Brand nuke idea (Nuclear energy for oilsands production)

[struggle4progress]

Company wants to open plant within decade
By IAN WILSON, BUSINESS EDITOR

The province's first nuclear power plant could open in the oilsands within a decade, says a Calgary-based company in talks with several oilpatch players and government officials to bring the project to reality.

"It'll come -- it's just a matter of the date," said Wayne Henuset, director of Energy Alberta Corporation.

Henuset, who founded Energy Alberta with Precision Drilling CEO Hank Swartout, said he's in preliminary talks with three energy companies about building a nuclear plant to produce steam, which is used to separate bitumen -- or thick crude oil -- from sand.

The nuclear process would be used in place of natural gas, which is typically used for extraction, but has grown costly due to a jump in prices. <snip>

http://calsun.canoe.ca/News/Alberta/2006/04/13/1532645-sun.html

Just another example of how the nuclear boys are busy trying to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels ... :eyes:

[benburch]

1. Why cannot the extracted fuel oil feed the process?

I mean, coal mines used coal fired steam engines in the 18th, 19th, and early 20th century.

[greenman3610]

2. demonic

[NNadir]

3. Really? You have information showing that most nuclear power plants

are used to mine fossil fuels? What percentage of existing nuclear power plants are used for this purpose?

You want to ban the world's nuclear power plants, all 441 of them. With what are you going to replace 'em coal boy? You have no problem telling us that coal can be rendered safe, and suddenly you're up in arms about one proposed steam tar sands report? And's let's be clear: You don't care about tar sands. You'd dig up all of Canada to close two nuclear power plants, just as you applaud by inaction and silence the strip mining of all West Virginia. What gets you is the "nuclear" portion of it. If they were strip mining Alberta for oil sands, cooking it with coal, stripping the forests to make fires under vats of sticky sands, you would not issue a single wimper. Say "nuclear" and you run into a paranoid frenzy of fear.

The world's nuclear power plants produced 9 exajoules of electrical energy and 27 exajoules of primary energy last year. There were no deaths. Put it up, coal boy, show us where you're going to get 27 exajoules of primary energy or 9 exajoules of electrical energy and do it so safely. Where?

You have plenty of energy for stories about tar sands, stories about loose bolts and scary stories about terrorism. You think if you make enough wind, you can can spin some wind mills? That apparently is the only energy you have.

And while we're talking about making stuff up, how come you never answered me on this one, coal boy?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=48709&mesg_id=49983

I refer you to your own post, at the risk of subjecting other people to reading a how to manual on how to be specious, obscure and wrong in the space of 5 lines of absurd, contorted and confused prose:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=48709&mesg_id=49925

You don't know what you're talking about, but even as we all lay dying, as our planet boils off, you are still worrying about...oh who the fuck cares? You ain't going anywhere bub.

[struggle4progress]

4. Yah. I didna answer ya on the "uranium from seawater" stuff

cuz yer alleged argument wid me wuz actually showin that my claims were correct.

[NNadir]

7. No, your argument conflicted with Ind Chem Eng.

Almost everything you say is in conflict with real scientists, coal boy.

[greenman3610]

5. We are thinking of starting world war three

because the "wrong" country is thinking of
building nuclear power plants.

that should be cause enough for skepticism about
nuclear power.

[struggle4progress]

6. Really? Ya wanna explain just how you think building nukes ..

.. is gonna end use of coal?

It's gonna be how?

Like, poof?! every nuke we build takes out a coal station?

Just explain the politics of this miraculous transmutation to me.

Nukes is a big boondoggle. It's the ultimate government/corporate crony racket. Secrecy and subsidies under the umbrella of the national security state.

Public acceptance of nukes will leave to expansive proposals for nuke construction: nuke fired coal gasification plants, nuke fired oil sands recovery projects, ... Why, the possibilities is endless, and the industry is (of course) studying all of them ...

[NNadir]

8. Pretty simple and pretty obvious, coal boy.

Nuclear power stations and coal stations, a few gas fired, and more rarely hydro stations stations represent all of the continuous load power power. In the United States, there is only one resource that can replace coal stations, your favorite form of energy, nuclear power.

The anti-nuclear argument depends on attempting to bury data, make stuff up, misconstrue data, ignore data, changing the subject, and religious chanting, but nevertheless I will continue to present data in the face of all this nonsense.

The energy information administration provides statistics on the name plate capacity of power plants of each type of energy and the amount of energy provided by them. To use this data, you would need to avoid all of the standard attempts at confusion that characterizes the anti-nuclear industry, as listed above - so I very much doubt that this will effect any of the regular silly anti-nuclear posts we see here, since the anti-nuclear industry is a game of denial. But here goes anyway.

The amount of electricity generated by energy source is given in this file:

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epa/epat1p1.html

The electric name plate capacity is given in this file:

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epa/epat2p2.html

Now we can calculate the capacity loading for various types of fuel, i.e. the percentage of the capacity that is actually used.

The Columns below represent the following information. 1: Fuel type 2: Name plate capacity (MW) 3: Name plate capacity expressed in joules based on a full year at 100%, 4: actual generated energy (thousands of megawatt-hours), column 5 converted to joules and finally the capacity loading factor (multiplied by 100 this would give the percentage of capacity actually used.

Coal<1> 335,243 1.05795E+19 1,978,620 7.12303E+18 0.673

Petroleum<2> 37,970 1.19824E+18 120,646 4.34326E+17 0.362

Natural Gas 256,627 8.09853E+18 708,979 2.55232E+18 0.315

Other Gases<3> 2,535 7.99985E+16 16,766 6.03576E+16 0.754

Nuclear 105,560 3.33122E+18 788,528 2.8387E+18 0.852

Hydroelectric 77,130 2.43404E+18 268,417 9.66301E+17 0.397

Renewables<5> 21,113 6.66276E+17 90,408 3.25469E+17 0.488


The "renewables" listed refers to Wood, black liquor, other wood waste, municipal solid waste, landfill gas, sludge waste, tires, agriculture byproducts, other biomass, geothermal, solar thermal, photovoltaic energy, and wind. Many of these types of energy are anything but renewable, and many are incredibly filthy, but no matter.

So coal boy, there is only one form of energy that exceeds the capacity loading of coal fired plants, and thus can replace coal. (Note that the other fossil fuels have low capacity loading owing to the fact that they are used as peak load systems.)

I know that you will ignore this reality, but it's pretty fucking clear that every coal fired power plant that has been built in the last 30 years has been built because a nuclear power plant wasn't built. Only nuclear power can operate at the capacity loads at which coal operates.

This post demolishes again, through data, as so many other posts have, the absurd religious contention that nuclear power is unreliable. It is in fact the most reliable capacity in the entire United States, cherry picked stories about bolts aside.

If you can't see what this means, I am unsurprised. You don't see anything, coal boy.

[Pab Sungenis]

9. Considering how right wing Alberta is

strip mining it is fine by me. Canada would be a lot better off if they could cut off both Quebec and Alabamerta.

However, I'm with you on this issue. New ways of extracting the oil sands do need to be found. And if between nuclear energy and oil sands, Canada can work its way towards energy independence, then more power to them. I wish we had the courage to do the same here in the States.