Klein talks energy no mention of Biofuels

[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?