WATER WAY: The Northern Gateway pipeline would traverse north-central Albert and British Columbia and cross 996 watercourses, of which 669 are fish-bearing, including the Nechako River pictured here.
Image: Andrew S. Wright/WWF-Canada
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As controversy continues around the Keystone XL Pipeline that would snake through the U.S., a similar drama plays out north of the border. Canadian officials are deciding whether to green-light a pipeline that would carry a semiliquid hydrocarbon mix for 1,172 kilometers from Alberta's tar sands over the Canadian Rockies to the Pacific coast of British Columbia. Near its proposed terminus, the proposal has met with public outcry and fierce opposition from the Coastal First Nations, a coalition of indigenous tribes.
Calgary, Alberta–based energy company Enbridge's proposed Northern Gateway Pipeline would cross over 1,000 fish-bearing streams and bring 255 oil supertankers each year to the coastline, making the issue highly contentious in Canada's famously outdoor-loving province. Of 1,161 British Columbians to give oral statements as part of the pipeline's federal review process, only two were in favor of the project.
What's more, the pipeline would be carrying an oil product that no one knows much about: diluted bitumen, or dilbit. University and government scientists emphasize an urgent need to fill the knowledge gaps surrounding what diluted bitumen is made of, how it reacts in the environment when spilled, and what its long-term biological effects are.
Answers to those questions are prerequisites to assessing the ecological risks posed by the eight such pipeline projects in Canada alone and to planning for an effective spill-response when things go wrong. “I think it's fair to say, there’s been some purposeful denial that the bitumen is really something different,” says Steve Hamilton, an aquatic ecologist at Michigan State University who worked with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Enbridge in 2010 to remediate a diluted bitumen spill in Michigan—work that is still ongoing. “The science has not informed this cleanup very well. There’s a pressing need for research.”
Bitumen is a thick hydrocarbon, the “tar” in Alberta's tar sands, the third largest deposit of hydrocarbons in the world. To flow through a pipeline, the tarlike bitumen is diluted with gas condensates or synthetic oils known as diluents. This mixture of bitumen and diluent is called diluted bitumen, or dilbit for short, but its precise formulation varies widely and is not publicly released.
Finding out what exactly is included under the umbrella term dilbit is an important first step in understanding this unconventional form of oil. “It’s not cast in stone exactly what dilbit is,” says Kenneth Lee, head of Fisheries and Oceans Canada’s (DFO) Center for Offshore Oil and Gas Energy Research in Nova Scotia. “The fate and behavior of the product—the character of the product when it's spilled in the water—will depend on what the final formulation is,” Lee says. Next comes figuring out how dilbit behaves when it is spilled. “We have to understand the physical behavior of the oil before we can design the optimal cleanup technologies,” he adds.
The chronic, long-term effects of bitumen on an ecosystem present a similar blank, although the Michigan spill will provide some information. "In trying to identify research needs, one of the things that's obvious is the lack of toxicity data," says Peter Hodson, a fish toxicologist at Queens University in Ontario. "Neither dilbit nor gas condensates have been tested, and so far I've not been able to find any literature on the environmental impacts of those two products."
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35 Comments
Add CommentI've read in many places that local opposition, principally in British Columbia, will make this pipeline impossible to build. But all those saying it are against the project. Just once I'd like to hear from someone who is not personally invested in the issue to offer an opinion on this one way or the other.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYes, indeed. But what constitutes "not personally invested in the issue"? Does someone living >1000 miles east of the proposed route of the Keystone XL pipeline meet your criterion? There's no way for me to know whether a gallon of gasoline I buy in 2017 will have originated in BC, so I can't say I'm not connected. And I am totally invested personally in whether the Ogallala Aquifer is kept untainted and in whether anyone living in the Pacific NW or Western Canada can catch unpoisoned fish. I am totally invested -- as are you -- in the impact of anthropogenic global warming.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGood luck finding someone not personally invested in this issue. Any candidates who live on Mars?
I'd say that you are totally invested in the concept of CAGW. Please post your data that shows that CAGW is real. By that I mean please post your data that defines and outlines the mechanism by which CO2's acknowledged weak direct effects are multiplied many times over to match up with the real world data.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAll computer models use some ASSUMED amplification or forcing factor, but NO ONE has ever found or defined exactly what this factor is. NO ONE can even show that it exists. Without defined and verifiable evidence of this ASSUMED amplification mechanism, the case against CO2 is imaginary.
If you know of evidence please post it and get your Nobel Prize. You will deserve it. Until then, I politely but emphatically state that your CO2 fears are unfounded.
As to oil, Wal-Mart parking lots have far more oil spilled on them than all of the pipelines in British Columbia. If you want to help clean up the environment, start at your local Wal-Mart parking lot.
I know that Darryl Hannah and James Hansen won't show up to get arrested protesting Wal-Mart parking lots, but if they did that, I might even support them.
You missed a few facts in your 'reporting':
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this1. The Lower Cretaceous 'oil sands' outcrop at surface in northeastern Alberta and have been naturally exposed and eroded by streams and rivers for thousands of years.
2. The oil & gas industry has been studying the properties of bitumen and tar sands for approximately 60 years.
I don't believe that "catastrophic" (as in CAGW) is the right adjective to be using, but nevertheless, reading the never ending banter at SA and other forums...I need to inform you (or remind you) that the debate regarding anthropogenic global warming in the professional scientific community is really over, and has been for a while. And by "professional scientific community" I mean, not you lay people hiding behind anonymity arguing with incomplete, invalid, or otherwise highly biased data (whether you know it or not) which you don't--or can't--comprehend. Beyond the bar stool arenas (and the SA comment area)...the debate is over.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe are ALL personally invested in the carbon that could potentially come out of the Tar Sands. Digging it all up will make our climate problems worse and displace cleaner technologies for dirtier tar sands oil since it would lull us into a false sense of security.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA J Baxter,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYour facts are vague. Could you provide a few more details?
1. Could you tell us the erosion rate of bitumen in kg/yr over thousands of years for all streams and rivers in northeastern Alberta? Also, what is the erosion rate of bitumin in areas through which the bitumen will be transported (e.g. British Columbia and Nebraska)?
2. What has the oil & gas industry learned by studying the properties of bitumen for 60 years? I am sure they have studied how to extract it, transport it, and refine it. Have they studied the ecological risks and how to respond to spills and other disasters?
In reply to several of the above comments....after another fascinating discussion between the "true believers" on both sides of the AGW issue, it still leaves unanswered the question of whether there are any unbiased reporters who could seriously say if the pipeline can get built.Perhaps there are no reporters remaining who are not so biased one way or the other that they can report objectively.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLook, this has nothing to do with belief. The science on climate change is clear and opening up billions of tons of stored carbon in the Tar Sands is a really bad idea. To stay under 2C of warming that everyone agrees is getting into the danger zone, we'll have to leave around 75% of the remaining recoverable fossil fuel reserves in the ground. 2C might still mean that we have a mostly ice-free Arctic in the summer, sea levels might increase by almost a meter displacing millions of people, and food shortages / "dustbowlification" become common. I don't believe this; scientific papers projecting the effects of warming keep coming out that paint an increasingly dire picture of our potential future.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs a major source of buried carbon, the Tar Sands (and other unconventional, DIRTY sources of oil) do not make sense. We have the technology to begin transitioning off oil and we should be investing in them, not in ever dirtier ways to continue our wasteful and destructive status quo. For starters, it takes 1 unit of clean(er) natural gas energy to extract 4 units of bitumen. Then you have to move it to a refinery 1000 or more miles away in an expensive and leak-prone pipeline as illustrated in this article. THEN you have to refine it into gas / diesel / etc. BTW, it is estimated that the energy used in JUST the refining step for each gallon of gas can be used to propel an electric car just as far, if not farther, than a gas-powered vehicle can go on that gallon of fuel. Finally, you have to truck the fuel to gas stations where the average person puts 10 - 20 gallons of it into a 2 - 3 ton machine that throws away 80% of the energy in the fuel as waste heat...on a good day!
Look, let's not put our natural wonders and our groundwater at risk just to make gigantic corporations even more gigantic. Tar Sands crude is already causing a glut of supply in the Midwestern US, lowerng prices there. These companies only want pipelines to the Gulf Coast and the Pacific so they can export fuels to South America and China. They want to saddle us with a worsening climate, the risk of pipeline leakage and all the pollution from the oil refineries just so they can pocket even more money...Oh, and they want over $4B in corporate welfare every year to do it too.
"At the time the river was in a flood stage, which slowed the oil’s transport downstream"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis isn't correct. What stopped the transport of oil downstream was that an astute dam operator closed the gates to the Morrow Lake Dam. Fluvial systems in floodstage = more water transported downstream, not less.
The "debate" is over regarding the basic theory of whether additional CO2 will warm the planet if all other conditions remain unchanged.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere is still an extensive debate regarding
1. What rate the planet will actually warm (if at all). The earth's climate system changes in more ways than just CO2 and we do NOT know how much the planet will warm over time.
2. We do not know the net positive and negative long term changes that will result from additional CO2.
We also do not know of any realistic plan to preclude CO2 concentrations from continuing to rise for many decades. It will continue to rise regardless of US actions.
Every living being is "INVESTED"!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYour assertions are ridiculous. Just because you can't be bothered to EVEN READ just 1 or 2 of the scientific papers, out of the HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS that have been published concerning climate change, doesn't mean you can try to pass off your own ignorance as established fact.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe don't have to know EXACTLY how many times we can poke a sleeping bear before it wakes up (and chases us out of its cave!) to know that poking a sleeping bear is a bad idea! More CO2 = more warming, and we know about a lot of the most powerful feedbacks in the climate system (ice has a higher albedo than bare ground, the oceans release CO2 as they warm, permafrost releases a lot of methane as it thaws, etc.). So, just because there is uncertainty about the amount of warming going forward and other effects our GHG emissions have on the climate, that doesn't mean we shouldn't act.
You have car insurance right? Or how about health, life or any other kind of insurance? You CAN'T know the EXACT timing or cost of a car accident or a heart attack or whatever, yet the prudent and responsible action is to plan for these events so you don't get wiped out by them. And again, just because you can't predict the EXACT timing or cost of events doesn't mean that taking precautions to reduce their LIKELIHOOD and / or IMPACT is a bad idea either! Don't you agree that it's prudent to wear seatbelts and obey traffic laws while driving, and that these approaches can reduce the likelihood / impact of traffic accidents even though it is impossible to predict the EXACT timind / severity of these accidents?
And finally, we have to start reducing GHG emissions somewhere. Renewable energy and efficinecy measures are falling in cost rapidly. New grid management approaches are making it increasingly easier to manage variable sources as well. And a new generation of nuclear reactors holds promise. Again, just because you are unaware of something doesn't mean it's not possible.
sault
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat specifically have I written that is not accurate?
Yes lots of papers have been written based upon the output of climate models. Those papers were generally written believing that these models accurately represented what future conditions would occur. It has subsequently been found that these models do a poor jor of accurately forecasting observed conditions. If you base an analysis on an inaccurte model it means that the study is highly unrelaible.
I have agreed with the concept of AGW, but the rate of any warming is critical and observed conditions suggest the actual rate of warming will continue to be much slower than estimate a decade ago.
I agree that people should prepard for a changing climate. I believe that they should do so by building robust infrastructure since it is the one method that we know will actually reduce harm to humans. I do not generally support mitigation actions because they are not an effective use of limited resources.
You really do know that what I have written to be accurate. The ky long term is the 3 billion people who want electricity and transportation who don't have it today. They will drive the worldwide CO2 growth curve. Not acknowledging that fact is really denial.
Again, you show that you don't know a lot about climate change. Projections aren't just based on models. The Earth's past climate can give us a picture of what to expect in the future given certain changes in climate forcing. For example, the magnitude of the changes seen since the last "Ice Age" tell us that the Earth's climate sensitivity is high and that initially small changes (like orbital forcing) are amplified by feedback mechanisms.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJust OBSERVING the pattern of warming currently occurring is another piece of the puzzle that reinforces our understanding of climate change (poles warming faster than the tropics, nights warming faster than days. etc.). There are no glaring holes in our understanding of the Earth's climate like you or the fossil fuel companies would like to believe.
And I've posted evidence several times that shows the IPCC's and other climate realists' predictions are holding strong, but you refuse to even look at it. Hey, just because 98% of climate scientists agree that you're wrong doesn't mean you can dismiss everything they say and still expect to be right! And even with record low solar activity and La Nina dominance over the last 5 years, average temperatures keep increasing regardless of how bad deniers cherry-pick the data. So NOTHING in your post#11 was correct!
I agree, most of the growth in CO2 emissions will come from developing countries. However, the OECD is still responsible for 30 - 40% of global GHG emissions and the demand for cheap imported goods in these countries fuels ANOTHER 30 - 40% of global GHG emissions, so there is A LOT that the developed world can do to lower emissions. Developing and deploying clean technologies to reduce their own emissions is a GREAT start and then selling these items / techniques to the developing world so they can leapfrog past dirty technologies is another. Since China is implementing a Carbon Tax, the main excuse for inaction from the USA is now gone. This country can either show the global leadership expected of it or it can continue its slide into decreasing relevence.
Sault
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou are in denial of the truth of the situation and write untruthful and silly comments.
There is NO information used to forecast specific conditions decades into the future that is not based upon some form of a model. The vast majority of these models are GCMs although different models have been used to try to forecast the rate of sea level rise. Almost none of these models seem to accurately reflect observed conditions and none are effective in forecasting the key conditions that impact the lives of humans. (annual rainfall as an example). Btw- doing a historical analysis of conditions and projecting future conditions based on this analysis is a simply and often inaccurate model.
You are mistaken that the magnitude of the changes seen since the last "Ice Age" tell us that the Earth's climate sensitivity is high and that initially small changes (like orbital forcing) are amplified by feedback mechanisms. This information provides information upon which one can develop a theory and a model to see if it will accurately represent future conditions. We do not know.
Observing the pattern of warming currently occurring is a very important part of information. The rate of warming in recent years is statistically insignificant. That was very unexpected wasn’t it? Another tangible example that we do not yet understand the system. If you are trying to claim that we know the net impact of positive and negative forcings you know even less that I thought you did.
NOTHING in my post#11 was correct? That is most certainly untruthful.
Please tell me +/- .1C what the rate of warming will be over the next decade. If you can’t it is obvious you and science does not know. Care to wager for real money?
Please tell me upon what information you have based your conclusion that you know the net positive vs. negative impacts that will occur 50 years from now. You again are being completely untruthful in your response.
Be open to the science and be willing to accept that what you thought may be wrong.
I'm invested in doing something about global warming; however, this particular type of cheap oil is not much different from the rest in terms of impact or environmental damage. What is needed is massive changes in how we use energy and how we produce it. Doubtless any alternative will be more expensive and should be used less by more efficient use of energy in a lifestyle consciously engineered to maximize utility and minimize energy input.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSimply starving the beast by being difficult about fracking or pipelines misses the point; in fact, such BANANA tactics retard meaningful solutions.
Bauder -- I agree with you that massive changes in how we use and produce energy are needed. Regarding this type of cheap oil not being much different from other types of oil: Tar sand oil is more greenhouse gas intensive per energy produced, but I think the real issue is that the extraction and shipping of tar sands oil represents a large investment in long-lived energy infrastructure that commits us to many decades of extraction of this more greenhouse gas intensive type of oil, until it is all extracted and burned. That is why people like Jim Hansen and Bill McKibben say we need to draw the line here, by stopping the Keystone pipeline. The International Energy Agency's World Energy Outlook 2012 says existing energy infrastructure has already committed us to use most of the fossil fuels we can "safely" burn, and gives us something like a decade to stop building new long-lived fossil fuel energy infrastructure (this may be based on overly optimistic climate science assumptions -- we may not have a decade). With the government continuing to permit new coal and oil extraction, and in the absence of any coherent government plan to begin the transition away from fossil fuels, individual people driven by conscience and concern for their children are deciding we have to start somewhere. Tar sands, large pipelines, and coal trains seem like obvious places to start.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe harsh reality nobody wants to be told is Canada WILL NOT be able to economically supply the Tar Sands with domestic Natural Gas to supply the Energy & Hydrogen necessary to extract & process bitumen for more than 10 yrs. The Oil price will have to either explode, or the Tar Sands project will collapse due to high NG prices. They will be forced to import LNG from mostly the Arab Terrorists which will be priced at $15-$30 or more per mmBtu, not the sucker-trap price of $3/mmBtu they are paying now.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDavid Hughes on the coming shortage of NG in Canada:
watershedsentinel.ca/content/canadian-gas-exports-threaten-energy-security
Exploding the Natural Gas Supply Myth:
tinyurl.com/Cold-Hungry-and-in-the-Darknes
The ONLY way to SAVE the Tar Sands project is to use Nuclear Energy to supply the Electricity, Process Heat, Steam & Hydrogen needed. Happy coincidence, emissions are reduced below that of Arab Terrorist Job Killing Oil imports.
For just the $2B Canada has already stupidly thrown down the sewer on Carbon Capture(with $billions more to follow), they could develop David Leblanc's (University of Carleton) Denatured Molten Salt Small Modular Reactor. Perfect for Mining Camps, Mining Camps, Bitumen Process Heat, Steam, Electricity & Hydrogen and Community Electricity & Building Heat.
The DMSR uses 1/6th the Uranium of an American type LWR or 1/4 that of the CANDU. And is a prelude to the LFTR which uses 1 tonne of thorium to generate a GW of electricity for a year. 1.4 gms of thorium/yr to supply the avg households electricity.
Inherently safe, meltdown proof (the fuel is already molten), they can't overheat, they are self-regulating, no control rods, and if they ever did over-temp a frozen plug would melt and the core would be dumped into a holding tank, they did that every weekend at ONRL - dumped the core. They run at atmospheric pressure - you don't need a giant containment building. You likely will bury them underground. High temp, very efficient, air cooling is practical. They are small & compact.
Denatured Molten Salt Reactors (DMSR)- An Idea Whose Time Has Finally Come? by D. LeBlanc:
energyfromthorium.com/forum/download/file.php?id=728&sid=5a94910cc159198f9adc52d69955e817
David Leblanc explains how effective the DMSR would be for Tar Sands steam, electricity & process heat:
youtube.com/watch?v=_-BXg18fAIk&feature=relmfu
Those are the Facts. Like it or lump it.
"Jack Ruitenbeek reported that the probability of a tanker, pipeline rupture or terminal spill—of any size, large or small—across the pipeline’s 50-year lifetime was 93 percent"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis would include a one-barrel oil spill. How about the probability of substantial spills? If you're afraid of oil spills, build a power plant beside the tar sands and transmit electricity instead of bitumen.
It is a terrible idea. Of course it will likely happen and with it the inevitable damage both during construction and accidents.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI guess it is time once again to inflict humanity upon nature.
Your article does not mention Enbridge's p.r. games, like its map showing Douglas Channel as if it were a wide passage, without mountainous islands, or levelling the improbably fierce terrain of the Coast Mountains in that area to mere hills......
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOr, for that matter, claiming to have the support of indigenous governments when, in fact, it has none.
hard to find someone who's not personally invested in or affected by this who WOULD have an opinion......the people whose territories this pipeline will cross, like their coastal neighbours whose fisheries and lifestyles will be affected, are decidedly NOT going to allow the pipeline to be built and have served notice to that effect, very strongly.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisChina's all for it, of course.
good to see, by the way, that Scientific American has not succumbed to the rebranding of this sticky crap as "oil sands", a term which the oilbiz-friendly Canadian media have been pushing, and which even Wikipedia has been forced to succumb to because of the pressure from covert oil-industry "editors" there.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI look forward to a Scientific American article on how the Harper government is muzzling scientists, and how the FIPA treaty with China is really meant to be a way to bypass Canadian environmental standards and aboriginal rights by making Chinese-law pre-eminent over Canadian ones for companies owned by the Chinese state, and that this pipeline is one of the main reasons for that treaty (which so far hasn't been ratified due to public outcry).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn general the current Canadian regime's hostility towards climate change issues, environment and so on means that Canadian policy, unlike with previous governments, is no longer policy based but only based on ideology and expediency for the benefit of foreign companies and how little in the way of recourse is available to Canadian citizens to oppose such measures.......
It's NOT cheap oil...it's very expsnsive-to-process TAR and has sat in the ground for years because of the expense of processing it and transporting it to market. That market, in this pipeline's case, is China, and it owns part of the pipeline company and there are indications even the jobs building it will by for imported, lower-paid Chinese temporary workers, and that they will also own the shipping......
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRepeat this is NOT "cheap oil" - anything but. Especially if a coastal spill were to happen (WHEN such a spill would happen and it's very likely) the costs of cleanup are not insurable and mean this is a "lose lose" project.
Hey, quit lowballing the cost of these reactors by around 10x. Nobody has ever built one before, or even gotten close to what you're thinking, so how can you have ANY IDEA how much it'll actually cost? Remember, if you're going to extrapolate from an experiment that ran for a few years in the 60's by a factor of 100 or more, developing the technology and getting it deployed along with making a commercial fuel cycle will have to be scaled up by a factor of 100 or more too! Stuff doesn't just magically come together because some nuclear enthusiasts can make some good powerpoint presentations...And if these reactors were such a good idea, how come private investment in them is pitifully low compared to their supposed potential?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSeriously, you can advocate for stuff all you like, but when you claim it's the ONLY way to do something and ALL other alternatives are bogus (without proof of either claim), it really just looks like you're getting fooled by some pretty pictures and a few conspiracy theories about why this technology hasn't saved the world by now.
I remember all the lame stories about the "carbeurator / fuel injector / mystery device" that could let a car get 100, 200 or some other insanely high MPG. I remember all the hype surrounding cold fusion, Eestor, Aptera, and any number of technologies / companies that were about to change the world. And you know what, a lot of the most vocal supports of these fanciful technologies sounded a lot like you.
This article leaves a lot to be desired. It misleads the reader when it claims there's very little information on the nature of diluted bitumen. When a large pipeline is built, it serves as a transport system, in a sense it's similar to a road. The shippers are allowed on this road if they meet requirements, but those who build the road can't provide an exact forecast of what is going to be shipped. What they can do is put in place rules and regulations which limit what will be shipped. Therefore most of the article is hogwash. I found it so poorly done, I have to confess I didn't read it. But i do have a question, how many oil tankers bring oil to British Columbia today, to satisfy its needs? Or is the fuel being consumed in British Columbia shipped by pipeline?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSault claims: ".. "carbeurator car get 100..MPG..hype surrounding cold fusion, Eestor, Aptera,.."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA ridiculous statement. Your carburetor & Eestor are obvious SCAMs, no science there or proven tech. Aptera is quite different, just a good example of an ultra-light high efficiency EV, they built them, they proved them, but not successful for the present commercial market in the USA. Perhaps in the future, when fuel prices are much higher. An entirely different case. Amazing that you are unable to tell the difference between them.
So replacing Coal burners - remember that is just removing the Coal boiler, replacing it with a factory produced modular reactor(s) for steam generation. That certainly cuts costs to about 1/3rd of a full blown nuclear plant. So complete factory produced, modular reactors with power generation & site development/power transmission are certainly going to be in the $3k per kwe range. China, recently exported CANDUs, India & Korea are all well under that cost. So just replacing a Coal boiler is CERTAINLY in the $1k/kwe range. So your "lowballing by 10X" is just more of your uneducated nonsense.
And I didn't say anything about "an experiment in the 60's", -ONRL's MSRs? The reactors mentioned are:
Reactors in this class:
"...NGNP 625 MW(t), 750 to 925°C (1,380 to 1,700°F), Helium Gas Cooled, Thermal Prismatic TRISO, Idaho National Labs, Derived from AREVA Framatome's "Antares" reactor.
ANTARES 600 MW(t), 850°C (1,560°F) Inlet Temperature 355°C (671°F), Prismatic, Helium Gas Cooled, AREVA Framatome's "Antares" reactor.
GFR EM2 600 MW(t) 240 MW(e) 850°C (1,560°F) Prismatic, Helium Gas Cooled, Fast Reactor Thorium to U-233 Breeder, General Atomics
GT-MHR 600 MW(t), 850°C (1,560°F) Inlet Temperature 490°C (914°F), Helium Gas Cooled, Thermal Prismatic TRISO, General Atomics, Russia’s OKBM Afrikantov is an affiliate.
PB-AHTR 900 MW(t), 704°C (1,300°F) Molten Salt Cooled Pebble Bed, Thermal, UC Berkeley
HTR-PM 250 MW(t), 750°C (1,380°F) 100 MW(e), Helium Gas Cooled Pebble Bed, Thermal TRISO, Huaneng Shandong Shidao Bay Nuclear Power Company Ltd. (HSNPC)
To familiarize the reader with this type of reactor the author has taken the liberty of making Framatome's slide show available.."
This is a TRISO fueled high temperature Gas Cooled reactor suitable for Tar Sands Bitumen recovery:
coal2nuclear.com/ANTARES%20Oil%20Recovery%20Slide%20Show.pdf
coal2nuclear.com/
Ready to build, REAL ENERGY - No "fanciful technologies here", unlike your pixie power Wind & Solar $trillion failures.
You will note that China began construction of a commercial 200MWe High Temperature Pebble Bed Gas Cooled 4th Gen reactor in Dec 2012, scheduled for completion by end of 2017. At a cost of $476M or $2.38k per kwe for a complete First-Of-A-Kind power generation unit. Certainly entirely reasonable that an nth-of-a-kind, just a boiler substitute would be < $1k per kw. Interesting how Sault and his Greenie buddies pronounce that Solar PV will keep getting cheaper exponentially every year, but Nuclear will ALWAYS increase in price from their First-Of-A-Kind, no factory production, no supply chain, zero learning curve value until they reach $infinite per kw by about the same time Sault's Solar reaches $zero per kw.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisnextbigfuture.com/2013/03/china-may-start-exporting-ap1400.html
millenniumpost.in/NewsContent.aspx?NID=17672
According to Sault these proven Nuclear tech are just fantasies, just like his so-far-haven't-done-zip Wind & Solar specials. Wrong. Mickey-Mouse developing nation India, which can't even manufacture commercial aircraft yet, already has two COMMERCIAL 500 MWe Fast Breeder Reactors under construction, already 94% complete, which will be pumping oodles of zero-CO2 power into the grid by end of 2014. According to Sault that's impossible - couldn't happen even for a technologically advanced nation like the USA for another 30yrs minimum. And:
"...The government envisages setting up about ten PHWRs of 700 MWe capacity to about 2023, fuelled by indigenous uranium, as stage 1 of its nuclear program. Stage 2 - four 500 MWe FBRs - will be concurrent.
Construction costs of reactors as reported by AEC are about $1200 per kilowatt for Tarapur 3 & 4 (540 MWe), $1300/kW for Kaiga 3 & 4 (220 MWe) and expected $1700/kW for the 700 MWe PHWRs with 60-year life expectancy..."
Someone call 911, call the EMS, Sault just fell down with a coronary attack.
"I found it so poorly done, I have to confess I didn't read it."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNo wonder your username is 'null'
As for your questions, pipelines do not exist in the area of BC planned for this one; oil for BC is yes, imported by tanker to refineries in the Vancouver area; and some from Alberta via the TransMountain pipeline corridor, which also is slated for doubling and similar opposed by native peoples and others.
Like other commentors here, and the article itself, you're asking mostly about pipelines; just as big or bigger of an issue is the presence of bitumen condensate tankers in the narrow and bizarrely dangerous Douglas Channel and in the other (very) dangerous waters off the BC Coast, namely Hecate Strait (incidentally but not inaptly named for the queen of witches). We're not talking about ordinary shipping here, nor ordinary tankers, nor an oil spill; the consequences of a spill of bitumen condensate in salt water are unknown but all forecasts are dire. And expensive.
And you, mr null, maybe you should read articles before cr#pping on them.
helenavargas can afford to be wrong about CO2. You and the other deniers of global climate change cannot afford to be wrong. How would it hurt us to have cleaner air/environment to live in?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this... or refine it to a much lighter grade before shipping.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI live 4 miles from Enbridge's Michigan spill. 1,000,000 gallons into the Kalamazoo River. Over 24 hour response time. They had turned OFF their corrosion prevention system and turned OFF their alarms. Took local residents and the County Sheriff to find out they had a 40 foot rupture.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI wouldn't trust Enbridge with a pile of rocks.
Considering that you tend toward the conservative side, having you state this scares the hell out of me in regards to Enbridge
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