New Brunswick's nuclear nightmare

[bananas]

http://timestranscript.canadaeast.com/opinion/article/1172935

New Brunswick's nuclear nightmare
Published Thursday August 12th, 2010

A khaki-clad, buttoned-down Yves Gagnon flashed a disarming grin not long ago as he leaned into his point. Looking more professorial than iconoclastic, the renowned wind energy expert and K.C. Irving Chair in Sustainable Development at the University of Moncton nevertheless allowed himself a low, ironic laugh.

"I'm going to tell you something not too many people know about me," he said. "Once upon a time, I wanted to be a nuclear engineer."

In fact, despite his pedigree and current predilections, the revelation is hardly shocking. After all, once upon a time, didn't everyone with a mathematical mind and a couple of advanced science degrees want to be a nuclear engineer? Wasn't the atomic pile the energy wave of the future, supplying clean, cheap and endlessly abundant power to heat our homes and light our way to prosperity?

Indeed, how the times have changed, as the slow-motion train wreck that is the Point Lepreau refurbishment project, courtesy of Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL), so amply illustrates.

<snip>

[HEyHEY]

1. All I read is an article about how Point Lepreau sucks.

Yet nothing that really says why besides the refurbishing has cost more and has taken time.

[bananas]

2. You could look up the PUC assessment from 2002

According to energy analyst, Toby Couture, this was predictable. The refit, he recently told the Saint John Telegraph-Journal, was always "a foolhardy and devastating decision for the province (as the risks were) systemically underestimated at every step of the process . . . It would have been far better to cut our losses."

By this he means, presumably, that the Liberals and the Conservatives should have heeded the former Public Utilities Board's assessment in 2002 that breathing new life into the plant was "too risky to be in the public interest."

[HEyHEY]

3. Okay, true that

However, without this refit where would they be?

[bananas]

4. Better off than they are now.

According to the article, "AECL remains unable to work out the kinks or even stipulate with any degree of certainty when the plant will be operational."

They could've better spent the money on efficiency and renewables.
http://newscenter.lbl.gov/feature-stories/2010/03/09/the-rosenfeld-unit-of-energy-efficiency/