Alberta's Oil Sands in pictures

[Azure]

Just wanted to post this...

Syncrude Gateway Hill
In 2008, Syncrude was the first company in the oil sands industry to receive certification from the Alberta Government for a reclaimed area. Called Gateway Hill, the area was planted in the early 1980s and is now a healthy forest of broad leaf and needle leaf trees interspersed by several wetlands.

[driveway]

Every time debates around oil extraction, heavy oil extraction and the whole hydrocarbons = bad debate begins raging, all I think is that I wish uber-environmentalists would pull their collective heads out of their rears and we could start building some freakin' nuclear plants.

[Rhettzky]

Strip Mining is pretty cool too...

[Azure]

Originally Posted by driveway

Every time debates around oil extraction, heavy oil extraction and the whole hydrocarbons = bad debate begins raging, all I think is that I wish uber-environmentalists would pull their collective heads out of their rears and we could start building some freakin' nuclear plants.

No kidding.

The long-term effect of building more nuclear power plants NOW will be massive.

[BavarianHorde]

Originally Posted by Azure

No kidding.

The long-term effect of building more nuclear power plants NOW will be massive.

Yeah I have always wondered about that myself. You hear that a lot now, but I remember growing up in the 80s and hearing about how awful they are. I guess they forget Chernobyl, and Three Mile Island, and the fact that there is a LOT of nuclear waste.

[Azure]

Originally Posted by BavarianHorde

Yeah I have always wondered about that myself. You hear that a lot now, but I remember growing up in the 80s and hearing about how awful they are. I guess they forget Chernobyl, and Three Mile Island, and the fact that there is a LOT of nuclear waste.

You read me wrong.

The long-term effect will be 'good.'

There are ways to clean up nuclear waste.

[BavarianHorde]

Originally Posted by Azure

You read me wrong.

The long-term effect will be 'good.'

There are ways to clean up nuclear waste.

Oh! Sorry! I stand by my other comments.

[photon]

Originally Posted by BavarianHorde

Yeah I have always wondered about that myself. You hear that a lot now, but I remember growing up in the 80s and hearing about how awful they are. I guess they forget Chernobyl, and Three Mile Island, and the fact that there is a LOT of nuclear waste.

Current reactor designs are very different and are far far safer. France gets the majority of its power from nuclear.

Coal power puts out far more radioactive waste into the environment.

And the thing with nuclear waste is it's comparatively small, and you know exactly where it is. Storage is a problem but at least storage is an option as opposed to pumping the waste into the atmosphere.

Plus breeding reactors can be built that actually use the waste products over and over to the point where almost all of the radioactivity is gone, reducing the time-span that the waste is dangerous to only decades.

Other options for waste disposal exist as well. Drop it into a subduction zone and let plate tectonics take it back into the earth.. much of the reason the earth is livable is because of the heating from natural nuclear reactors in the earth anyway, adding a few millionths of a percent of material to this isn't going to change anything.

If we spent as much time engineering solutions to nuclear reactor issues as we do to other things we'd be long into replacing oil.

[Bagor]

Originally Posted by photon

And the thing with nuclear waste is it's comparatively small, and you know exactly where it is. Storage is a problem but at least storage is an option as opposed to pumping the waste into the atmosphere.

Don't know if I can agree with that using Sellafield in the UK as a case example. The Irish and Norwegian governments have had as their policy for quite a while now to seek the closing of the plant due to waste drifting along their coastlines.

Granted Sellafield is an old plant and now a processing plant.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sellafield

[driveway]

Originally Posted by BavarianHorde

Yeah I have always wondered about that myself. You hear that a lot now, but I remember growing up in the 80s and hearing about how awful they are. I guess they forget Chernobyl, and Three Mile Island, and the fact that there is a LOT of nuclear waste.

1. Three Mile Island released less radiation than an average person recieves in a year from elevators and digital watches. It is and was a vastly over-hyped incident.

2. Chernobyl was entirely the result of human activity. Essentially, they wanted to see what would happen if they turned off all the safeties and then screwed around with a nuclear reactor.

3. It's possible to deal with nuclear waste. We in Canada are blessed with the Canadian Shield, the single most stable geological feature on the planet and the ideal place to store nuclear waste.

There are no good reasons not to build nuclear plants. There are only hysterical reasons.

[photon]

Originally Posted by Bagor

Don't know if I can agree with that using Sellafield in the UK as a case example. The Irish and Norwegian governments have had as their policy for quite a while now to seek the closing of the plant due to waste drifting along their coastlines.

Granted Sellafield is an old plant and now a processing plant.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sellafield

I meant in general... it's not part of the normal practice of a nuclear plant to discharge waste into the environment, unlike burning fossil fuels. Human error can fail to react to problems, but that's my point is if we'd been working on engineering better reactors for the past 50 years we'd be much further ahead with safer reactors and better rules and processes.

[Frequitude]

Originally Posted by driveway

1. Three Mile Island released less radiation than an average person recieves in a year from elevators and digital watches. It is and was a vastly over-hyped incident.

2. Chernobyl was entirely the result of human activity. Essentially, they wanted to see what would happen if they turned off all the safeties and then screwed around with a nuclear reactor.

3. It's possible to deal with nuclear waste. We in Canada are blessed with the Canadian Shield, the single most stable geological feature on the planet and the ideal place to store nuclear waste.

There are no good reasons not to build nuclear plants. There are only hysterical reasons.

Cost and schedule.

[Boblobla]

I couldn't find the original syncrude thread so I will put this here.

Over 1600 birds killed in Syncrude tailing pond

http://calgary.ctv.ca/servlet/an/loc...ub=CalgaryHome

Some of the comments are pretty awesome.

Obama climate bill could side-swipe Alberta oilsands

http://www.calgaryherald.com/Busines...046/story.html

It is pretty frustrating seeing all this negative media coming out about Alberta and hearing NOTHING at all from the provincial or federal governments.

[ok, ok,....I get it]

Originally Posted by photon

Not relevant, I just love that huge diamond mine.

nice hole!