Page 4 - NorthAmOil Week 29 2022

NorthAmOil COMMENTARY NorthAmOil

Oil sands producers considering

nuclear to power operations

Producers in Canada’s oil sands are exploring the possibility of using small modular

reactor nuclear technology to power their operations

CANADA CANADA’S oil sands industry is under growing are also much shorter, while construction of
pressure to decarbonise and is exploring new conventional reactors can take many years.
WHAT: ways of doing this. In mid-July it emerged that Ahead of SMR technology being rolled out,
Oil sands producers are interest was rising in the use of small modular four Canadian provinces – New Brunswick,
looking at the possibility reactor (SMR) technology to help power opera- Ontario, Saskatchewan and Alberta – have
of using nuclear tions in the oil sands. agreed to collaborate on the advancement of
technology to power their The same week, the Canadian government the technology as a cleaner energy option. The
operations. released two potential scenarios for an emis- Canadian Press noted that researchers in the
sions cap on the oil and gas industry as part of a country were also working on new materials
WHY: plan to cut its emissions by 42% by 2030. While and designs that could make SMRs practical
Decarbonisation targets the proposals still have to clear a number of hur- across a wider range of new uses.
are renewing interest in dles before one of them can become reality, the The oil sands are thought to be at the fore-
nuclear power. fact that an emissions cap is being advanced will front of Canadian regions with potential for the
add urgency to any initiatives for decarbonising deployment of SMRs.
WHAT NEXT: the oil sands. “Without a doubt the oil sands is the biggest
This comes as the market for small modular reactors in Canada,”
Canadian government Nuclear option the Canadian Nuclear Association’s president
advances efforts to According to the Canadian Press, while SMRs and CEO, John Gorman, was quoted by the
establish an emissions are not yet commercially available, the tech- Canadian Press as saying. “It’s something that
cap for the oil and gas nology is close to that point. The International some companies are very actively looking at.”
industry. Atomic Energy Agency has estimated that nearly Oil sands producers typically use natural gas
100 SMRs could be operating globally by 2030. to power their operations, generating high-tem-
SMRs can generate 10-300 MW of energy and perature heat to produce steam, which in turn
are fully scalable. They also benefit from being is used to extract bitumen from sand. Indeed,
able to be assembled in factory settings rather Canada’s oil and gas industry accounts for 30%
than needing to be built on-site like large-scale of the country’s gas consumption. As decarbon-
nuclear reactors. Timelines for building SMRs isation increasingly takes priority, it is therefore

P4 www. NEWSBASE .com Week 29 21•July•2022