Gordon Jaremko, edmontonjournal.com Published: Friday, March 28, 2008
EDMONTON — Use of atomic power for oilsands development will be investigated by a research partnership, announced today, between the Alberta and United States governments.
The Alberta Research Council and the U.S. energy department’s main nuclear laboratory in Idaho signed an agreement calling for work on potential bitumen belt applications of electricity, heat and chemical byproducts from reactors proposed north of Edmonton.
“This is a marriage made in heaven,” said Idaho laboratory associate director Bill Rogers. Although no budget for the collaboration was announced, he said potentially all his operation’s 3,800 scientists can be drafted into the Alberta project.
“The U.S. is dependent on Alberta for energy security,” Rogers said, pointing to the province’s “essential” role as the biggest source of increasing American oil and natural gas imports.
In the U.S. view, Alberta stands out for reliability and stability as a supplier, he emphasized. Elsewhere “we face nationalization of resources in countries that are hostile to the U.S.,” Rogers said...
Partners to study nuclear role in oilsands
BTW: The main group fighting the proposed nuclear power plant in the Peace region of northern Alberta is the Peace River Environmental Society (PRES). Their website is: www.peaceriverenvironmentalsociety.org
Stumble It!
Fort Chip cancers, soon to have a glow-in-the-dark feature..........
What worries me most about nuclear power in AB is the nuclear waste. Under the Global Nuclear Partnership Canada just signed with the US (of course), we are committed to "reprocessing" nuclear waste, and the way it's worded it's likely that as a producer of uranium we'd be committed to taking the lion's share of nuclear waste back here to "reprocess" (something which has been banned for years because it produces weapons grade material) and also to store the waste.
Of course, there are plenty of other technologies which are actually green, and don't produce dangerous radioactive wastes, but they're not as heavily subsidized as nuclear, so they haven't been developed as far, meaning that political will (and US pressure) is a key reason why nuclear is getting the hard sell right now.
I wondered why wind-power was favoured so until I realized how much it cost and how little power it generates. It fits KYOTO perfectly. It bankrupts us and leaves us in the dark! Both KYOTO goals.
So really nuclear, which was rejected by Kyoto, is what will bankrupt us and leave us in the dark.
Yeah well tree planting and forestation as proposed by the US was also rejected. It like nuclear would not involve sending our money to China for CCs and our industry as well. Besides the luddite lunitic fringe involved in AGW/KYOTO has traditionally feared nuclear......ban the bomb, ban cruise missiles, ad nausea.....