A Canadian nuclear reactor proposed for use in Alberta’s oilsands is still on the drawing board and will require huge government subsidies to become commercial, critics say.
But Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. (AECL) insists its “Advanced CANDU Reactor-700” would be a cost-efficient method for oilsands extraction without producing greenhouse gas emissions. The ACR-700 unit wouldn’t be available until 2012.
AECL has commissioned a $35,000 study by the Calgary-based Canadian Energy Research Institute (CERI) on the nuclear option.
CERI’s study is comparing the costs of using the relatively small 700-megawatt ACR-700 reactor, versus a natural gas-fired plant, to generate steam used in extracting tarry bitumen from the oilsands.
“If we can pass the economic hurdle, then we have the advantage of no emissions and we also have an advantage of (price) stability, in that our costs aren’t volatile like they are for gas,” says David Bock, AECL vice-president in Calgary.
But Shawn-Patrick Stensil, national co-ordinator for the Campaign for Nuclear Phaseout, warns that “Albertans should be very wary of AECL’s promises.”
The Crown corporation has survived only by receiving $17.5 billion in federal government subsidies in the last 50 years, Stensil says.
“AECL is a financial basket-case,” he contends. “Their entire history they’ve been plagued by cost overruns and technical glitches . . .”
Bock, however, says any federal funding is only for AECL’s research on nuclear waste management and for the corporation’s laboratories, which produce almost 80 per cent of the world’s nuclear isotopes.
AECL’s reactors are a commercial success, Bock says, adding: “We’ve never lost money on any reactor.”
According to AECL, since 1990 it has completed four CANDU 6 reactors worldwide (including in China and Romania), with three others under construction – “all on time and on budget.”
Bob Taylor, Alberta Energy’s assistant deputy minister for oil development, said the province is interested in the potential of a nuclear option.
With current technology, Alberta’s natural gas reserves are expected to start declining within the next 10 years, so oilsands developers will eventually need to find new sources of energy for extracting bitumen, Taylor told CERI’s World Oil Conference in Calgary last week.
The National Energy Board forecasts that Western Canadian gas production will peak, then begin to decline between 2008 and 2013, just as new oilsands production ramps up.
CERI’s study is looking at the cost of nuclear power only for steam production, not for co-generation of electricity. The gas-fired co-generation option being compared includes the cost of steam production offset by the revenue from selling any surplus electricity into Alberta’s power grid.
Although the study is ongoing, “the nuclear option looks like it would be competitive with the gas-fired option,” says Bob Dunbar, CERI’s senior director of research.
The study will be complete by the end of February. CERI won’t be recommending either option, only presenting the economic cases for both, Dunbar says.
But Stensil notes that the international community deliberately excluded nuclear power from the Kyoto Protocol as an acceptable option for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Ottawa also left nuclear power out of its current plan for implementing the accord.
AECL’s “foray into Alberta” is merely an attempt to wrest more subsidies out of Ottawa to finish designing the new reactor, Stensil charges.
But Bock says that if CERI’s study shows the nuclear option for the oilsands is economic and Alberta companies are interested, the next stage would be modelling a project.
“Whether or not there’s any federal (financial) involvement in that would be pure speculation at this time.”
AECL promotes the ACR-700 as a low-cost, light-water-cooled reactor with two steam generators.
It uses slightly enriched uranium fuel, computer-controlled operation and on-power fuelling.
