That is a big backhoe!
While crude is pumped from the ground, oil sands must be mined and bitumen separated from the sand and water, then upgraded and refined. Petroleum companies are eyeing nuclear power to feed burgeoning oil production in Canada’s oil patch.
At an estimated 173 billion barrels, Canada’s oil sands rank second behind Saudi Arabia in petroleum reserves. However, due to high extraction costs, the deposits were long neglected, except by local companies.
Extraction from oil sands not only requires heat, the typical use of natural gas adds to the carbon burden of the process.
But with wide fluctuations in natural gas prices and pressure from the government and environmentalists to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, some petroleum companies are contemplating switching to cleaner and stable nuclear energy to fuel the oil sands boom.
Of note, neighboring Saskatchewan province is one of the top producers of uranium in the world.
Armand Laferrere, president of Areva Canada, said, “The most likely scenario is that several oil companies each needing a few hundred megawatts join together – tapping into one nuclear plant”.
You could end up with low-emissions production from the oil sands – using nuclear power generated nearby to lower the cost of production.
I love the characterization of nuclear power as “clean.” No particulates==just radioactive poison. Clean?
Alberta is experiencing an unprecedented population boom right now.
I have nothing against natural gas, which burns clean, only against bad motor designs that burn lousy with over 90% mechanical loss.
What’s interesting to note is the those petroleum companies have a larger $ operational budget than all of Canada put together, or say, all of Texas.
Just to put things into context. So if they want a Nuke Plant, They Will Get It.
In Other News – GM is trying to bolster it’s stock by yapping about the Volt
The Reality :: only 1000 test cars will be built in 2009-2010.
The battery system and gas powered efficient generator system will be tested.
THEN IN 2014, if ALL go well, GM will mass produce, IF there’s demand for at least one million.
2—Again, clean only in that it does not spew particulate matter, but yes, much better than nukes.
GM is a travesty of a business. It doesn’t deserve to exist, and sadly for us, won’t as the world turns electric, they will still be testing models and petitioning Congress for tax breaks for SVU’s. Real corporate cretins.
#1,3 ????
Seem to have a hate on for nuke power. No radioactivity is released (unless a serious accident occurs). All in all, I’d much rather live next to a nuke plant than an oil refinery, coal plant, gas plant, etc…
#1 – Nukes are very clean. Waste is a problem in the US because of political BS. One of the few things to admire about France is their nuclear industry. The technology is out there to basically remove any serious issues with waste.
This is good way to go about things.
That solves the problem of it takes more energy to pull the oil out of the ground than you generate.
Not against nuclear powerplants.
An Israeli scientist, using gasification / plasma & electricity totally destroyed radioactive waste from a plant . . .
. . . into a chunk of crystallized coal with no residual radiation.
So there are clean ways to deal with the waste. I’m sure the Harper Gov’t will ensure waste is properly disposed. (not being ironic)
No, I love nukes, hate the radioactive waste. I agree that no radioactivity is released unless it is released.
Nukes were shutdown in this country because of concerns regarding accidental release and long term storage of radioactive waste cooling water and other parts.
My hang up flows most directly from the “language.” Calling nuke clean is a manipulation of the relevant issues.
The newer issue for the next few decades is why build a nuke giving the terrorists another cheap weapon system to use?
You pro nuke guys just never do the negative part of the analysis. I am risk adverse because other options exist without the risk. Simple really.
7–if thats true, and it includes the waste water, then my major complaint is gone.===or the target thing is still there, but the risk is more argumentative/could be designed against and so forth. Recent article about the pollution invovled in the mining for uranium ore.
Another reason to be against nukes is that it is centralized/concentrated big business project. Lots of reasons to use decentralized/distributed power generation.
The need for nuclear power –electricity– is pretty clear. Instead of nuclear we are burning coal, a real green house gas producer, or our precious natural gas.
People don’t realize that the burning coal also releases tons of radiation into the environment as uranium is present everywhere. This has been documented by at least one US government lab.
Sorry, bobbo, but, your arguments make neither economic nor scientific sense.
My criticisms of the corporate thugs who used America’s original nuclear power construction as an open-ended welfare check would probably match yours. I did – after all – witness it firsthand working for a vendor to that industry.
There is no reason for cooling water to be any more dangerous than the same for any power generation plant. that doesn’t omit thermal “pollution”; but, the cooling water acquires no particulate or chemical pollutants.
Decentralization for the sake of decentralization may be some folks’ religion; but, there are many economic processes wherein centralized manufacturing or distribution make a lot of sense. I wouldn’t accept for example everyone returning to self-sustaining family farms or rely upon my own reasonably capable abilities to build the family vehicle. I could do a pretty good scooter; but, not a pickup truck.
#7
The question then is: How much is that “scientist” charging in license fees? ’cause nothing kills a good idea better than greed.
11–I like where you’re coming from, but not enough details?
If I have any religion (science?), its pretty thin–easily poked by facts.
You seem to agree with most of what I say, then draw a different conclusion without a good explanation.
Para 2–Its still big business that builds the power plants (national ownership anyone??) with all the attendant fraud that goes along with it. Wouldn’t we all agree that earmarks and whatnot are worse today than what you decry from years ago? Whats up with that?
Para 3–Gee==I think RADIOACTIVITY is the reason. bit different than thermal or particulate pollution. Whats up with that?
Para 4–Decentralization for the benefits of decentralization which include avoiding the negatives of centralization. Perhaps the biggest one here being the danger of a nuke plant as a target for terrorism. Indian Point Power Station anyone? I agree that cost of scale differentiates across industries. The fact that farming benefits from a mix of delivery systems says NOTHING about the risk of nukes. Whats up with that?
I hate to burst your bubble, but Uranium is, as far as extraction and scarcity goes, just another fossil fuel. If we use nuke power to extract oil from the tar sands, it might be usefull for polymers after the big crash, but it’s not going to delay the fuel crisis. For one thing, gasoline extracted in this method is going to be at least twice as expensive as the gas we are using now, due to the energy input required. Do you think the US can survive on $6 gas for long? I don’t think so. And then, what happens when we prematurely deplete our uranium supplies.
Buy a bicycle. As much as I like my Civic, I know at the current rate of oil production losses, I won’t be driving it for long.
All of what 14 said. Plus, the industry is grasping at straws. They are running out of water and energy and therefore production is falling behind demand. There is immense political pressure to get out press releases that might talk the price down. I can’t drive, this is fun to watch!
And BTW this is light years from being approved.
Wouldn’t Canada be better off with the nuclear plant just putting power on the grid? How much better is it to extract the oil using the nukes?
bobbo,
I’m mostly with you, especially with respect to nuclear waste. I would add that there is also an issue with safety since a nuclear power plant is a prime terrorist target. Unfortunately, this is not a secret that I just let out of the bag.
BTW, GM made a great electric car. They also refused to sell it. They leased it instead. At the end of the lease, they crushed perfectly good cars, much to the dismay of the former leasers. See the documentary “Who Killed the Electric Car?”
It’s really interesting. Japanese car manufacturers got so nervous about the U.S. winning the electric car market that they invented the technology used in today’s hybrids in response.
17—You cant tease me. You say you are mostly with me and then don’t say where you disagree. Lets hear it.
A nuke plant alone only produces electricity (and hot water that no one uses). The idea is to use a nuke to produce gasoline more cheaply than using a coal based electric plant. Absolutely nothing new–electricty to process oil sand, only issue is whether source is nuke or coal.
That makes me wonder–why not kick start with batteries, and then switch over to oil sand based energy power plant?
I grew-up next to a huge coal burning power plant. There were literally mountains of left-over ash piled up for miles around it. All of the local rivers and steams were dead because of the sulfer runoff. …and, of course, it spewed filth into the air 24/7 which kids like me got to breath.
I few hundred pounds of (admitedly) radioactive waste always seemed to me a much better idea than destroying vast swaths of land and potentially poisoning a local population.
Of course, accepting nuclear energy would mean accepting something less than ideal and some people simply lack the capacity for that.
#18 bobbo
The tar sands use heated water to warm the oil sufficiently to flow. Otherwise, it is too viscous. Any heat from a nuclear generator could be readily used for that purpose. Also, this far north it gets cold. Very cold. Green houses heated with the excess hot water could help supply vegetables year round.
There is (almost) always a way to recycle something.
20—Goes to show what happens when I opine on that which I know precious little about. Its good “they” are being more efficient/less wasteful.
Now 19—I’m too inept to find how many tons/gallons of highly radioactive waste is generated per year per facility but in case you are serious, I’ll give you a teaser from what I did find:
http://tinyurl.com/2cbw4d
“The major problem of nuclear waste is what to do with it. In fact, one of the biggest (and perhaps the single biggest) expenses of the nuclear power industry could eventually be the storage of nuclear waste. Currently there are several ways in which nuclear waste is stored. Most of these methods are temporary. In most cases a viable long-term solution for waste storage has yet to be found. This is because the time period for storage is so incredibly long, on the order of THOUSANDS OF YEARS”
You see, “relatively speaking” coal mining destroys an area for a limited amount of time and can be remediated. Not so with any radioactive spills which can kill for 1000 of years.
Course that is only one issue of the 3-4-5 mentioned above.
#7 – An Israeli scientist, using gasification / plasma & electricity totally destroyed radioactive waste from a plant…
Can we see a scientific peer review of their claim?
21:
Absolutely. Storage of the waste is THE big problem with nuclear energy but the volume of waste is orders of magnitude less than you get with any viable alternative. So, we have the problem of finding a good place to put a relatively small amount of very toxic material. There have been lots of storage proposals over the years, all of them opposed by people who had simply decided that anything nuclear was evil and they were going to resist it. So now we have global warming instead, possibly caused by all of the CO2.
It just strikes me as ironic, and a bit sad, the way the environmental radicals often end up creating situations that are far worse that what they oppose. Case in point is the pesticide DDT. Back in the 70’s, the fashionable thing for green types was to oppose the use of the stuff. They suspected it caused cancer and generally just didn’t like the idea of farmers using anything “unnatural”. So they fought, successfully, to have it banned internationally.
Problem is, this great “victory” has likely led to the deaths of millions in Africa because it was being used to control mosquitoes that carry malaria. I’ve heard some pretty convincing arguments that this event alone has set back the African continent by decades.
To make matters worse, studies over the last 20 years have pretty much shown that unless you eat DDT, it’s pretty safe. So, millions die so a small but vocal group of radicals can feel like they’re saving the planet.
That’s the price the world pays when people insist on adhering to rigid, uncompromising belief systems. Nobody thinks nuclear energy is perfect but it would most likely be THE power source in the US today were it not for the protesters. …and we’d all probably be much better off.
The money we’re about to spend on global warming would have built a hell of a lot of storage capacity for nuclear waste.
Matt that is a bunch of crap, DDT was on the verge of destroying all life on earth. Get an education.
24:
All life on Earth? I’d love to see some proof of that.
Here’s the very first two links I found when I googled the health effects of DDT:
http://www.cei.org/gencon/019,05945.cfm
http://www.cdc.gov/nceh/clusters/fallon/ddtfaq.htm
“Workers heavily exposed to DDT have not had more cancer than workers not exposed to DDT.”
So people who work with the stuff all day long have had no problems but you say all life on earth will end if we use it. Funny, seems to me a lot of life ended when we stopped using it.
It does seem to be true that large doses of it can cause problems, but that’s true of most any chemical. Trace amounts in food, which is what you really get, hasn’t been shown to do much.
And I a very good education actually, but thanks. 🙂
25:
Matt, asking an environmentalist to re-think nuclear power or DDT is like asking a creationist to reconsider evolution. In both cases you’re dealing with people who are intensely dogmatic.
I’m with you on the nuclear power plant thing. We should focus our efforts on how to deal with the waste because it seems the most practical alternative to fossil fuels.
Not sure I agree with on DDT though. It maybe makes sense to use it in areas where malaria outbreaks are high but I think it shouldn’t be used anywhere else. The effects on humans might not be that bad but It does a lot of damage to fish and bird species and takes a long time to break down.
They have been talking about this for years. Even an underground detonation of a nuclear explosion. Then all the oil warms up and it will flow out of the ground easily.
23–I am an “environmentalist”==who isn’t? I say kill the pup fish in some desert creek if that is required to build something else. But I say save old growth Redwood Trees for their own worth, saving the owl is more of a by-product.
Its been said, DDT was never about “human health” but rather about bird eggs being thinned out and fish kills. So==I agree, maybe use it in a controlled application for houses in Africa, but don’t spray it liberally from the air. But is the use of “any” poison worth the extinguishing of several/many bird and fish species to get a 10-11-12 generation of moisquito relief? Maybe so.
Back to nukes. So we agree==no nukes until waste disposal is solved, or crap on our grandchildren again????
I laughed when a recent glass/ceramic/concrete container was supposed to last a few thousand years and it started leaking after 3 years. Some sort of unknown electrollic reaction was set up. Bury it in salt mines? Yes==sounds good, but if it leaks, there goes an entire ground water supply aquafer?
Why not do what is KNOWN TO BE SAFE rather than shit on our grandchildren with A GUESS AS TO WHAT MIGHT WORK? but I don’t want to be dogmatic.
#s 23-26,
DDT does not break down in the environment. It accumulates up the food chain. When raptors eat other species that have eaten smaller quantities, it accumulates in them and makes their eggs thin, thus making them effectively unable to reproduce. Many raptor species in the U.S. were on the verge of extinction. Some still are. Many are coming back since the chemical was banned here. Interestingly, U.S. chemical companies are still allowed to (and still do) produce the crap and sell it overseas where it is causing huge damage.
bobbo,
I added to your statements rather than truly contradicting them. That was what I called mostly in agreement. It was really a statement that even the huge problems of nuclear waste, may not be the biggest issue of nuclear plants. Safety and security from terrorism may outweigh even the huge problems of radioactive waste.
So, in your last comment, “no nukes until waste disposal is solved”, please consider security as well.
More on nukes:
I heard at a lecture that in order for nuclear power to make a real difference in global warming, we need 25 times the number of nuclear plants currently in the world. These plants will not all be in the nations that already have them. Many will be required in third world nations.
I have nothing against developing nations. They often harbor the beautiful wildlife that I love to travel to see. But, do you really believe that they will be able to keep these plants at the same level of safety as the U.S. and France? Or do you think they’ll be a bit more like Chernobyl? Do you think that we can be assured that they will not use them to produce weapons? Or, just produce weapons grade materials and sell them?
In short, nuclear power is not going to solve the problems of the world.
That said though, there is not even a good reason to consider it. When nuclear power is not subsidized, it is the most expensive power we can purchase. Wind, solar, and tidal are all dramatically cheaper, probably cheaper than oil, gas, and coal when those subsidies are removed.
The reason nukes look like a good idea to some power companies is because they become an externalized cost. The government typically spends a couple of gigabucks building the plant and the power company gets to charge for the electricity generated. The net cost to consumers is very high. Most of it will be paid in a tax bill rather than an energy bill. However, paid it must be. TANSTAAFL.