The Dominion - Nuclear Power

"Green Bitumen?!"

Sandra — Mon, 27 Aug 2012 12:39:24 +0000

Nuclear reactors in the tar sands

SASKATOON—What do you get when you cross a nuclear reactor with a hydraulic shovel-full of tar sands? The answer, according to the Canadian Energy Research Institute, is "Green Bitumen."

The brainchild of the nuclear industry, this novel concept of deploying small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs) to replace natural gas is being sold as a solution to the tar sands' reputation for producing the largest carbon footprint on the planet. Nuclear is being touted as an environmentally friendly, "clean" energy source for the extraction process. But in order to make that claim, one must overlook the substantial carbon emissions in the nuclear "fuel cycle," from mining to ultimate disposal; the risks of weapons proliferation; the toxic radioactive footprint; and the legacy of highly radioactive waste left behind for many generations to come.

Several key players have expressed interest in deploying nuclear reactors in the tar sands, including: Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. (AECL), a federal Crown corporation; SNC Lavalin Nuclear and its subsidiary Candu Energy Inc.; Bruce Power, one of Ontario's largest nuclear power generators and its parent company Cameco, the world's largest supplier of uranium; Toshiba, builder of the Fukushima Daiichi 3 power plant; Westinghouse; Aitel; Gen 4 (formerly Hyperion); and General Atomics. The governments of Canada, Alberta and Saskatchewan have at times all actively promoted this agenda. Also involved is the Idaho National Laboratory (INL), a major US Department of Energy nuclear research facility.

The nuclear industry, government and academia are pitching "Green Bitumen" to the tar sands industry and anyone else who will listen. Dr. Warren Bell, founding president of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment, sees wide and grave implications for the environment and public health should this message resonate with its target audience.

"The federal and provincial governments are intent on tying the tar sands to nuclear power. Their forlorn hope is that the putative 'greenness' of the latter will counteract the overwhelming 'blackness' of the former," Dr. Bell told The Dominion.

Nuclear reactors have been proposed for three different functions in the tar sands. They could produce high-pressure steam to heat up the underground deposits, inducing bitumen flow from Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage (SAGD) mines. They could supply electricity to the mines. And they could generate electricity to produce hydrogen from water. The hydrogen is used to "upgrade" bitumen into a product similar to conventional crude oil.

But attention is currently focused principally on high pressure steam production. Single-mine electricity requirements are too small to justify reactor purchase, and current hydrogen production methods—from natural gas—are much cheaper. Since the high reactor temperatures required for high pressure steam production exclude conventional designs, the nuclear industry will look to universities for taxpayer-subsidized research and development based on as-yet unproven, "fourth generation" SMR designs.

A reactor would serve one tar sands mining complex, producing at most 30,000 barrels/day; a 375MW-thermal reactor would provide sufficient steam. The same size of reactor would be rated at about 150MW if used to generate electricity, with the other 225MW lost to the atmosphere. For comparison, modern full-size reactors generate 1000 to 1500MW.

The first sign of a concerted effort towards nuclear reactors in the tar sands came in 2006, when the Alberta Energy Research Institute, the energy-technology arm of the provincial government, announced plans to participate in a study with the industry to define nuclear options for the tar sands. This was followed by a private presentation by AECL and Energy Alberta Corporation—a company later linked to Ontario's Bruce Power—to the provincial Conservative caucus in 2007. Two days later, the Alberta Conservative convention passed a resolution to explore using nuclear power plants to assist oil sands development.

In 2008, the provincial government established the Alberta Nuclear Power Expert Panel to study the proposals. Three of its four members were drawn from the oil and nuclear industries. In 2007, with support from their federal counterparts, provincial government officials had already entered into discussions with the Idaho National Laboratory and had reached an agreement to study ways to use nuclear energy in Alberta's oil and gas industry.

The Peace River Environmental Society and other concerned citizens began an intensive public campaign to resist Bruce Power’s application to build a large-scale nuclear reactor in Peace River country, in north-western Alberta. They argued that the application and review process was riddled with a lack of transparency and integrity, undermining its credibility.

"It's a sad commentary on our society when government institutions meant to protect and inform us become puppets of the industries that harm us. Their obstruction of the truth compromised the best interests of Albertans for the benefit of an industry that has created massive debt and contamination for Canadians for the past forty years," Peace River anti-nuclear activist Pat McNamara told The Dominion in an interview.

Faced with effective public opposition, Bruce Power finally withdrew its application in December 2011. But by then the focus had already moved on to Saskatchewan.

Even before the election of his Saskatchewan Party government in 2007, Brad Wall had decided to embrace a nuclear future. "Small reactor technology is coming on fast and may present an opportunity for our province to develop our oil sands in an environmentally responsible way as the new technology produces much-needed steam as well as energy," Wall said in May 2007, six months before his election as Premier, according to a Saskatchewan Party Caucus news release. In 2008, Bruce Power made a pitch to SaskPower, a provincial Crown corporation, extolling the benefits of a large-scale nuclear reactor in Saskatchewan, with the potential to export electricity to the Alberta tar sands and beyond.

The Uranium Development Partnership, a Saskatchewan review panel comprising university and industry representatives, was keen on moving the nuclear agenda forward. Its report with 20 recommendations to "revitalize and capture growth opportunities across the uranium value chain" was released in April 2009 and followed by a public consultation process over the summer months. Just as had happened in Alberta, the Saskatchewan government had already signed an agreement with the Idaho National Laboratory, in March 2009. According to a Saskatchewan government news release, the Memorandum of Understanding would provide "a mechanism for the government and INL to consider research and demonstration projects on a variety of energy sources and resources, including uranium, nuclear energy, heavy oil, oil shale and oil sands."

Public reaction and opposition to the nuclear proposals was swift. The Saskatchewan government ultimately had to retreat from the Bruce Power proposal, but then pursued a different strategy from Alberta. Public funds were made available for nuclear research and development at the University of Saskatchewan. Largely outside public purview, and in close collaboration with the University administration, the Canadian Centre for Nuclear Innovation (CCNI) was established in 2011 with $30 million of government seed money, as was reported in Briarpatch earlier this year. In the CCNI Business Framework, the government establishes that CCNI must meet expectations for nuclear industry enhancement over the next seven years. In a linked move, the Hitachi business group was also funded to conduct "research into the design and feasibility of small reactor technologies," according to a 2011 Saskatchewan government news release.

In the short-term, nuclear reactors cannot compete with natural gas in the tar sands, but there is much dispute over the extent of gas reserves, adding uncertainty to plans for rapid gas-fuelled tar sands expansion. Industry experts worry that by 2030 there might not be sufficient natural gas to fulfil requirements, according to a 2006 Oil Sands Experts Group Workshop report by Len Flint. Studies continue to explore just when nuclear might become a viable option.

Irrespective of the economics, environmental journalist Andrew Nikiforuk told The Dominion that using nuclear power to produce bitumen is an absurd plan. "It's an insult to basic energetics and thermodynamics," he said.

This is not the nuclear industry's only target. In Saskatchewan, rapid, minimally regulated expansion of the oil, gas and potash industries will massively increase electricity consumption. SaskPower forecasts an 83 per cent increase in heavy industry's consumption by 2019, with 3750MW of new generating capacity required by 2033, citing nuclear as a long-term option, post-2023. SaskPower's grid management methodology would favour smaller (200 to 300MW), modular applications of existing reactor types. Hitachi has proposed to adapt a small conventional reactor design under the Saskatchewan agreement.

It is also important to recognize that the conventional power industry—nuclear, fossil fuels, pipelines and electricity—is becoming increasingly integrated. Along with Cameco and BPC Generation Infrastructure Trust, TransCanada Corporation is a one-third owner of Bruce Power. Its proposed Keystone XL pipeline represents an important synchronicity of investment between oil and nuclear expansion. SNC Lavalin is already active in the tar sands, and dovetailing that business with their Candu nuclear interests could be a next step. SNC Lavalin now also owns AltaLink, the private electrical company operating most of Alberta’s electrical grid. Planned and existing tie lines into Saskatchewan, British Columbia and Montana will enhance that export capacity.

Some argue that the Western Energy Corridor proposal, designed to export electricity across the border into the United States, is an even bigger opportunity for nuclear expansion in Alberta and Saskatchewan. This explains the keen interest of the Idaho National Laboratory in collaborating with government and industry in Canada. INL sees potential for nuclear reactors in western Canada to fulfil future U.S. energy demand. It is not, however, clear how any nuclear reactor could be built without public subsidy.

But the tar sands, perched atop the federal agenda, remain a much-desired prize. SMRs constitute one of very few technologies that tar sands corporations can use to misleadingly promise a smaller future carbon footprint. Even if ultimately non-viable, the argument serves to promote continued rapid expansion of tar sands extraction.

While European countries such as Denmark and Germany are increasingly moving to a renewables-based future, few North American utility and grid management companies are working to overcome the technical challenges involved in making that transition. Unless this changes, many regions are left with a choice between coal, gas and nuclear. The high greenhouse gas emissions of fossil fuels provide the nuclear industry with an opportunity to promote itself and revive its flagging fortunes despite its prohibitively high price tags.

David Geary, an anti-nuclear activist in Saskatchewan, says there can be no "Green Bitumen" in an environmentally sustainable future.

"Nuclear energy is not clean or green – it uses up huge amounts of fresh water, routinely spews out numerous pollutants and carcinogens into the air and water, and leaves behind a legacy of highly toxic, long-lived wastes," he told The Dominion.

Time will tell whether the organized struggles against well-funded vested interests in western Canada will overcome the proposed publicly-subsidized proliferation of small nuclear reactors in the tar sands or anywhere else. The battle between truly sustainable energy options and the "Green Bitumen" of the conventional energy industry continues.

D'Arcy Hande is a retired archivist and historian, living in Saskatoon. Dr Mark Bigland-Pritchard is a Saskatoon-based applied physicist working as a sustainable energy and green building consultant.

Green Bitumen?!

Enriched Hypocrisy

Moira Peters — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 05:40:37 +0000

Before criticizing Iran's nuke program, Canada should look within

PETERBOROUGH—Eight of the world’s most powerful leaders are meeting in Huntsville, Ontario, this June to discuss Iran’s nuclear power industry. Concerned over Tehran’s enrichment of uranium, Prime Minister Stephen Harper intends to use Canada’s leadership of the Group of Eight (G8) to push for sanctions against the Middle Eastern country. Anti-nuclear activists, citing the prominence and recent growth of Canada's own nuclear industry, are pointing out contradictions between domestic policy and Harper's intentions at the G8.

Reacting to Tehran’s February 9 announcement that Iran had successfully enriched uranium at its Natanz nuclear facility south of Tehran, Harper announced in a February press release his intentions to push the G8 to adopt harsher policies against Iran. “Canada will continue to work with our allies to find strong and viable solutions, including sanctions, to hold Iran to account.”

Harper said he aimed to reach an agreement amongst the G8 countries prior to the G20 meetings, as “the sting of a co-ordinated approach is always felt more strongly.”

Canada hopes China, also a nuclear supplier and one of Iran’s leading trading partners, won’t want to risk isolation from the other major industrialized economies and will therefore be pressured into supporting sanctions. (A similar strong-arm tactic was used against Russia in 1997 to gain support for the G7-led invasion of Serbia.)

Two days after Tehran's February 9 announcement, General Electric (GE) was awarded permission to enrich uranium in Peterborough, Ontario—an activity in which the provincial government had invested $15 million last November.

Peterborough’s GE plant, located in the heart of the city, already produces nuclear materials in partnership with the Japanese company Hitachi. GE-Hitachi submitted an environmental assessment proposal in 2007 to produce "low enriched uranium fuel bundles." This would require an upgrade of the plant’s status to “nuclear installation,” in turn requiring higher insurance costs.

Residents are concerned. The facility is immediately adjacent to residential areas and the Prince of Wales Elementary School, where 120 parents showed up to the only public meeting on the issue. Notice was given to parents just two days before the meeting, while residents were not informed at all.

The Environmental Assessment Report (EAR) submitted by GE stated the facility is located among “the most vulnerable catchments in the city for floods.” (The facility had in fact flooded during a city-wide flood in 2002.) The EAR also noted that in two years out of ten, water contamination from radiation reached a level 20 per cent above Health Canada’s 2006 safety levels. At the January hearing on the EAR, it was also noted that radiation contamination levels in the air at the plant had been steadily increasing over the past few years.

None of the parents, nor any other residents interviewed for this article, had been aware of this. All expressed the assumption that governmental regulations would keep them safe.

At the public hearing on GE's submission (which was scheduled for the afternoon of a weekday in Ottawa), the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC—the federal nuclear regulating agency) ruled in favour of GE-Hitachi’s proposal, in spite of a number of written submissions from Peterborough residents to the CNSC, opposing the the proposal.

According to The Arthur, Trent University’s student newspaper, Canadian government approval of a nuclear plant is a “slap in the face” to the residents of the City of Peterborough, given the success of a recent mass mobilization against uranium mining. In 2008, local organizing succeeded in having the city council pass a motion calling for a moratorium on the mining of uranium in Sharbot Lake, 150km to the east. The Arthur wrote that some Peterborough residents felt the Sharbot Lake ruling should have been an indictment of the entire nuclear industry.

According to Roy Brady, an activist with anti-nuclear group Safe and Green Energy (SAGE), if Canada is serious about nuclear non-proliferation, all aspects of the uranium cycle must be examined, including our own domestic uses.

This was not the case for GE, Brady said in an interview, given the proposed plant’s environmental assessment states that GE lacks a decommissioning plan.

In his recent book, Atomic Accomplice, Paul McKay, founding editor of the now-defunct (and Peterborough-published) Nuclear Free Press, said Canadian-built CANDU reactors were designed as part of the infamous Manhattan Project in the development of the nuclear bomb. The CANDU reactors produce more plutonium, the main reactive material in the nuclear bomb, than any other reactor type. The uranium bundles to be produced in Peterborough are destined for such CANDU reactors.

Craig Severence, who recently authored Business Risks and Costs of Nuclear Power, in lambasting the economics of the nuclear industry, pointed out the only “legitimate” reason to enrich uranium is for use in a nuclear power plant.

“The continued promotion and sale worldwide of civilian nuclear reactors gives nations the excuse to operate uranium enrichment programs,” Severence wrote in his report, pointing to Iran as an example.

According to McKay, Iran's nuclear ambitions can even be linked to Canada's export of nuclear technology to India, one of Iran's regional rivals. Canada provided India with nuclear material despite knowledge that the country was attempting to build an atomic bomb—which India certainly did, conducting the first successful test in 1974.

Critics of Canadian foreign policy point out that despite commonly-held beliefs, Canada's non-proliferation record is questionable. Yves Engler noted one example of this in his book, Black Book of Canadian Foreign Policy, stating that Canadian military jets stationed in Europe were armed with nuclear warheads during the Cold War—even after all American nuclear silos were removed from the country. As McKay said, “Canada’s nuclear record is far from innocent.”

Leading up to the G8 summit in Huntsville this summer, Canadians might wonder if the G8 would be worrying about nuclear non-proliferation issues now had countries like Canada kept a distance from nuclear trade with the Middle East in the first place.

The hope among nuclear critics is for G8 and G20 countries that have strong nuclear industries to realize how closely their nuclear programs play into Iran's.

Matthew Davidson is a student of history and international development at Trent University. He is actively engaged with both anti-nuclear and G8 resistance organizing in Peterborough.

Nuclear Bud

Nuclear Kids

Two Films Return Power to the Screen

dawn — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 09:29:20 +0000

PARIS, FRANCE–Canada's vast territory is graced with the full range of potential energy sources, from wind, solar and wave power to hydro, fossil fuels and uranium, used for nuclear power. Some see this as an enviable position: many of the world's nations are without the resources to make energy sovereignty possible. However, Canada – like the rest of the world – must come to grips with the dire combination of global warming and dwindling oil reserves.

In the face of this crisis, the nuclear industry has been quick to position itself as the energy source of the future. Its claims are that nuclear power produces virtually no carbon emissions and that incidents like Chernobyl are a thing of the Soviet past. The nuclear industry is enjoying somewhat of a renaissance, with some 35 reactors under construction in 12 countries.

Crude and The Nuclear Comeback are two documentaries from Down Under that explore the nature of oil and nuclear energy, and the role that each play in our society, today and in the future. Both films are essential viewing for anyone uneasy about the fate of our fragile planet.

The Nuclear Comeback, by Justin Pemberton
75 minutes
(Documentary, New Zealand)

If there’s something that big business excels at, it is turning a crisis into an opportunity. In this vein, the nuclear industry has been back in the spotlight recently as a self-proclaimed panacea to global warming and peak oil.

In The Nuclear Comeback, filmmaker Justin Pemberton explores the question of whether nuclear power can indeed chart the path to a low carbon future. His quest is earnest. The filmmaker finds himself in some of the gloomiest places in the world: a ghost town on the edge of the Chernobyl power plant's red zone, in the depths of Sweden’s nuclear waste storage facility some 50 meters below the Baltic Sea, and inside the bowels of an inoperative power station in the UK that will take approximately 120 years to dismantle.

Pemberton also manages to dig up Bruno Comby, a French environmentalist who is pro-nuclear, which is apparently an aberration. France is an exceptional case when it comes to nuclear power: 80 per cent of its electricity comes from this source.

It is one thing to read about the various arguments for and against nuclear power, but it is quite another to be taken on a tour of the facilities that host – in one way or another – some of the most radioactive and lethal substances on the planet. This is the film’s greatest virtue; the buzzing of a massive control panel is as unnerving as the sight of a couple of lone Ukrainian engineers smoking in the radioactive control room of the abandoned Chernobyl plant.

While the ground covered in the 53 minute version of the film is vast, the question of mining for uranium – the mineral that fuels nuclear reactors – is under-explored in the film, as it is in mainstream press.

The nuclear industry’s comeback is perhaps best assessed by an expert from The New Scientist, who is interviewed in the film, as he asks if we are jumping “out of the carbon frying pan and into the plutonium fire.”

Crude - The Incredible Journey of Oil by Dr. Richard Smith
89 minutes
(Documentary, Australia)

It would be a mistake to see Crude expecting classified documents of the wars in the Middle East to be revealed. That said, Crude is a refreshing departure from the geopolitical innuendo that monopolizes much of the talk around one of the world’s most primeval, powerful and coveted substances.

For many of us, a history lesson in oil might seem to begin sometime around the middle of the 19^th century, when the first hand powered rig unleashed the genie in the bottle.

Using striking animations of dinosaurs that could compete with a Spielberg blockbuster, Crude walks us through the greenhouse climatic conditions of the Jurassic era that allowed the formation of oil in the first place. The film makes the case that oil is essentially a concentration of millions of years of ancient sunlight.

Fast forward to modern times. Oil has been unleashed and the dense energy of this liquid sunlight now powers civilization. From the cars we drive to the food we eat, oil is ubiquitous.

Even newborns are drenched in oil from their first moments of life. "Newborn babies slide from their mothers into petro-plastic-gloved hands, are swaddled in petro-polyester blankets, and are hurried off to be warmed by oil-burning heaters," observes author Sonia Shah.

According to the many of the experts interviewed in the film, oil is peaking now. The 95-year-old retired oil pioneer will have seen the rise and fall of an oil civilization in his lifetime. In less than a century and a half, millions of years of evolution have been burned up, ushering in the climatic conditions that enabled its creation.

The film brings out the tragic beauty of this paradox, despite the obvious implications for humanity.

While the documentary remains somewhat conventional in its approach, it is in its content – which is fundamental to our understanding of life as we know it – that this documentary is at once novel and essential.

Carolyn Lebel is a Canadian freelance journalist based in Paris.

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