The Toronto Star’s John Spears wrote a feature story on energy – green and not so green – on Lake Ontario. The article provides a fascinating snapshot of current energy issues in the watershed, and references Lake Ontario Waterkeeper’s Darlington New Nuclear Plant intervention:
Cold Lake Ontario water is also playing a big, though indirect, role in providing nuclear energy to Ontario’s power system.
The Darlington and Pickering nuclear stations are planted on the lakeshore for a reason: they need large quantities of water to cool the reactors.
If the lake water warms up too much, as it does occasionally during a hot summer, the plants might have to scale back production.
But some naturalists wonder whether pumping cold water into the plants and returning it to the lake at higher temperature is good for aquatic life on the shoreline.
Intervenors at this spring’s hearings into the proposed new nuclear reactors at Darlington suggested the new reactors use a closed system to cool the reactors. That would involve running the heated water through cooling towers and recirculating it back into the reactor.
Municipal leaders objected, saying the industrial architecture of the cooling towers would give a poor image to the community.
An environmental panel is due to report on that issue and others later this year.
Back on Wolfe Island , talk has heated up again this month about birds and turbines.
