It is Crazy and Pointless for Environmentalists to Demand Alberta Stop Oilsand Production

Various environmental groups have tried to block or slow Canadian oilsand development.

Alberta is fiercely independent of the federal government and does not forgive them for the national energy program

The energy sector (oil and gas/mining)accounted for over 22 per cent of Alberta’s GDP in 2012. But that is only the direct number. All of the stores, hotels etc… are there because of the oil.

Harper’s federal government is pro-oilsands.

According to the Canadian Energy Research Institute (CERI), Alberta can expect $350 billion in royalties and $122 billion in provincial and municipal tax revenue from the oil sands over the next 25 years.

Is Saudi Arabia going to stop producing oil voluntarily? Should environmentalists protest for Saudi Arabia to stop oil production ?
Is Texas ?
Should environmentalist protest China to demand the factories that produce products get shutdown ?
Companies and countries would be idiots to totally screw their own economy without better plans. Not every country has politics as screwed up as Germany, who shut down nuclear plants early or population as irrationally afraid as Japan. Those decisions are costing many billions to those economies and increased the pollution from the use of more coal, gas and oil.

The craziness is asking for things that if implemented would drive a region to over 60% unemployment and then wondering why the people being asked to do this are not agreeing to it.

If one oil producing nation has trouble with production like Libya, Iraq or Nigeria have had in the past then the production increases in other places.

Alberta would vote for separation in a heartbeat if some Government in Ottawa tried to mess in a major way with the oilsands.

Alberta now has over 4 million people and growing fast. Sask 1.1 million, BC 4.6 million.
Sask also has some oil and oilsands. BC has a lot of natural gas. This population that is pro-oil and natural gas development would not vote for an anti-oil federal government.

There is absolutely no political viability in Alberta and Canada on their own deciding they will turn their noses up at 170 billion barrel recoverable with current tech and probably 350 billion barrels with likely technology. At$100 per barrel. $35 trillion.

The world is generating about 92 million barrels per day of oil. Whether Canada produces 3.5 million barrels or 7 million barrels per day effects Canada and Alberta a whole bunch but for the world environment – the oil would have come from some place else if Canada did not produce it.

If Terrestrial Energy is able to develop and sell 300 molten salt reactors to produce oil starting in 2021. It will actually be cleaner than the alternative oilsand projects. It will make Terrestrial Energy and its investors a lot of money. It will make Alberta more money and faster. It will help the Canadian economy. Plus it will set up the IMSR as an export technology that would provide lower cost energy and cleaner energy for the world. One tiny step back to enable a cleaner world economy ten to one hundred times larger, Where everyone in the world has western level or higher energy levels and that can be sustained for a billion years.

LeBlanc is going to develop the Integral Molten Salt Reactor, or IMSR. The goal is to commercialize the Terrestrial reactor by 2021. They have oilsand partners.

David LeBlanc had a presentation – Molten Salt Reactors and the Oil Sands:
Odd Couple or Key to North American Energy Independence?

Molten Salt Reactor Advantages
* Many potential variations but sharing unique advantages
* Increased Safety
* Reduced Costs
* Resource Sustainability
* Greatly Reduced Long Lived Wastes
* Fission products almost all benign after a few hundred years
* The transuranics (Np,Pu,Am,Cm) are the real issue and reason for “Yucca Mountains”
* All designs produce less TRUs and can be kept in or recycled back into the reactor to fission off (IMSR will keep the waste inside)
* Over a thousand fold improvement over conventional “Once Through”

Molten Salt and Oilsands
* Using nuclear produced steam for Oil Sands production long studied
* Vast majority of oil only accessible by In-Situ methods
* No turbine island needed so 30% to 40% the capital cost saved (instead of steam to turbine for electricity just send it underground to produce oil from oilsands)
* Oil sands producers expected to pay 200 Billion$ on carbon taxes over the next 35 years, funds mandated to be spent on cleantech initiatives
* Canada Oil Sands in ground reserves of 2 trillion barrels, current estimate 10% recoverable (likely much higher with cheaper steam)
* 64 GWth nuclear to add 6.4 million bbls/day (200B$/year revenue)
* 64 GWth needed as about 200 small 300MWth MSRs
* Oil Sands a bridge to MSRs then with time, MSRs a bridge to not needing oil

IMSR design
* No fuel fabrication cost or salt processing = extremely low fuel costs
* Under 0.1 cents/kwh
* Right size reactors, right pressure steam

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