frflyer

Tar Sands: How Much Is Out There and Can Nuclear Help?

"As for environmental degradation - it's possible to recover land - just not cost effective. If you subscribe to the Keynsian solution to deflation - pay one team to dig a hole, pay another team to fill it in - then the tar sands projects will work wonders for Canada (but more likely, they'll leave ghastly scars in the land, as the money to clean things up proves grossly underestimated, and clean-up processes sit idle..."

You must be kidding. You can't fix the Boreal Forest of Canada once you have destroyed it. It is one of the most important ecosystems in the world, being one of the biggest carbon sinks on earth. No kind of economics can restore the complexity and biodiversity once it is broken. See the articles National Geographic has done on the Boreal Forest. It is critical to much of North America's wildlife and water sheds. The tar sands is just one way it is being decimated. Scientists who study biodiversity say that breaking up large ecosystems like forests reduces the biodiverstiy drastically. A hundred thousand acre forest that has x number of species, when broken into smaller pieces, loses half the biodiverstiy. You don't end up with smaller forests with the same biodiversity of the original.
Just filling in the holes you made won't cut it. Not even close.

Tar Sands: How Much Is Out There and Can Nuclear Help?

john s gordon

"producing tar-sand bitumen cleanly' is an oxymoron, there is massive environmental devastation to consider"

That's right. The Canadian tar sands has been called the most destructive project on Earth. The pollution from and waste of natural gas used to produce the oil are only part of the huge environmental impact of tar sands.

ED K

"I don't see any real use or impact of alternative energies for a long time,this could help."


That is so completely wrong. it is just a popular canard used by the fossil and nuclear industries to keep renewables from being developed, and to keep the public in doubt about them. It is pure BS. Just because people say things does not make them true.
It's disinformation and it's intentional.
The public is being duped.

Wind energy in the U.S. grew by 8.3 GW last year, and jobs in wind grew by 70% to 85,000, and now exceeds jobs in coal mining.
Considering the 35% capacity factor for wind, that is the equivalent of building 3 nuclear power plants in one year, or 5-6 coal plants.
Good luck building 3 nuclear plants in a year, maybe in a decade.

Solar thermal with heat storage can replace coal plants with base load dispatchable power. We could build 50-100 GW of this by the time the first nuke goes online in a decade or so.
Solar thermal (or CSP) with molten salt heat storage can run day and night. Electricity prices can already beat new coal or "clean coal", both of which aren't even proven. 9 small Solar thermal pilot plants in California have been
putting out 355 MW since the late 80s to early 90s. Over 3 GW have already been signed for in California or are already being built. Just the beginning. This is solar with it's own energy storage. It's at least 20 times cheaper to store heat as to store electricity.

Both solar thermal and wind, unlike new nuclear or "clean coal" are ready to build right now, and can be built much much faster than either coal or nuclear.

A study by the Western Governors Association estimated that electricity prices from solar thermal (or CSP) would fall to below 10 cents/kWh after there were 4 GW of installed capacity in the U.S. There are already over 3 GW approved or already building, so that shouldn't take long.

They also said prices would drop to 5-8 cents/kWh after the industry got up to scale. That would be about half what electricity from new nuclear or coal with CCS will cost.

Note: the price estimates I've seen for clean coal are 16 cents/kWh - Some estimates for new nuclear are as high as 22-30 cents/kWh, though the numbers quoted most often are 12-17 cents. Solar thermal is 12-1 7 cents now. Wind is only about 7 cents.

"Southern California Edison has contracted with BrightSource Energy Inc. for seven projects totaling 1,300 megawatts of concentrated solar-thermal power (CSP). CSP is a core climate solution, probably the zero-carbon form of electricity with the most potential, since it can be easily integrated with thermal storage and provide power reliably throughout the day and evening."
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www.rsc.org/delivery/_...

"The time to plan and construct a coal-fired power plant without CCS equipment is generally 5–8 yr. CCS technology would be added during this period. The development time is another 1–3 yr. Thus, the total planning-to-operation time for a standard coal plant with CCS is estimated to be 6–11 yr. If the coal-CCS plant is an IGCC plant, the time may be longer since none has been built to date."

"..... based on the most optimistic future projections of nuclear power construction times of 4–5 yr5 and those times based on historic data,64 we assume future construction times due to nuclear power plants as 4–9 yr. Thus, the overall time between planning and operation of a nuclear power plant ranges from 10–19 yr."

"The median construction time for reactors in the US built since 1970 is 9 yr."


"For CSP, the construction time is similar to that of a wind farm. For example, Nevada Solar One required about 1.5 yr for construction. Similarly, an ethanol refinery requires about 1.5 yr to construct. We assume a range in both cases of 1–2 yr. We also assume the development time is the same as that for a wind farm, 1–3 yr. Thus, the overall planning-to-operation time for a CSP plant or ethanol refinery is 2–5 yr. We assume the same time range for tidal, wave, and solar-PV power plants."