Klein talks energy no mention of Biofuels

[JD4ME]

EDMONTON -- Alberta will build a global energy centre by 2021 that will pump an additional $50 billion into the province's economy annually, predicts Ralph Klein.

The premier told the Alberta Chamber of Resources yesterday the energy production system will include state-of-the-art refining and processing, massive storage facilities and a world-scale petrochemical complex.

He said the centre, also to include electrical generation and transmission facilities, will drive new industrial investment in the province and smooth out Alberta's boom-and-bust rollercoaster.

"Like the song says, you ain't seen nothing yet," Klein told the annual general meeting of resource industry executives. "It's one of the legacies I would like to leave."

He promised Alberta's resource sector will be "bigger, more diverse and busier than ever."

"In addition to the energy-production system, Alberta will be a leader in technology development and environmentally sound energy development," he said.

A big part of his plan includes a shift to "clean coal" and other non-conventional energy sources -- wind, solar and perhaps even nuclear, he said.


Klein said he'll be outlining in his Feb. 21 annual TV address and in the Throne speech what Alberta plans to do to encourage those developments.

But he said he believes new technology can be invented to burn coal with fewer emissions and that will spur Alberta prosperity since the province has a 300- to 1,100-year supply of coal.

"A new day is dawning for coal and it's dawning in Alberta," the premier said, borrowing a page from speeches Tory leadership hopeful Jim Dinning has been making around the province over the past year.

Klein added Alberta's coal seams also contain an estimated 500-trillion-cu.-ft. of natural gas.

Conventional oil and gas and the oilsands will continue to drive the province in the short-term as the U.S. becomes more dependent on Alberta for a secure supply of energy, Klein said.

"We're close. We're friendly. We're stable and we have abundant energy sources capable of meeting the continent's needs for decades to come."
Previous story: Disaster ops to get facelift

[silverback]

Does that mean he is not going to retire until 2021?

[JD4ME]

Don't tell Lyle Oberg, Gar Mar and Jim Dinning that, who the he-- knows with Ralph,

[wd9]

Wonder what the environmental costs that we are not spending on today will compounded at by 2021?

[cowman]

I see he also threw in a possibility of nuclear energy, which kind of surprized me! I really don't think we need that here? But hey with Ralph you never know? If the money is big enough he can be bought, no matter what!
I also find it strange that he drivels about "alternate energy"? The Alberta government usually does everything in its power to NOT encourage alternate energy! Just check out the hoops you have to go through if you are a small electical supplier? The system is set up all for the benifit of the big companies keeping the little guys out!
If you aren't "big business" in Alberta you need not apply.

[Vader]

The tar sands are huge energy users and also large final emitters under Kyoto. They need to generate a tremendous amount of heat to extract the oil from the sand. What is being considered is using nuclear energy to generate this heat so that the tar sands could become less polluting. I believe that they are burning a lot of natural gas now.

I read the other day that if you had invested equally in the four major tar sands players that over the last year your return would have been 160%. No wonder they are planning on investing 100 billion over the next decade.

[cowman]

My problem with nuclear energy has always been what do you do with the waste? I don't believe that problem has ever been solved?
If you have any more up to date info on this I would like to hear it?

[Vader]

I worked for Atomic Energy when I was a University student and my project back then was waste disposal. I don't think that they have any better ideas today than they did back then, it is simply a question of where to do it and will that be acceptable to those people living in that area.

The actually number of pounds/tonnes of nuclear waste from electrical generation is surprisingly small.

I think that the current thinking is that the best disposal site is in a deep mine where the risk of earth movement is small. Perhaps somewhere in Northern Saskatchewan where the stuff comes from in the first place. However even in those remote areas there are those who say Not In My Back Yard (NIMBY).

[silverback]

In my opinion a nuclear plant connected to the tar sands is by far the smartest place to use it. The heat and steam available from a reactor would make that place hum right along.

[cowman]

Well then that might be acceptable. I wonder how the people who might live around the area of toxic waste might view this?
Way down in a deep mine just might work...if it is necessary? Is it?

[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".