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bananas

(27,509 posts)
1. "How nuclear will make oil greener" :sarcasm:
Sun Nov 25, 2012, 01:47 AM
Nov 2012
http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/intelligent-energy/how-nuclear-will-make-oil-greener/10879

How nuclear will make oil greener

By Mark Halper | November 30, 2011, 3:32 AM PST

Here’s a statement likely to raise the hackles of some environmentalists: Nuclear power will make oil greener, at least anywhere there are vast fields of oil sands, like in Canada.

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That’s exactly what several nuclear companies including veteran General Atomics as well as smaller outfits like NuScale Power Inc., Radix Power and Energy Corp., Q-Power Corp., Hyperion Power Generation, General Fusion and Helion Energy Inc. could find themselves doing. So could thorium specialist Flibe Energy.

Each is developing a reactor that is much smaller than the typical reactor that has a gigawatt-plus capacity of a modern nuclear electricity station. (Contrary to popular belief, the Bill Gates-backed Terra Power is not focused on small reactor design, but is concentrating on a large model).

I recently spoke with top executives from all these organizations, for an in-depth report I wrote on the future of nuclear power, published by consulting firm Kachan & Co. Many of them do indeed view the oil sands industry as a target market for their so-called “small modular reactors” (SMRs). One of them, Burnaby, Canada based General Fusion, is even partially owned by a Calgary oil sands company, Cenovus Energy.

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But when they are ready, look for them in the oil prairies of Western Canada. They won’t eradicate oil’s environmental hazards The bitumen they help extract will still deposit CO2 into the atmosphere when it’s burned as fuel; the oil mining itself will scar the land; and the extraction process requires a lot of water. And, needless to say, the SMRs will have to operate safely and with absolute minimum risk of radiation leaks and weapons proliferation.

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