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Hello nuclear
energy folks, This October 18,
I attended a Climate Action Workshop at UNB in Fredericton. I would have walked
to the workshop but it was raining. John Bennett, executive
director of Climate Action Network was the workshop leader. One of his overheads
showed the amount of electrical energy generated in Canada by hydro was about
the same as sum of thermal and nuclear at present and that the total electrical
demand could be reduced over the next 10 to 20 years by improvements in energy
efficiency so that eventually only the present hydro amount would required. I pointed about
that only generating electricity by water was nonsense because of the impossible
task of transmitting hydro power across Canada. I did not get into the argument
about how much could really be reduced by energy efficiency, but said that Bennett’s
credibility would be impaired by pushing that hydro could be enough scenario. Unfortunately
this was at the end of the workshop and not time allowed me to explain the
realities of electrical power generation and distribution. Later I deduced
from the NB Power annual report that in this Province hydro was only 15% of the
total kWh generated and only had a capacity factor of 36% (because full water flow
is only available for about six weeks of the year). Copies of the
overhead was not available, so I may have the years wrong, but have any of you heard
of this “only hydro needed to save the climate “ gospel ? Has any one seen the nonsense overhead before ? More information
can be obtained from The official Climate Action Tour website www.climatetour.ca and the website
for the CAN-RAC, www.climateactionnetwork.ca Neil G. Craik 130 Oxford Street Fredericton New Brunswick E3B 2W3 phone (506) 454
0274 email ncraik@nbnet.nb.ca
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