Letter to the Editor – Harry Valentine Focuses on Energy For Cornwall & South Stormont Future Growth

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LTE UA looming municipal election provides opportunity to raise some issues relevant to South Stormont’s future economy. The newly designated industrial area between Hwy 401 and the CN Rail line, to the east of Moulinette Road has the advantage of being in close proximity to main power transmission lines, a natural gas pipeline, an oil pipeline, a supply of water from the St Lawrence River and fibre-optic telecommunications buried next to the railway line and Hwy 401. Ontario’s power pricing policy may be a disadvantage if businesses that move into that industrial area will have to pay the same rates as businesses in Brockville and Ottawa.

Transmission lines require maintenance and dissipate energy in the form of heat. The longer the distance from the site of power generation, the higher the maintenance cost and power loss along the transmission line. Businesses that move into South Stormont’s new industrial area may indirectly subsidize commercial power rates in Ottawa and Brockville. A tariff based on distance from the power station would give the South Stormont business area an advantage in the form of lower commercial electric power bills.

There are several outcrops of gravel in the designated business area. Deposits of gravel located deep underground have commercial value if they can be saturated with groundwater. In Alberta during summer, an energy business uses solar thermal collection technology to raise the temperature of an underground deposit of water-logged gravel to 80-degrees centigrade. During winter, that stored heat flows through insulated pipes to provide the interior heating requirements of several buildings, at very low cost. Further investigation will be required to determine as to whether such seasonal geothermal energy storage will be possible at South Stormont’s designated business area.
There may be benefit in evaluating the lands west of Moulinette Road, between Hwy 401 and CN Rail line, for underground gravel deposits that may be suitable for seasonal geothermal energy storage using stored summer-solar heat. That heat could sustain the winter interior heating requirements of hothouses and greenhouses, at low cost. Those lands are zoned for agricultural use and could become the site of large greenhouses or hothouses that could supply competitively priced produce to a future food distribution centre.
It is unfortunate that South Stormont endured the debacle of a proposed bio-pellet plant that initially had been promised government funding. Several years earlier, Cornwall endured the debacle of a proposed corn-ethanol plant, also on promised government funding. Fortunately, Greenfield Ethanol resolved Cornwall’s ethanol plant debacle by opening their ethanol plant at Johnstown. Cornwall’s economy has had a long and sad history with industries that depend on government funding, none of which remained inthe city for very long.
Businesses and industries across Ontario are dealing with higher electrical energy costs, also higher costs to provide interior heating inside large buildings. If lower energy costs became available to businesses in South Stormont (and in Cornwall), perhaps a few business and industries that operate FREE from the promise government handouts, may be interested in evaluating future prospects for themselves in this region.

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11 Comments

  1. Mr. Valentine you have a lot of excellent ideas and I hope that they do go through. Electricity is mighty expensive here in Ottawa and people are complaining about the high cost of utilities and taxes. I was also bringing up before about garbage that can be recycled into electricity and they do this in Sweden and I think Norway as well. In the State of Washington in the US Seattle to be precise they do that as well. Sweden also recycles the nuclear waste into electricity. You can google all this and find out the facts. This is the way to go is to recycle garbage into electricity and not pollute the atmosphere the way it is now.

  2. No Jules they do NOT turn nuclear waste into electricity.

  3. Hugger I read that somewhere some time ago that the Swedes or Norwegians turn nuclear waste into fuel. I do know that they recycle garbage into fuel. I read about the nuclear stuff about a year ago.

  4. Unfortunately, no safe way to dispose of nuclear waste exists. The waste from the nuclear power we use today will be around to haunt humanity for thousands of years to come.

  5. Furtz you sure are right about the nuclear fuel that will be around for thousands of years to haunt us. I did read a year or more ago where Sweden or Norway had a way of making nuclear fuel into electricity. I didn’t do too much reading on this but according to what I saw that they have the know how. This could be in an experimental form. I hope that this can be done and would help the world out with all of this growing population.

  6. As Furtz says there is no safe way to dispose of nuclear waste. So, no one is using it to generate electricity.

  7. Actually nuclear waste comprises less than 1% of all industrial wastes. The amount of nuclear waste is minor relative to the waste fossil fuels electricity production creates. Industrial waste remains toxic indefinitely, not the case with nuclear. It is not particularly hazardous or hard to manage relative to other toxic wastes. Hydro or nuclear generation are still our best options. When a nuclear facility is designed storage for the spent fuel for the life of the facility is determined and financially accounted for in the costs of delivering power.

  8. We’ve had nuclear power plants in Canada for forty years. The waste is highly radioactive, and will remain radioactive for 100,000 years. We still don’t have a permanent and safe storage facility for the waste. It is currently being stored in temporary facilities at the power plants where it is produced.

  9. An added thought: 100,000 years is about 95,000 years longer than the universe has been in existence, according to some. It kinda puts things in perspective, I think.

  10. Something has to be done about that radioactive waste and I did read about Sweden or Norway who had the means to turn that into electricity. There was something a few years or more ago about the radioactive waste to be sent to one of those countries to be turned into electricity and of course it would have been a huge danger to transport that and right through the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River and through Cornwall, etc. to Europe. Scientists are going to have to come up with answers before it is too late.

  11. I did some research and could not find any info on turning nuclear waste into electricity. Perhaps it was a pilot project. We haven’t figured out what to do with nuclear waste yet. Will we ever? I doubt it.

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