Canada Considering Nuclear Reactors in Alberta Tar Sands Fields -Designed by Bill Gates?

“…The wisdom of dotting Canada’s remote northern landscape with mini reactors has yet to be debated, but with Harper’s conservative government and the figures stated above, it seems likely that mini reactors in the Great White North are most likely a done deal….”

“…Toshiba’s new mini reactor will produce only 10,000-50,000 kilowatts, about one to five percent the power of a regular nuclear reactor, according to company sources, with the steam generated in the reactor pumped underground. Toshiba reportedly plans to construct a nuclear reactor building underground, with an earthquake-absorbing structure.

Besides potential earthquakes, the buried reactor will have to cope with temperatures as cold as –40C in winter and 30C in the summer….”

http://gizmodo.com/5499923/an-underground-nuclear-reactor-powered-by-bill-gates-money

By John Daly | Mon, 21 January 2013 22:42

Like them or hate them, Alberta, Canada’s tar sands deposits of bitumen or extremely heavy crude oil, are the world’s largest. The province’s resources include the Athabasca, Peace River and Cold Lake deposits in the McMurray Formation, which consist of a mixture of crude bitumen, a semi-solid form of crude oil, admixed with silica sand, clay minerals, and water.

According to the U.S. government’s Energy Information Administration, “Canada controls the third-largest amount of proven reserves in the world, after Saudi Arabia and Venezuela… Canada’s proven oil reserve levels have been stagnant or slightly declining since 2003, when they increased by an order of magnitude after oil sands resources were deemed to be technically and economically recoverable. The oil sands now account for approximately 170 billion barrels, or 98 percent, of Canada’s oil reserves.”

Lying under 54,000 square miles of forest and bogs, the bitumen tar sands are estimated to be comparable in magnitude to the world’s total proven reserves of conventional petroleum.

But exploiting the tar sands comes at a significant environmental cost.

Oil sands pollution is not a topic that Ottawa is keen to publicize. In 2009 the Canadian government acknowledged that it deliberately had excluded data indicating a 20 percent increase in annual pollution from Canada’s oil sands industry from a 567-page report on climate change that it was required to submit to the United Nations.

Quite aside from the despoliation of the landscape, Alberta’s oil sands have been found to be one of the major causes of air pollution in Canada, as Tar sands facilities were found to be among the top four highest polluters of volatile organic compounds, a major air contaminant, along with acid rain.

That pollution rap sheet could soon include nuclear, as Toshiba is developing “mini” nuclear reactors to be used to mine Canadian oil sands, with an initial deployment projected by 2020.

Why nuclear power? It is estimated that approximately 90 percent of the Alberta oil sands are too far below the surface to use open-pit mining. Making liquid fuels from oil sands requires energy for steam injection and refining. Mining oil sands is water intensive; drilling one well consumes 5.5 acre-feet of water each year, and the production of one gallon of oil requires thirty-five gallons of water.

Toshiba’s new mini reactor will produce only 10,000-50,000 kilowatts, about one to five percent the power of a regular nuclear reactor, according to company sources, with the steam generated in the reactor pumped underground. Toshiba reportedly plans to construct a nuclear reactor building underground, with an earthquake-absorbing structure.

Besides potential earthquakes, the buried reactor will have to cope with temperatures as cold as –40C in winter and 30C in the summer.

Related Article: Oil Exports, Politics and Propaganda

Toshiba is not the only Asian company to tout for business in Alberta’s oil sands. Last year China’s CNOOC Ltd. spent $15.1 billion to acquire oil sands producer Nexen Inc., but the deal was controversial. Accordingly, Wenran Jiang, a senior fellow at the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada and senior adviser to the Alberta energy department noted, “They feel the oil sands projects are too large in pre-capital investment and take too long to get to the market.”

But Ottawa is not discouraged over its oil sands future. The Canadian Energy Research Institute estimates that Canadian employment as a result of new oil sands investments is expected to grow from 75,000 in 2010 to 905,000 by 2035 and that oil sands developments overall will contribute $2.1 trillion to the Canadian economy over the next 25 years.

The wisdom of dotting Canada’s remote northern landscape with mini reactors has yet to be debated, but with Harper’s conservative government and the figures stated above, it seems likely that mini reactors in the Great White North are most likely a done deal.

By. John C.K. Daly of Oilprice.com

Nuclear power to go underground?

19:00 29 March 2011

Phil McKenna, contributor

Nuclear power is going to be a tough sell going forward given the ongoing radiation leaking from Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi power plant, but what if future reactors were buried underground?

It may sound like a crazy idea, but Singapore, a tiny island country whose population would have no place to go in the event of a wide-scale evacuation, is giving buried nukes a closer look.

The thinking is that you could bury a small reactor in a shallow layer of bedrock, perhaps 30-50 meters underground. Then, if things at the plant go south for any reason, the granite will provide natural containment; simply cement in any access tunnels going down to the facility and walk away.

The idea was first floated last fall by Hooman Peimani an energy security specialist at the National University of Singapore. Countries with nuclear power typically build large-scale reactors 15 to 20 km away from heavily populated residential areas. Singapore, a country of roughly 700 square kilometers, doesn’t have a potential site even 3 km from residential areas, Peimani says.

Going underground would significantly increase the costs of any reactor. Peimani says only small reactors 30-50 megawatts in size, one-twentieth the size of conventional large-scale reactors, would be cost effective.

Several designs for such “mini reactors” have been proposed by companies like TerraPower andHyperion Power. And while their proponents argue they could provide cheap, reliable, and safe sources of energy, they are still years away from being plugged into any electrical grid.

(Image: Hyperion Power Generation)

Earthquake prone areas or regions with high water tables wouldn’t work. The limitations would rule out much of Japan but wouldn’t preclude Singapore, Peimani says.

Singapore is currently dependent on natural gas imported from Indonesia and Malaysia for much of its electricity production but is building a massive liquefied natural gas terminal that would allow the country to import the fuel from anywhere in the world.

The Singapore government authorized a feasibility study for underground reactors last year without setting a timetable for completion. Peimani says recent events in Japan may help push the idea forward.

http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/onepercent/2011/03/nuclear-power-to-go-undergroun.html

An Underground Nuclear Reactor Powered by Bill Gates’ Money

BY MATT BUCHANAN

A unit of Intellectual Ventures—the patent firm started by ex-Microsoft chief tech dude Nathan Myhrvold and funded partly by Bill Gates—called TerraPower is talking with Toshiba about using its nuclear reactor tech to build underground reactors.

Their reactor tech supposedly can “run for decades on depleted uranium without refueling or removing spent fuel from the device.” So, these reactors are built way, way underground, without people actually working in them. Of course, these safer, cheaper and awesomer reactors are years and years away from actually being developed.

Still, Bill Gates + nuclear power sounds kind of nerdsexy, maybe more so than the nigh-mythical Bloom Box, even if you’re ambivalent about what Intellectual Ventures actually does (just Google—or Bing—”Intellectual Ventures patent troll”). [WSJ, Image viabibliodyssey/Flickr]

http://gizmodo.com/5499923/an-underground-nuclear-reactor-powered-by-bill-gates-money

January 22, 2013 - Posted by arclight2011 | Uncategorized

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