Tuesday August 22, 2006

Nuclear pitch for oil sands

peakoil.com -> theglobeandmail.com :

An upstart Alberta company has a deal with Atomic Energy of Canada to market the Candu nuclear reactor to firms in Calgary looking to operate oil sands projects. Energy Alberta is targeting developers of projects that use steam injection to recover bitumen from the oil sands. That list is led by the likes of EnCana, Husky Energy and Total. Energy Alberta hopes to build a reactor worth about $3 billion by 2014 to provide steam to support the production of 220,000 barrels of bitumen a day.

The prospect of nuclear power in the oil sands has been raised quietly for the past several years after a 2003 study showed it to be economically viable, compared with using natural gas to generate power and steam.

- I think it's a dumb idea. And this is coming from someone holding on to a "nuclear-powered portfolio". It's far better to use the massive amount of energy to generate electricity efficiently, than to boil water to wash small amounts of oil from large amounts of sand, inefficiently.

See also :

1. Oil sands: burning energy to produce it
2. Oil sands cost explosion

(2006-08-22 00:33:25 SGT) [Energy] Permalink

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