The Round-Up: November 9th 2006
Posted by Stoneleigh on November 9, 2006 - 3:38pm in The Oil Drum: Canada
Jim Dinning suddenly became the nuclear candidate Tuesday, promising the crowd at a Vermilion candidates' forum he would look at allowing a reactor plant to meet the oilsands' ballooning energy needs.The perceived front-runner became the first Conservative leadership contender to publicly flirt with Alberta going nuclear, a controversial idea that retiring Premier Ralph Klein also recently warmed up to.
"We're wasting natural gas, and nuclear power's got to go on the list of energy sources to be considered to support the development of the oilsands," Dinning said, getting cheers from many in at Lakeland College's Vermilion campus theatre.
The oilsands' energy-intensive extraction and processing sucks up massive amounts of natural gas, a need which will grow as more megaprojects join the northern oil rush. While that happens, forecasters predict the Alberta's natural-gas production will peak.
The Alberta government may introduce incentives to upgrade raw oil sands output in the province to discourage the product from being shipped to the United States for processing, according to Murray Edwards, vice-chairman of Canadian Natural Resources Ltd."There is the possibility as we move through the next decade, you may see government steps taken to encourage more upgrading to take place in Alberta," Mr. Edwards said at a luncheon during a company presentation to investors. "There may be an economic incentive ... to upgrade that oil in Alberta."....
....The question of upgrading in Alberta is becoming more heated every day. EnCana Corp. last month signed a major deal to export raw bitumen, and Husky Energy Inc. is looking to do the same, possibly with BP PLC as a partner. BP is spending $3-billion (U.S.) at its Chicago refinery to handle much more bitumen and last week said it is also considering overhauls in Washington State and Ohio.
Failure to move soon on new transmission capacity from Bruce Power could lock in electricity from a $4.2-billion retrofit at the site, chief executive officer Duncan Hawthorne warned Wednesday.Terms of a long-term electricity supply contract struck last year between the Ontario Power Authority and Bruce Power may mean the province ends up paying for power that can't be delivered, Hawthorne said. Price guarantees in the deal led to the company renovating and restoring mothballed reactors at the Bruce A generating station....
....Transmission capacity from Bruce has been undersized since the completion of all eight reactors on the site almost 20 years ago. Current reactor refurbishing projects are designed to boost output from 4,700 to 6,200 megawatts....
....Bruce Power's supply contract requires the province to pay for undeliverable power. It's the flip side of built-in penalties for the company if it fails to meet delivery deadlines.
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The letter that RENEW sent to US DOT relies heavily on David Hughes' presentations at last month's ASPO-USA conference. Hughes believes the pipelines are a done deal, but I believe it is vulnerable to multiple challenges, in Canada as well as in the USA. You can read RENEW's letter at
http://www.madisonpeakoil-blog.blogspot.com
I have this image of pit ponies down Canadian U mines, to get at the energy to produce your tar.
CW
"""DavidFleming's article (writing in June 2005 Prospect) available at the prospect website and also republished in the Australian Financial Review at:
http://afr.com/articles/2005/06/23/1119321845502.html
Unfortunately, Fleming's article is not referenced, but the structure of his argument and his broad, long-term view gives it credibility. He draws on analysis being done by Jan Willem Storm van Leeuwen and Philip Smith, both nuclear scientists. """
again, hard to reference, but should help add some names to your research list
cheers
Also it was my understanding that the natural gas adds hydrocarbons into the bitumen in order to make it into usable oil, something electricity doesn't do on it's own. Is that correct? And if so how is this going to work? Not so much.
How many nuclear powerplants are we talking about? I've heard anywhere from 5 to 20. (a few billion each) Maybe more? And what about the waste? As if Alberta doesn't have enough toxic waste to deal with. The number of powerplants needed alone and given the time limitations of peak just doesn't add up.
Also nuclear is not carbon neutral as it seems, using much carbon producing materials in it's construction, maintainence and end of life cycle.
There's also the small fact of peak-uranium and peak-metals and peak-x (insert here). How do you mine for ore if nobody takes into account all that energy required, all before it can even get used to make tarsands oil? I'd love to see the negative ERoEI on that one! haha... Tarsands has an abismal ERoRI rate to begin with, and that's with natural gas. It's not going to improve with more resources required before any more oil is made, over a shorter timeframe from other resources.
When peak occurs, the ability to maintain all the pieces together for a nuclear plant will go with it.
call it peak-dreaming
time to stop the dreaming and cut the bull. Conservation of energy would prove more profitable, more sustainable and cost **less** (not billions and billions) and frankly is more practical. But we don't care!
peak-Weirdness ....