Author: scruss

You might have seen the Bruce Power Cost and Clean Air Calculator. It’s supposed to show that nuclear is both cheap and clean, and using anything else would make your bills and your emissions go through the roof. Well, here are 40+ scenarios that all save money and emissions while using no nuclear and no coal:

1. 3.9% Solar, 5.7% Wind, 0.2% Gas, 0% Nuclear, 90.2% Hydro and 0% Coal saves $5.09/month and 89.7 t/CO₂ annually.
2. 2.1% Solar, 10.1% Wind, 0.3% Gas, 0% Nuclear, 87.5% Hydro and 0% Coal saves $8.97/month and 89.2 t/CO₂ annually.
3. 0.5% Solar, 23.6% Wind, 0.4% Gas, 0% Nuclear, 75.5% Hydro and 0% Coal saves $2.75/month and 88.7 t/CO₂ annually.
4. 2.1% Solar, 2.5% Wind, 0.8% Gas, 0% Nuclear, 94.6% Hydro and 0% Coal saves $16.32/month and 87.1 t/CO₂ annually.
5. 3.1% Solar, 0.2% Wind, 1.4% Gas, 0% Nuclear, 95.3% Hydro and 0% Coal saves $13.27/month and 84.5 t/CO₂ annually.
6. 0.6% Solar, 5.4% Wind, 1.8% Gas, 0% Nuclear, 92.2% Hydro and 0% Coal saves $19.52/month and 82.7 t/CO₂ annually.
7. 1.9% Solar, 15.8% Wind, 2.5% Gas, 0% Nuclear, 79.8% Hydro and 0% Coal saves $2.48/month and 79.8 t/CO₂ annually.
8. 0.3% Solar, 13.6% Wind, 2.5% Gas, 0% Nuclear, 83.6% Hydro and 0% Coal saves $12.08/month and 79.7 t/CO₂ annually.
9. 3.0% Solar, 11.7% Wind, 2.9% Gas, 0% Nuclear, 82.4% Hydro and 0% Coal saves $1.21/month and 78.0 t/CO₂ annually.
10. 0.1% Solar, 24.8% Wind, 3.1% Gas, 0% Nuclear, 72.0% Hydro and 0% Coal saves $1.35/month and 77.3 t/CO₂ annually.
11. 2.7% Solar, 4.8% Wind, 3.6% Gas, 0% Nuclear, 88.9% Hydro and 0% Coal saves $8.77/month and 75.2 t/CO₂ annually.
12. 4.1% Solar, 1.2% Wind, 3.9% Gas, 0% Nuclear, 90.8% Hydro and 0% Coal saves $5.96/month and 73.6 t/CO₂ annually.
13. 1.3% Solar, 0.3% Wind, 5.6% Gas, 0% Nuclear, 92.8% Hydro and 0% Coal saves $18.44/month and 66.3 t/CO₂ annually.
14. 2.4% Solar, 0.1% Wind, 6.0% Gas, 0% Nuclear, 91.5% Hydro and 0% Coal saves $13.26/month and 64.7 t/CO₂ annually.
15. 3.8% Solar, 4.6% Wind, 6.5% Gas, 0% Nuclear, 85.1% Hydro and 0% Coal saves $1.99/month and 62.2 t/CO₂ annually.
16. 1.4% Solar, 11.8% Wind, 6.8% Gas, 0% Nuclear, 80% Hydro and 0% Coal saves $5.54/month and 61.0 t/CO₂ annually.
17. 2.9% Solar, 5.7% Wind, 7.0% Gas, 0% Nuclear, 84.4% Hydro and 0% Coal saves $4.64/month and 60.1 t/CO₂ annually.
18. 0.6% Solar, 14.4% Wind, 7.6% Gas, 0% Nuclear, 77.4% Hydro and 0% Coal saves $6.09/month and 57.7 t/CO₂ annually.
19. 0.7% Solar, 12.1% Wind, 7.9% Gas, 0% Nuclear, 79.3% Hydro and 0% Coal saves $7.64/month and 56.4 t/CO₂ annually.
20. 2.1% Solar, 2.9% Wind, 8.5% Gas, 0% Nuclear, 86.5% Hydro and 0% Coal saves $104/month and 53.5 t/CO₂ annually.
21. 1.9% Solar, 13.5% Wind, 8.6% Gas, 0% Nuclear, 76.0% Hydro and 0% Coal saves $0.36/month and 53.1 t/CO₂ annually.
22. 2.5% Solar, 3.5% Wind, 8.6% Gas, 0% Nuclear, 85.4% Hydro and 0% Coal saves $7.63/month and 53.1 t/CO₂ annually.
23. 0% Solar, 5.4% Wind, 8.7% Gas, 0% Nuclear, 85.9% Hydro and 0% Coal saves $17.02/month and 52.9 t/CO₂ annually.
24. 0.5% Solar, 0.4% Wind, 8.8% Gas, 0% Nuclear, 90.3% Hydro and 0% Coal saves $19.53/month and 52.4 t/CO₂ annually.
25. 1.6% Solar, 3.9% Wind, 9.7% Gas, 0% Nuclear, 84.8% Hydro and 0% Coal saves $10.31/month and 48.5 t/CO₂ annually.
26. 2.6% Solar, 6.6% Wind, 9.9% Gas, 0% Nuclear, 80.9% Hydro and 0% Coal saves $2.76/month and 47.6 t/CO₂ annually.
27. 0.6% Solar, 9.6% Wind, 10.5% Gas, 0% Nuclear, 79.3% Hydro and 0% Coal saves $8.70/month and 45.2 t/CO₂ annually.
28. 1.4% Solar, 1.0% Wind, 10.5% Gas, 0% Nuclear, 87.1% Hydro and 0% Coal saves $13.58/month and 44.9 t/CO₂ annually.
29. 0.9% Solar, 12.1% Wind, 11.7% Gas, 0% Nuclear, 75.3% Hydro and 0% Coal saves $3.96/month and 39.9 t/CO₂ annually.
30. 0.4% Solar, 13.9% Wind, 12.6% Gas, 0% Nuclear, 73.1% Hydro and 0% Coal saves $3.89/month and 35.7 t/CO₂ annually.
31. 0.3% Solar, 10.7% Wind, 13.3% Gas, 0% Nuclear, 75.7% Hydro and 0% Coal saves $6.89/month and 32.9 t/CO₂ annually.
32. 0.3% Solar, 10.5% Wind, 13.3% Gas, 0% Nuclear, 75.9% Hydro and 0% Coal saves $7.11/month and 32.8 t/CO₂ annually.
33. 0.2% Solar, 17.8% Wind, 13.6% Gas, 0% Nuclear, 68.4% Hydro and 0% Coal saves $0.18/month and 31.8 t/CO₂ annually.
34. 2.3% Solar, 6.9% Wind, 14.0% Gas, 0% Nuclear, 76.8% Hydro and 0% Coal saves $0.96/month and 29.8 t/CO₂ annually.
35. 3.5% Solar, 0.2% Wind, 14.0% Gas, 0% Nuclear, 82.3% Hydro and 0% Coal saves $2.11/month and 29.7 t/CO₂ annually.
36. 0.6% Solar, 15.2% Wind, 14.0% Gas, 0% Nuclear, 70.2% Hydro and 0% Coal saves $0.68/month and 29.6 t/CO₂ annually.
37. 3.1% Solar, 3.4% Wind, 14.9% Gas, 0% Nuclear, 78.6% Hydro and 0% Coal saves $09/month and 26.0 t/CO₂ annually.
38. 2.2% Solar, 3.6% Wind, 16.8% Gas, 0% Nuclear, 77.4% Hydro and 0% Coal saves $2.65/month and 17.8 t/CO₂ annually.
39. 1.4% Solar, 1.3% Wind, 17.1% Gas, 0% Nuclear, 80.2% Hydro and 0% Coal saves $8.29/month and 16.2 t/CO₂ annually.
40. 1.1% Solar, 4.5% Wind, 18.2% Gas, 0% Nuclear, 76.2% Hydro and 0% Coal saves $5.74/month and 11.5 t/CO₂ annually.
41. 0.1% Solar, 13.3% Wind, 19.1% Gas, 0% Nuclear, 67.5% Hydro and 0% Coal saves $0.70/month and 7.9 t/CO₂ annually.
42. 0.1% Solar, 6.4% Wind, 19.8% Gas, 0% Nuclear, 73.7% Hydro and 0% Coal saves $7.47/month and 4.7 t/CO₂ annually.
43. 0.7% Solar, 8.7% Wind, 20.6% Gas, 0% Nuclear, 70% Hydro and 0% Coal saves $1.73/month and 1.2 t/CO₂ annually.

Sure, some of these won’t be practical from a dispatch/capacity perspective, but hey, that’s Bruce’s issue to explain away.

I couldn’t have done it without this tiny routine to produce a list of random numbers that all add up to 1. No way was I clicking those sliders 10000+ times. Viewing the source was handy, though.

sub rndnormsum {
    # generate N uniformly distributed random numbers that sum to 1
    # see http://stackoverflow.com/a/2640079/377125
    my $n = shift;        # number of entries to return
    my @arr = ( 0, 1 );
    foreach ( 1 .. ( $n - 1 ) ) {
        push @arr, rand;
    }
    @arr = sort(@arr);
    my @result = ();
    foreach ( 1 .. $n ) {
        push @result, $arr[$_] - $arr[ $_ - 1 ];
    }
    return @result;
}