Ontario Electricity Generation on a Hot Day

Today is a hot day in Toronto. The temperature is 34 degrees and it is only 2 pm. Toronto's Medical Officer has upgraded the heat alert to an extreme heat alert. Cities across the province are finding it very hot as well.
On hot days like today, demand for air conditioning swells. Air conditioning requires electricity, so what fuel sources are being used to generate electricity?

Source	MW	%
Nuclear	10857	45.31
Hydro	4658	19.44
Gas	5410	22.58
Coal	1722	7.19
Wind	441	1.84
Other	873	3.64
Total	23961	100
source:http://www.ieso.ca/
Fuels used to meet demand Jun. 20 - 12:00-13:00

Nuclear is the most important fuel. Nuclear, hydro and natural gas provide 87.3% of the fuel. Other refers to wood waste, biogas, solar, etc. Electricity generation in Ontario is very dependent on nuclear. For the year to date, nuclear has accounted for 56.9% of the fuel used to generate electricity in Ontario. Renewables make up a relatively small proportion of total fuel source. Notice that coal, which used to be a big fuel source, now accounts for just 2.7% of total fuel usage.

Today's electricity demand is projected to peak is 24,267 MW at 5 pm.
The summer record was 27,005 MW on August 1, 2006.

General Fusion's New Approach

For BSUS 6600 students there were some questions last class about the state of nuclear fusion.Here is a link to a story about Canadian company General Fusion. General Fusion is a venture capital backed start up company trying a different approach to nuclear fusion.

In related news, here is a link to a story about Terrapower, a start up company partly funded by Bill Gates.Terrapower is working on an advanced nuclear reactor that uses the more abundant uranium 238 rather than the rare uranium 235 used in conventional reactors.

Or, perhaps more research should be done on the liquid fluoride thorium reactor. The fact that China is now interested in this technology should give other countries a push.

Fukushima is a Big Problem

Here is a video from Australia's 60 minutes reporting on Fukushima.



The Japanese government is also finally admitting that there could be long term depopulation in the areas surrounding the plant.

Nuclear Power Around the World

For BSUS 6600 students, here and here are looks at the current global nuclear power situation.

Fukushima Clean Up to Take Decades

Washington's blog (see here) has an interesting article on the Fukushima nuclear accident. 100 percent core melt in all three reactors. It will take between 50 and 100 years to clean up the mess. The CNN  interview with physicist Michio Kaku is very informative.