Newage not all nuclear plants are created equal. Technology and safety systems have come a long way. When the Pickering A plant went into service in the 70’s it was the largest plant in the world with  4 units x 500 MW. It uses very low grade fuel which does not go through any enrichment. Because it is such a low grade it needs to be surrounded by heavy water (D2O) to slow down the uranium atoms so that they can collide and sustain the chain reaction required to achieve positive reactivity to produce heat. Conditions have to be perfect for this to take place. It is hard to keep these reactors running on such low grade material. In the early days they used high grade booster rods to increase reactivity during unit upsets. Those have long since been removed and any time there is a disturbance the units go into shut down. They do not have Condenser Drain Valves and unlimited lake water to keep reactivity level at a high enough point to overcome xenon poisoning. Other newer plants do. Also because the fuel is such a low grade it requires fuel to be routinely replaced and it does this while on line using fueling machines which become part of the containment zone. These units have set world records in the early days remaining on line for years at a time.

OK again long story short… Ontario invested heavily in building Nuclear plants to the point where often we had unutilized base load generation during night. With all this Nuclear energy Ontario was able to displace some of the dirtiest coal plants in the Ohio valley and throughout the Northeast.. The prevailing air currents carried very high levels of acid gas from these dirty coal fired plants creating acid rain that killed many of our lakes and damaged our forests especially in the Canadian shield where granite replaces limestone (PH buffer). 

The point I am trying to make is that Ontario’s abundance of nuclear power displaces the emissions of fossil fuel plants helping to preserve the ecosystem. And all this low grade spent fuel is stored in place in pools under these plants. At some point in the future I am sure that this fuel will have a new life but in the meantime the amount of pollution…NOX, CO2 and acid gas emissions that these plants have displaced has been enormous.

Rainer is probably the best person to talk on the subject but I am totally convinced that Nuclear is required to bridge the gap. It is not an easy subject.