Oil Sands Extraction – LFTR in Alberta?
Posted by gordonmcdowell in Alberta, Calgary, Canada, Environment on November 23rd, 2009
THORIUM REMIX 2009 has been well received, so I’ve cut it down further to 10 minutes and put the subject in a Canadian context: How about using a liquid-fluoride thorium reactor to power oil sands crude extraction?
Bill Dickie (Alberta Minister of Mines and Minerals 1971-1975) pointed out the Stelmach government just polled 1024 Albertans and found only 25% object to new nuclear projects…
Calgary Herald: Alberta would welcome private nuclear power, Stelmach gov’t says (excerpt follows)
The Stelmach government opened the door Monday to nuclear power in Alberta — rejecting a moratorium and saying it will consider the controversial energy option on a case-by-case basis — but vowed no public dollars will be invested in any project.
The province announced its nuclear power policy the same day Energy Minister Mel Knight rolled out the results of the province’s public consultation on the issue. A telephone survey of 1,024 Albertans, which incorporated input from stakeholder groups, found about one-quarter of people want the government to refuse projects. Two in 10 said the province should encourage proposals and 45 per cent of people polled want nuclear power plants considered on a case-by-case basis.
With those numbers in hand, Knight said Monday that Alberta is open for business on nuclear power. But he stressed the province won’t cough up a penny and hinted the lack of subsidies might dissuade companies from proceeding in Alberta. “We’re not putting a moratorium on nuclear,” Knight told reporters. “We are not proponents of nuclear energy,” he added. “We need power and proponents that want to build (nuclear) in the system in Alberta are welcome to do so.”
Premier Ed Stelmach, however, said Monday in his “Ask Premier Ed” online video that nuclear energy is a “viable option” in Alberta.
“This is one way of keeping down the carbon footprint,” Stelmach said, noting the United States is “very high” on nuclear energy.
The premier acknowledged nuclear waste is a worry for many, but said new technology is key to addressing concerns.
I’m got some useful feedback on REDDIT, and forum pertaining to LFTR’s potential in Alberta…
Depleted uranium can be used as fuel in fast reactors. However, it is not usable in CANDU. CANDU is a thermal reactor, not a fast reactor: it does not breed fuel. It runs on fissile U-235. It can run on (0.7% U-235) natural uranium because it is very efficient at using U-235, not because it burns U-238 (not self-sufficiently, anyway). Conventional reactors are extremely wasteful, as they throw away over 99% of the starting material (because they can not feasibly burn U-238). A closed fuel cycle, with reprocessing and fast reactors, increases fuel efficiency by 100x – hence decreases fuel demands by 100x, and waste production by 100x. The transuranic elements, the most important of nuclear waste, are not left over but are consumed as fuel. Fast reactors can import these waste components from other reactors and burn them. They are waste incinerators. Thorium fuel cycles are basically the same – substituting U-238 with Th-232, and Pu-239 with U-233. They have the same basic advantages as plutonium-cycle fast reactors – fuel efficiency, waste burning. - deleted
Somewhere around 1/3 to 1/2 of a barrel of oil is needed to extract 1 barrel of oil. This is a very significant amount. I can not speak for other people. My primary concern with nuclear reactors are the usual concerns about cost, fuel production, safety, disposal, and cost. If the benefits of nuclear can be had without the drawbacks, then I will dance a little jig. It’s the promise of fusion, after all. - MechaBlue
Canadians are slightly anti-nuke, but the primary problem is that the oil companies already own the natural gas. They just drill a hole and it comes out of the ground to be burned for free, so from their point of view why would they use nuclear? They used to burn natural gas off as waste. You would have an easier time selling the idea of a Thorium reactor in terms of providing people with cheap power. Even then, in Alberta, the “lines provider” will be taking most of the profit from delivering that power. The reason why consumers are stuck with heavily polluting mines and power generation is primarily political. The current generators have used regulatory means to exclude newcomers because it isn’t in their best interest to lower their profits. - raghead
Use of nuclear energy for in situ gasification of coal (via high temperature steam) could reduce mining deaths. High ash coal deposits could also be exploited. Non-volatile poisons could be left in situ and the gas could be cleaned of volatile poisons and suspended matter before use. The process may also be feasible as an alternate for bitumen deposits like Alberta sands. - jagdish
Indian thorium solid fuel fast breeder will be up in 2011 at Kalpakkam This is unrelated to LFTR, which is a thermal spectrum reactor working with liquid fuels. - tt23
Oil Sands Debate with Elizabeth May
Posted by gordonmcdowell in Alberta, Calgary, Canada, Environment, Politics on November 20th, 2009
“Is Oil Sands Development Ultimately Irreconcilable with the Environmental Agenda?” was the question posed by Calgary Enterprise Forum. The discussion was held at Calgary Petroleum Club featuring Elizabeth May, Deborah Yedlin (Calgary Herald columnist) and Murray Smith (Energy Minister 2001-2005).
Despite the plethora of oil patch executives, Calgary Greens and red wine, no fisticuffs took place.
Thorium Remix 2009
Posted by gordonmcdowell in Environment on November 15th, 2009
Update: Further trimmed video’s length to 16 minutes! That’s as brief as I can possibly make it.
Kirk Sorensen’s Google Tech Talk “Energy from Thorium” made a big impression on me. But when I recommended it to others, the typical response was “it’s 82 minutes long”. So I shortened it. In fact, I combined 3 Google Tech Talks on Thorium into first a single 25 minute summary (below), and now a 16 minute summary (above).
If you are care about climate change, energy independence or nuclear fission byproducts (some take thousands of years to decay), then please check this out. The liquid-fluoride thorium reactor (LFTR) is a fascinating concept, and watching a remix may be the fastest way to get up to speed. Prefer reading copy? Chemical & Engineering News just posted an excellent Thorium overview.
197 minutes of Google Tech Talks were reviewed and compressed to make this video. The video quality is what it is because it is all second generation YouTube content. Should anyone knowledgeable about LFTR pay a visit to Calgary (or Edmonton), I’ll be happy to record a lecture on the subject, and provide a sharper summary video.
Canada’s oil sands may represent the most likely scenario for LFTR adoption in Canada. Regardless of the energy source used to extract oil from bitumen, Alberta will be responsible for emitting a lot of CO2 as oil sands development continues. That appears politically inevitable. The resource is in the ground, we’re going to dig it up. Hopefully it will proceed as slowly as possible (as the bitumen will only increase in value over time), and as efficiently as possible.
LFTR R&D might be only considered “Oil Sands R&D” in the short term. But if it enables Canada to expand our CANDU reactor line to include liquid-fluoride thorium reactors, we wouldn’t just have better energy options at home, but more reactor options for export.
With that in mind, I created a MP3 audio-only version (6 MB), and an iPhone/iPod friendly MPEG-4 version (115 MB).
Those alternate formats are the 25 minute version, not 16 minute version. If you want to take a stab at creating a still shorter version (I think a video needs to be under 8 minutes to go viral), a high quality MPEG-4 version of the 16 minute remix is right here (89 MB). Giv’er.
Chaordix Promo Video on Crowdsourcing
Posted by gordonmcdowell in startups on November 12th, 2009
I’ve created a corporate video for Calgary based Chaordix which briefly describes crowdsourcing.
Get the Flash Player to see this player.
The creation of this video was an example of client fast feedback loops enabled by posting iterations of a video to a private video host. While working on each iteration of the video, the previous iteration was uploading to Blip.TV.
Prior to upgrading to a 64-bit OS (Win7×64), there was a noticeable hit in PC performance while simultaneously rendering and editing. But now with 7 GB RAM, and 4 CPU, I can edit, render (and of course upload) at the same time. Good workflow.
DemoCampCalgary15 Coverage
Posted by gordonmcdowell in Calgary, startups on October 29th, 2009
DemoCampCalgary is where programmers and startups can expose their work to Calgarians, and put out an open call for various forms of assistance. Feedback? Beta testers? Looking for seed capital? A DemoCamp is just what the doctor ordered!
(Doctor Gordon James McDowell not a licensed physician, but can still fix your stiff spine with a quick twis… oh sorry. Can’t feel your legs? I’d better get you to a hospital.)
Head to BarCampCalgary.com to find out when & where the next BarCamp is going down in Calgary.
YoctoRide previewed at DemoCampCalgary
Posted by gordonmcdowell in Calgary, iPhone, yoctoRide on October 29th, 2009
Calgary’s 15th DemoCamp was particularly fun for me, as it was the first time I’ve demonstrated software at one. Nervous? Check. Stressed? Check. Capable of completing app store submission process before beginning the demo… not so much. I somehow overlooked the step of aquiring a distribution provisioning profile, and kept wondering why Xcode would not accept my .cer (it was looking for .mobileprovision).
Yesterday, I submitted yoctoRide. Had I known that app titles can be submitted in advance of code (I’d heard about iPhone app name squatting but never read the details), I’d have claimed the app name long ago and not worried about it. To claim an app name, all you need is a description and icon. I bet Apple has some entertaining stats about who’s claiming what.
If you want a heads-up when yoctoPlay is released, email me and I’ll sent you a single email once a functional carpooling tool is available on iTunes. I’m extremely interested in Calgarians who are willing to carpool via their iPhones. Because this software will have no value without the network effect (utility of yoctoRide is zero if only one person is running it), I’ll be heavily promoting it in Calgary where I can monitor usage and drive people around myself if necessary. (Our car isn’t that fuel efficient, so its a loss-leader both economically and environmentally.)
One point I failed to make at DemoCamp: Passenger safety will be assisted by passengers snapping a photo before they enter any vehicle. That’s a date-stamped, geo-tagged image of car and driver automatically uploaded to yoctoRide’s server.
To see all the DemoCampCalgary presentations, head to DemoCampCalgary.com where all the presentations are indexed.
yoctoRide post zero
Posted by gordonmcdowell in iPhone, yoctoRide on October 23rd, 2009
Wondering why yoctoPlay.com and yoctoRide.com are currently directed here?
It is the company name I’ll be writing small apps under. Milliplay. Centiplay. Nanoplay. All taken. Fortunately, the metric prefix gods are generous gods.
YoctoRide will be Demonstrated at Calgary DemoCamp on 2009-10-27 (Oct 27th).
What is yoctoRide? Exactly.
iPhone Banking & Contracts for Canadians
Posted by gordonmcdowell in Canada, iPhone on September 29th, 2009
In May 2009, Gazzard and Richerd assisted MJ teach a weekend-long iPhone development course. At the time of the lecture, I had only just bought a MacBook and hadn’t started any iPhone development. In fact, I hadn’t even set up my iTunes app store publishing contracts yet.
Which made the following portions of MJ’s iPhone lecture particularly useful to me: How to complete your contracts and receive an American Employee Identification Number (EIN). If you’re Canadian, and just on the cusp of starting iPhone development, I’d recommend giving the following video a look.
Beefart & Cheenkaw
Posted by gordonmcdowell in YouTube on September 28th, 2009
If you see one movie this year, but District 9 is no longer playing in your neighborhood, be sure to check out BEEFART & CHEENKAW – The Motion Picture.
Blaise Kolodychuk is a renaissance man. Musician. Director. Father. Master of photostatic copiers. He can peer into the multiverse, and see what might of been, or what may yet be. His reports from beyond are dismissed the mainstream press as “pure fiction”. And yet…
Unexplained flying objects are spotted every day in the north Calgary. Occasionally half eaten human remains are found in Fish Creek. TO THIS VERY DAY, no one knows what lurks at the bottom of Lake Bonavista. Only that it feeds… at night.
As you read this, you may find yourself trembling. Fear not! YouTube videos rarely kill. Courage, and a finger hovering nervously over your computer’s power button, will see you safely though the mind of Blaise Kolodychuk.
Fare thee well.
Calgary’s Low Carbon Future – The Summit
Posted by gordonmcdowell in Alberta, Calgary, Canada, Environment, Politics on September 14th, 2009
I haven’t had too many opportunities to stream live video since WireCast days at Cambrian House, so Calgary’s Carbon Summit was to be a live test of my new configuration:
- Dual core MacBook
- Wireless microphones feeding both the live stream, and HDV capture
- 3G iPhone with tethering capabilities (and my strong desire to max out ROGERS 6 GB data plan)
UStream.TV had broadcast flawlessly from my house the night before. What could go wrong? Well apparently SAIT’s WiFi was blocking ports to which the UStream responded by crashing the browser. Any browser.
Fortunately I had a ROGERS 6 GB data plan, an iPhone 3G, and a deep burning desire to use up as much bandwidth as possible. Do you know how HARD it is to eat up 6 GB with an iPhone? Finding a reasonably priced ROGERS data plan is IMPOSSIBLE, so I took SAIT’s blocked ports as a blessing in disguise. 753,100 KB later, and UStream.TV had rebroadcast the summit.
I’ve since had a chance to upload HDV coverage of the event to YouTube, and also to Internet Archive. The most viewer-friendly copy can be found at R4NT.com entitled “Calgary’s Low Carbon Future”, it is cut down from 101 to 56 minutes and follows the narrative woven by Skid Crease.
Outcomes
The summit adds value to other City of Calgary initiatives including the development of a Community Greenhouse Gas Plan, The City Manager’s Office Sustainable Development Strategy and the World Energy Cities Partnership. This is an opportunity to develop a multi-stakeholder developed and ratified action plan to address future energy challenges.
Bios for keynote speakers can be found here. Rob Macintosh’s presentation is also available as an isolated YouTube video, and downloadable MPEG-4 from Internet Archive.
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