There is an article here on the alberta tar sands. In it, a link to a university article which studied the feasibility of using nuclear reactors to replace natural gas for the heating of the sands and the production of hydrogen to process the heavy tar sand.

It was calculated that it would need a 300-400MW reactor to process 100000 barrels of oil, ideally placed so that the heat can be ideally used. To reach the figure of 5 million barrels that the US wants Canada to produce from the tar sands would require at least 50 reactors to offset the need for natural gas in the processes.

It's a staggering number to look at. A staggering infrastructure cost for a non-renewable resource. At some point, we have deminishing returns. Especially, since we just need this oil mostly for transportation. Are we just going to blindly trying to develope along the same old paths? Or are we going to try something different?

Oil & gas execs must be salivating at the notion that the Federal Government just might finally allow them to tap into the greatest untapped domestic source of liquid hydrocarbons. Extracting oil from shale is, however, extremely difficult and dirty. It also tends to consume copious quantities of water, which is in relatively short supply in the area.

Despite the beguiling lure of additional domestic supplies, the low hanging fruit is still energy conservation. Various low-cost improvements to new vehicle fuel economy, applied very broadly across model ranges as standard features, are especially effective.

Addendum

The site is :

http://www.computare.org/Support%20documents/Publications/Nuclear%20oil%20sand.htm

and my initial estimates are far worse. A 450MW nuclear facility can produce enough heat and electricity to process 30000 barrels of syncrude a day. At the present production levels of the oil sands in Canada (1 million barrels/day), that would mean at least 33 reactors. With the estimated amounts that the US wants to get from Canada (5 million barrels/day) that would be at least 167 reactors. Even worse.

We don't have all the GHG controlled. That is a fallacy. How about the stored amounts of methane in permafrost?

I would rather have the Canadians pipe the natural gas to the U.S. to power cars and trucks cleanly and leave the tar sands there for any future use that they may have. The idea of LNG in ocean going tankers is very expensive and might not be necessary if the NG were not being used for the tar sands. If investors need a higher price for NG, then lets consider than.

It does not cost all that much to convert modern vehicles to NG or dual fuel. It makes more sense to me to use the NG for vehicle fuel rather than use it to process the tar sands.

From Wiki:

‘’Oil sands represents as much as 2/3 of the world's total petroleum resource, with at least 1.7 trillion barrels (270 km³) in the Canadian Athabasca Oil Sands and perhaps 235 billion barrels of extra heavy crude in the Venezuelan Orinoco tar sands [1], compared to 1.75 trillion barrels (278 km³) of conventional oil worldwide, most of it in Saudi Arabia. This is only the remnant of vast petroleum deposits which once totaled as much as 18 trillion barrels (2,100 km³), most of which has escaped or been destroyed by bacteria over the eons.’’

First, I would be delighted to know how many dinosaurs should be buried to produce 2100 cubic kilometers (2000 billion tons) of oil in one spot.

Second, would be nice to know why ‘’escaped’’ and biologically ‘’destroyed’’ into CO2 amount of oil from Athabasca, roughly 200 times more than was combusted by humankind in 20 century did not contaminate Canada biosphere into oblivion and did not cause global climate catastrophe.

Third, water used in extraction of tar sand oil is not sent into parallel universe, it is discharged on the spot. The real concern is how to make this discharged water as clean as at intake, no matter the money used.

Forth, do anyone is ready to foot the bill to compensate Albertians (and they have 1.6 times higher per person income than the rest of Canada) for lost revenue and employment income, take aside that same amount of money will go into coffers of terrorist supporters?

@Stan,
quote all the figures from the other BS sources you like Stan and try to say what others have reasoned is because they don't think. What a load. I suggest you look at your own reasons for supporting your position and scrutinize them objectively.

The artic is warming faster than a lot of modeling has predicted.

http://www.sanfranciscosentinel.com/?p=5740

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2005/aug/11/science.climatechange1

http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=permafrost+melting+rate&meta=

With all of this, you quote figures like they were and are some proof of your position. Try looking at something less partisen to shore up your already made up mind.

Granted the study is from 1999, but it doesn't invalidate the overall limitations.

The article uses Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage (SAGD), which is still the latest method for production today. There are other methods but they are experimental still. In the last 9 years, I'm sure that there has been efficiencies in the various stages of processing the sands to reduce energy use, but i doubt there has been major changes to the amount since 1999 (ie less than twice).

Only since the recent push to reduce GHG's has there been a major effort to reduce emmissions. The projected reduction is from 1.0 - 1.25 GJ of natural gas /barrel to 0.7 by 2015. What is was in 1999, you try to find it?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_sands#Extraction_process

The total output of both heat and electricity is used on multiple stages in a very tight locality to maximize total efficiency. Since even the heat is used, the efficiency is very high, even with an older nuclear plant. The study takes into account the CANDU-9, which is a fairly recent design, and probably looked into the ACR.

But in any case, it is the output of heat as well as electricity which is used and therefore weakens the case that newer reactors would be more efficient in the processing of the tar sands although newer designs would probably be cheaper and faster to build but that was not the question.

Building a huge plant with multiple reactors at a single location means very little when the limitation is transfering the heat produced. In the study, there is a comparison between a CANDU-3 and a CANDU-9. Even though the CANDU-9 has about 3 times the output capacity, it can only be used to process twice as much oil.

To maximize the plant to use for the tar sands, requires smaller plants with single cores in multiple locations. Althouth multiple core plants would be cheaper to build, they would be of less use in the production of oil than single core ones. Just another strike. It also doesn't invalidate the huge number of plants required to process 5 million barrels/day.

Hmm, a CANDU-3 generates around 300 MW. Portable, it ain't. It is a fair sized piece of whatever you want to call it. Best to use it for multiple extraction methods over it's lifetime although it would decrease the optimal numbers and increase the number/size of the reactors needed. And this is just for displacing the use of natural gas. Would rather have an electric car and directly use the power than jump through all these hoops.