On Earth Day we take a moment to think about how we can reduce our environmental impacts. Nuclear energy in many ways is the most environmentally friendly way to generate electricity. It's incredible energy density means it has the least amount of mining, land use and waste of any other energy source. According to the IPCC nulcear is tied with wind…

I affectionately refer to Ontario as the "France of North America" with 62% of its electricity produced by Nuclear. However in the early 2000's Ontario embarked on an effort to become the "Germany of North America" by engaging in a renewable energy build out called the "Green Energy Act" which was modelled on Germany's Energiewende. Ontario granted…

Medical isotopes make modern medicine possible. We depend on a steady supply to sterilize medical equipment, as radiation sources for oncology treatments and for diagnostic imaging. Canada is a world leader in the production of medical isotopes and punches far above our weight. Our national research reactor, which closed in 2016, provided a number …

Nuclear waste. The bogeyman of industrial wastes and yet it has been fully contained for the 60 years of commercial power plant operation without a single fatality worldwide over that time period. Compare that to fossil fuels which kill over 3 million per year from waste that is simply dumped into the atmosphere and is rapidly heating our planet su…

Due to the global geopolitics of the 1940's Canada became the unlikely centre for the world's second largest nuclear research infrastructure at the end of World War II. Devoting itself to the peaceful use of the atom It went on to develop a unique power reactor design, the CANDU, based on the use of heavy water to avoid the need for uranium enrichm…

Nuclear energy is only possible thanks to a highly skilled, largely unionized workforce. In popular culture nuclear workers have been portrayed as incompetent by the Simpson or as evil incarnate by anti-nuclear activists like Dr Helen Caldicott. In Canada nuclear generation is publicly owned and run by a highly unionized workforce. It provides chea…

Jay Harris is an energy consultant and proponent of small modular reactor (SMR) development for remote locations. Jay is a member of the Cowessess First Nation in Saskatchewan and has worked as an aircraft maintainer in the Air Reserves and in the RCMP in the far north. He was the first aboriginal person to attend the World Nuclear University progr…

On today's show we explore Ontario's clean grid, how it got there, where its going and how unique it is. Ontario "overproduces" clean energy due to our large nuclear (65%) and hydro (25%) infrastructure. We explore how adding wind and solar to the Ontario grid actually drives up emissions, how wind produces out of sync with demand and how we end up…