How nuclear will make oil greener | SmartPlanet

…Oil from oil sands has become a major export for Canada, but the extraction method accounts for about 7 percent of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions, according to the Calgary Herald. It is far more energy-intensive than conventional oil drilling. Oil sands production relies on fossil fuel-generated steam to extract sticky oil known as bitumen – or tar – out of the ground.

That’s where nuclear power can help. Most nuclear power stations are, simply put, complex steam kettles. Reactors generate heat by splitting atoms. Power plants use the heat to create steam that drives electricity turbines.

But that heat and steam can also serve non-electricity purposes, such as enabling industrial processes like those at work in the Alberta prairies.

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

Modular nuclear reactors could arrive at on oil field on the back of a truck, as in this General Atomics mock-up.

…I recently spoke with top executives from all these organizations, for an in-depth report I wrote on the future of nuclear power, published byconsulting 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.

These companies also plan to sell their small reactors as electricity generators to remote regions that today rely on diesel generators; to utilities that can’t afford a conventional-sized nuclear reactor; and to the military for both domestic bases and war zones.

…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. I’ve had a peak at many of the safety and non-proliferation designs, and I’m impressed by the efforts so far.