Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Sparsely Populated Nunavut Considers Micro-Nuclear to Cut Fossil Energy Costs

Nunavut in Canada spends an extraordinary amount for energy, far more than most other provinces, and it is all fossil energy.  Try as much as a dollar a kilowatt-hour. At wholesale. 


Where consumers in the other Canadian provinces average 8.5 cents, the electric company itself buys diesel for electricity production at between 50 cents and as much as $1 a kwh. Part of the cost is simply transportation. Nunavut has only 33,000 consumers in the cold and sparsely populated province, which is partly made up of an arctic archipelago, spread out over an area the size of Europe.


The Qulliq Energy board wants to find an alternative to buying diesel to make electricity, and according to CBC, it is considering micro-nuclear power: North mulls micro-reactors as solution to rising power costs. More >>>