Integration of nuclear power with oil sands extraction projects in Canada

One of the largest oil reserves in the world is not in the Middle East or in Alaska, but in Canada. This fuel exists in the form of bitumen in Alberta's oil sands. While it takes a tremendous amount of energy to recover this bitumen and refine it into petroleum products, with oil prices nearing all time highs, it is profitable to do so. Oil sands recovery involves either strip mining the sands and extracting the oil, or pumping large quantities of steam into the ground in order to free the bitumen from the sand. Traditionally, the energy to produce the steam and hot water used in this process has come from natural gas. The use of natural gas for oil sands recovery presents a number of problems, among which are the environmental impact of the greenhouse gases and the price volatility of the natural gas market. This thesis explores the possibility of using nuclear energy to power oil sands recovery. Once operational, nuclear reactors produce no greenhouse gas emissions of carbon dioxide and offer relatively low and stable fuel and operation and maintenance costs. Uranium is not subject to the same market volatility as natural gas. There are, however, several trade-offs as well. This thesis compares the benefits and the drawbacks, and puts forth several complete scenarios for the introduction of nuclear technology into the oil sands recovery process. Nuclear energy used for steam production is found to be competitive with natural gas prices as low as $3.75/MMBtu (CAD).

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Nuclear Science and Engineering.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2007

Author dc:creator

• Finan, Ashley (Ashley E.)

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Andrew C. Kadak.

• Nuclear Science and Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/41305

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/41305