Watcher, taxpayers DO NOT pay for used fuel disposal. This is entirely funded through levies on the electric power utilities themselves who are actually generating electricity from nuclear power. The levy is directly on each nuclear fuel bundle manufactured and used. Go read the enabling legislation. Also look at and understand how the Nuclear Waste Organization (NMO) is actually structured and financed.
Perfect storm. There needs to be very costly safeties in place to address all cost & time overruns, as well as all warranty concerns. Bankrupt the bastards if they screw up.
What am I saying?! Rather than let his little darling go bankrupt, Blackie will merely bill the taxpayer for all SNC bailouts.
Put it out for tender. I’d award it to anyone but FLQ Lavalin or any other Canadian company for that matter. If Moe can’t figure out how not to reward our enemies he should GTF out.
Saskatchewan.
Soon to have its very own Librano chapter.
Join early for fun, games and riches beyond your dreams!
Taxpayers have no bottom line.
There are lots of other engineering service companies around that could also do the work that aren’t SNC, including WSP, AECOM, Hatch and others
WSP? The company that used to be called Genivar?
Jesus wept, they’re fckn idiot-sticks.
Je suis WSP, got out before the email pronouns. It’s partially owned by CPP investment, doesn’t do EPC like Laval-in.
Knew an engineer who bought the mexican condo meant for Gaddafi’s son. The rot is everywhere.
Anything for a toonie.
SNC is the Canadian equivalent of Haliburton.
Hate ’em all ya like, they are probably the biggest collection of civil engineering expertise in the country.
I’d bet that every province has dozens of infrastructure projects being implemented by them, so all your reeeeeeing is just so much white noise.
Yes, and there is a difference between supplying engineering and leading a project or consortium.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again:
The problem isn’t SNC, its a corrupt political leadership.
Same thing with China: If our leaders were not so eager to jump in bed with China, China would not pose a significant threat. In that sense, Harper was the guy who struck our death blow with FIPA.
Much of Canada has long since been sold out from underneath us…and yet you still have aholes who prefer foreign investment to domestic investment, reeeing on cue at the mere mention of SNC like the bunch of brainwashed fools that they are.
Give it to the most qualified and able to build it, if it is SNC so be it, preferably a domestic company if there is such a thing anymore.
Just make sure the contract is iron clad so you can hold their feet to the fire should they cock it up.
Get them built ASAP, too much hand wringing, we need power now.
Just so long as someone important gets the hookers and blow.
Why mess around with SMRs?
Go all in. Build the biggest in the world and turn it into a hub of research, development, and commercial prospects.
Make one reactor to power the whole province. Then another one.
One reactor to rule them all and in the brightness bind them AND a spare (for Alberta).
Works for me.
Jeff, the Saskatchewan electrical grid isn’t big enough to accommodate a full-scale nuclear power reactor. It could only be done with a power-sharing agreement with Alberta. Those two provinces could readily accommodate two nuclear power plants allowing some redundancy for maintenance outages. Saskatchewan already has some R&D capability with the Sylvia Fedoruk Centre and the Saskatchewan Research Council.
And then there is this gem regarding SNC Lavalin (from their bid for the Ottawa light rail project):
“In August 2019, the City revealed the SNC-Lavalin-backed TransitNEXT bid did not meet the required 70% technical threshold to advance in the bidding process. It moved ahead because City Staff had the discretion to allow a bid to advance to the financial evaluation phase despite the lower technical score.”
“The bid was described as “generic” and “poorly written.” In two of the four technical categories, not a single “strength” was listed.”
“Poor technical submission throughout (civil, track, stations, systems and vehicles). Use of sweeping motherhood statement that demonstrated a limited understanding of the project, were often contradicted and/or not backed up,” the Team said in a summary of the bid, which it said had fatal flaws.”
https://ottawa.ctvnews.ca/fatally-flawed-the-glaring-weaknesses-of-snc-lavalin-s-winning-bid-for-stage-2-of-lrt-1.4781786
So, in addition to being corrupt they are also incompetent. Nevertheless, their bid was allowed to proceed by Ottawa politicians. I believe it was Premier Legault of Quebec who said he didn’t want any of the west’s “dirty oil”. Saskatchewan should reply “we don’t want a dirty Quebec construction company either”.
If SNC Lavelin isn’t good enough to build a large scale project in the west, or light rail transit in Ottawa, why reward their mediocrity with a high ticket, higher profile item? It’s not like Sask. couldn’t put it up for tender, and include the caveat that a major cost overrun will be borne by the contractor.
I think https://www.bechtel.com/services/energy/nuclear/ would be interested.
Sask. wouldn’t be rewarding a company which seeks to marginalise the west through their friends at the #Librano Party.
AB will need additional electric generation as well, and some of the richest uranium deposits in the world are right there in Sask.
When you put a caveat “that a major cost overrun will be borne by the contractor” in a tender, you can bet smart contractors will factor that into their initial bid. They will have a look at past similar projects, average the cost over runs, and put that into the bid. And then still demand extras to finish the project.
You end up paying twice.
Sask hasn’t passed legislation barring parties to a DPA from tendering? Perhaps they should. And quickly.
Calgarians have also been forced to use SNC-Lavalin to build the completely unnecessary and unwanted Green line C-Train LRT station to deliver people from/to the decimated downtown that is mostly vacant.
Funny that.
And with Vanguard as an institutional investor, by gum we’ll get that SMR built! Along with the much touted ESG score. So you’ll have that going for you.
Vanguard and Blackrock aren’t fund competitors as much as they’re two sides of the same coin. Not often you don’t see the two together on an investor list in their quest to own the world.
Aside from everything, what could possibly go wrong?
Oh dear, I didn’t know SNC were the world leaders in nuclear technology. I thought they were only good at channeling taxpayer money. The Liberal Party at work, as it were.
The sources aren’t very honest. GE/Hitachi isn’t necessarily the “leader”. NuScale has gotten their SMR design fully certified by the NRC in the US (and are working through the CNSC process, even though they were NOT shortlisted by OPG and their partners as options being looked at. It is highly likely the first SMR completed and operating in North America will be the NuScale unit currently in design that will be installed in Idaho. I think it will be painful when the first SMR in Canada is 5 years or more AFTER the first one in the US.
The other part is that any knowledge SNC-Lavalin got from buying AECL isn’t directly applicable, because heavy water reactors and BWRs are quite different.
A failed carbon capture and storage project (CCS) is inevitable so no indication of poor project execution. If governments are willing to pay for such ludicrous projects, there are surely those willing to take their money and play to their fantasies.