We are at the Clean Energy Research Center at the University of British Columbia and we're going
to talk about this book which actually looks at energy alternatives. Can you imagine a world where
a small nuclear reactor is set up at a campus like this for example or northern canadian town
or a disaster Zone to provide an alternate to fossil fuels. Seem like a practical idea? Well,
we can ask the author of the book Bob McDonald the host of Quirks and Quarks. Hey Bob. Hi Ian. So
let's talk about those small nuclear reactors, how practical an idea is that? Well actually it's a
very practical idea because small nuclear reactors have been powering aircraft carriers, submarines,
big icebreakers for years and they're they're actually quite safe. And it's a very different
way of looking at nuclear energy we're used to in Canada to building these big multi-billion
dollar facilities that take years and they go over budget and people get worried about them,
these new reactors are about the size of this little counter here that's beside me. It's got a
big case around it but you can put it on the back of a flatbed truck. And you put them underground,
you don't put them on the surface you put them underground and they produce just enough power to
power a small town. Yeah but here's the thing and your book is really good at setting this out the
science may say that it works and it's really easy and that it is relatively safe and you go into
that in detail but it's more than science when it comes to looking at some of these fuel sources
and the idea of powering let's say this campus by nuclear energy, I don't think everyone would like
that. And that's the point I make throughout the book is that as we move to Alternative
clean energy it's not just a scientific issue, it's a social issue, it's a political issue,
it's an economic issue and all of those things have to come together but the reason I wrote the
book is to just say look the technology is already out there. It already exists. And we just need to
come together to make it happen and I believe we really can. So you went through at nine or
ten potential alternates to fossil fuels. I'm going to ask you give me the top two or three
in terms of of practicality things that you think will actually make a big difference in the short
term. Well the the two big ones that are taking over in other parts of the world are wind and
solar and there's a lot of research going into both of them. Wind turbines have gotten gigantic
the largest one in the world right now stands 260 meters tall that's almost the height of the Eiffel
Tower. It's two and a half times higher than the peace Tower in Ottawa in our Parliament buildings.
These things are so gigantic that one of them can power sixteen thousand homes. A single turn
of the blade produces enough electricity to power a house for two days. So instead of having entire
fields of these things you can have just a few of them now that's the future wind. And a lot of
them will be offshore rather than taking up land. Solar, in some parts of the world, is now cheaper
than coal. When you say how much does it cost to make the electricity per kilowatt hour. It's
cheaper than coal. And you probably think of these big farms that cover a lot of land and people
say well that could be used for agriculture. Okay. There's another class of materials called
perovskites that you can print you can you can thin sheet of plastic or fabric, and, or glass.
And there's an idea that you put these things, you can see through them, so you put them on windows.
They still generate electricity. And you think about all the surface area of the glass buildings
that we have in our big cities, if they were all solar, that's a huge area that can be generating
electricity for the building. In India they're putting them on canals instead of putting them out
in farmer's fields. So solar is really changing a lot and you're going to see solar technology in
places you don't even know it's there because it's incorporated into the into part of the building.
I shouldn't be surprised because you're all about excitement and optimism when it comes to science,
but you do seem excited and optimistic, and those are two things I don't often hear when
people talk about where we're at in terms of the climate crisis and where we're at in terms of
alternate fuels. Well that's one of the reasons I wrote the book is because I've been reporting
on the environment since the 1970s, and it gets depressing after a while because all the news
is bad. And the emissions keep going up despite all these United Nations conferences we have the
emissions still going up. So I wanted to try to inject a little hope that yeah there are solutions
out there and and we can get on with them and if we have a positive attitude and say okay what do
we need to do let's do that instead of coming up with reasons why not to do it. And you don't
want to get you don't want to get polarized about it you don't want to say all the bad oil
industry and the good tree huggers because then everybody digs in and it's, nothing happens. So
let's cooperate with energy production, energy storage, there's a lot of work going on there,
new batteries, making our cities more walkable, more efficient. There's so much that can be done
and that's why I put it all in the there. It is it is possible. And I have faith in our
ingenuity you know we went to the moon for God's sake. We could, we can do this. One last thing,
I, I learned a little bit about you in this book that I wasn't expecting. You know I kind of think
that radio show hosts, like I am on Sundays, lead pretty sedentary lives. But not you you,
you talk about swimming in an underwater tunnel and kind of getting stuck there for a little
longer than you thought, getting stuck in the reversing falls on a boat, but also in a gale in
Florida that kind of had you nervous for a while. I put those stories into illustrate the energy and
the different things like wind like waves and like tides and yeah I've had a few adventures
with wind. You know we've been capturing wind for centuries, and I'm a sailor so I had one day down
in Florida and the thunder squall came along and I hadn't experienced them before. They come really,
really, fast and I too much sail up and you can have too much wind and it was like an invisible
hand just came and pushed my sails into the water and the boat went right over on her side
and I was like oh my god what have I done here. And I got out of it but it did demonstrate to
me just how much energy is in the wind. So we can capture that. And the uh the swimming thing I got,
I I wanted, I wanted to snorkel underneath this big rock but there was such a huge surge it was
in the ocean that I only got halfway through and then the wave came back the other way and stopped
me. And I realized I'm not going to get out then I took the next wave in. But again energy and waves,
and energy in the tides, more energy falls out of the sky every every hour than we use in a year.
So it's there. There's all this, there's no energy crisis. There's lots of energy around we
just need to gather it up. I guess one last thing I would say is that at the end of this interview,
I gotta say, I'm gonna get into a car, and head from UBC back to downtown Vancouver. It's going
to serve me very well and even though I know all the stats about climate change it's it's
easy to kind of accept the status quo. And if we accept the status quo and keep going the way
we are the cost in the long term is going to be greater than if we do something like you still
get in a car, but it's an electric car. And the energy for that, the electricity for that car is
coming from a whole variety of sources, not just one, and so that we can still keep our lifestyle.
We just do it slightly differently. Or maybe you'll be getting on an e-bike and bicycling
downtown. A lot of people are. Yeah, and so that's that's the thing, it's not a matter
of going back to the caves or the trees. We can still keep our lifestyle. It's just we're
we're just generating our energy in different ways and using it in different ways. And I,
you know, the technology's there, let's embrace it. I don't often get a chance to talk to you
for this amount of time it's been really fun, thank you. My pleasure Ian it's been great.