Klein talks energy no mention of Biofuels

[Vader]

stuff takes forever to cool off. If you don't wait for 30-50 years it will simply melt whatever type of storage you place it in. Most (if not all) of the nuclear waste generated so far is still being kept in large pools of water for cooling. Once it is cool enough it will be encapsulated in glass and steel jacketing and then it can be buried. If you bury it shallow then you have to post guards around it for the next hundred years or so to make sure nobody forgets it is there and accidentally digs it up.

Makes you wonder why we can't get more low grade heat out of the stuff and use it for home heating. But I am told that the cost to recover the heat and distribute it makes it cost more than it is worth. That may change as oil prices keep going up.

[Vader]

stuff takes forever to cool off. If you don't wait for 30-50 years it will simply melt whatever type of storage you place it in. Most (if not all) of the nuclear waste generated so far is still being kept in large pools of water for cooling. Once it is cool enough it will be encapsulated in glass and steel jacketing and then it can be buried. If you bury it shallow then you have to post guards around it for the next hundred years or so to make sure nobody forgets it is there and accidentally digs it up.

Makes you wonder why we can't get more low grade heat out of the stuff and use it for home heating. But I am told that the cost to recover the heat and distribute it makes it cost more than it is worth. That may change as oil prices keep going up.

[cowman]

Now I'm no expert on nuclear but I wonder how long is this stuff dangerous? I believe I read something like 16 million years! Is that possible?
It would seem after 50 years or so the nuclear business could have come up with a better solution than burying it?
I wonder how good disposal is in some of these unstable micky mouse countries that have nuclear reactors? How do you have a safe solution in countries where they violently turn over government every few years?
Is any country in the world stable enough that we can predict where they'll be 100 years from now? Nuclear power is potentially pretty scary stuff.

[Vader]

I think that if the half life were 16 million years that the energy being given off would be so low that there would be no danger at all.

A solution to this problem is very important for Saskatchewan since we have about 1/3 of the worlds known reserves of uranium.

Cameco who is headquartered in Saskatoon, is looking forward to being an important player in the industry. They would like to expand their business into uranium upgrading, fuel manufacturing and even the electrical generation end of the industry. This could mean a lot of jobs for Saskatchewan. Or we could turn it away and watch the jobs go to Ontario and Khazakistan.

[melvill]

The other day I was listening to an oilsands research engineer talking about using nuclear energy and steam to power removal of tar sands oil. Interesting thing is that the tar sands deposit covers a huge geographical area but it is only technically feasible to move steam 6 miles or 6 kilometers (I can't remember which). That means that the tar sands would need many nuclear plants to provide heat. One or two very large nuclear plants wouldn't do it. Using current technology, small nuclear plants are in his words, "grossly technically and economically unfeasible".

[Vader]

My guess is that you are not going to have a tar sands extraction plant every six miles. So you must move the tar sand to the extraction facility and that is where the nuclear plant would be located as well.

[melvill]

The problem is that, as I understand it for some of the tar sands projects, the heat is needed just to get the tar/sand mix out of the ground.

Anyone know anything about that?

And Vadar, you were working in the atomic industry at university. Does that mean you were a (nuclear) physics major? My wife's uncle was one of the early nuclear physicists at Chalk River. It appears he paid an awful price for his work there.

[Vader]

Lee, they dig up the sand with huge excavators and haul it to the processing facility with rock trucks. (They pay rock truck drivers 100,000 per year).

I took Mechanical Engineering and worked for Atomic Energy in Pinawa, MB one summer.

[Ron]

It is called SAG-D. steam assisted gravity drain. They inject steam into the ground to heat the bitumen in the sand so it will flow to a low point where they pump it out like a conventional oil well. There are several projects north of Ft. Mac, Cold Lake has a large Encana project. Much less direct enviornmental impact, no huge trucks and mines. If they use electricity to generate heat/steam the nuclear option should be viable?