how can a professed environmentalist prefer nuclear fission technology. its like being against hand grenades because they can kill people but being in favor of suitcase nukes. As an conservative / old school preserve the environment environmentalist and someone who majored in Econ... I am against nuclear technology until someone can show me the costs and the risks out way the alternative. I know they are working on safer nukes but they still have waste. When the technology is ready... then maybe we should look at it. Right now we can't risk more fukishima's more than we are already risking.
Speaking of death footprint from energy production... Everyone’s heard of the carbon footprint of different energy sources, the largest footprint belonging to coal because every kWhr of energy produced emits about 900 grams of CO2. Wind and nuclear have the smallest carbon footprint with only 15 g emitted per kWhr, and that mainly from concrete production, construction, and mining of steel and uranium. Biomass is supposedly carbon neutral as it sucks CO2 out of the atmosphere before it liberates it again later, although production losses are significant depending upon the biomass. Carbon emissions and physical footprints are known as externalities and are those vague someone-has-to-pay-eventually kind of thing it’s hard to put a value on. Proposed carbon footprint taxes are in the range of $15 to $40/ton of CO2 emitted, but assigning a physical footprint cost depends on the region, ecosystem sensitivities and importance. A hundred-acre wetlands to be flooded by a new dam is worth more to the planet than a barren hundred-acre strip under a solar array in the Mojave (P. Bickel and R. Friedrich, 2005). But an energy’s deathprint, as it is called, is rarely discussed. The deathprint is the number of people killed by one kind of energy or another per kWhr produced and, like the carbon footprint, coal is the worst and wind and nuclear are the best. According to the World Health Organization, the Centers for Disease Control, the National Academy of Science and many health studies over the last decade (NAS 2010), the adverse impacts on health become a significant effect for fossil fuel and biofuel/biomass sources (see especially Brian Wang for an excellent synopsis). In fact, the WHO has called biomass burning in developing countries a major global health issue (WHO int). The table below lists the mortality rate of each energy source as deaths per trillion kWhrs produced. The numbers are a combination of actual direct deaths and epidemiological estimates, and are rounded to two significant figures. http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-deathprint-a-price-always-paid/
Why don't you list the number of oil rail road accidents. The number is 10 times greater and the death toll is 70 times greater.
USA Today: Environmentalists will find that it's a Pyrrhic victory for them http://www.usatoday.com/story/opini...racking-obama-climate-change-column/75422888/ "Blocking Keystone hasn’t prevented Canadian oil from coming into the USA. Back in 2008, when the pipeline was proposed, the U.S. was importing 2.5 million barrels of oil per day from Canada. By August of this year, it was 3.9 million barrels per day. In other words, since 2008, just the increase in Canadian oil coming to the USA amounts to more than 1.5 times the capacity of Keystone XL, which was designed to carry 830,000 barrels a day." (More at above url)
you can't rank nuclear on that list... until you dispose of its waste properly and make it safe. for instance leaving it in pools near the reactors is crazy. we still don't know the costs in lives from fukishima alone... http://enenews.com/japan-times-dead...-nuclear-fuel-impossible-plan-decommissioning Published: October 30th, 2015 at 5:21 pm ET Japan Times: “Deadly” radiation levels detected outside Fukushima containment vessel — “Details behind situation are unknown” — Officials unable to grasp location of melted nuclear fuel — “Impossible” to plan for decommissioning
No, that will not increase tar sands extraction. Even holding the price of oil constant the landed price has not fallen.
Despite the dropping price of oil the tar sand / shale extraction has increased over the past two years. As I noted above the Keystone XL pipeline would have carried 830,000 barrels per day. The current total daily shipments to the U.S. is 3.9 million barrels per day. Eliminating the pipeline means that all the producers must ship by rail (which is costly) this evens the playing field for all producers -- meaning that many more oil companies are jumping in -- including Marathon to increase production in Canada. Do you even read your own Canadian papers on this subject?
You're combining different sources and technologies here. The tar sands are at a near standstill, and that's not because of Keystone.
These are the two primary technologies in Alberta oil production. No matter if shale or tar sand extraction is used --- the end result is the same. The elimination of the Keystone XL pipeline will be causing an INCREASE in production and more oil companies are coming to Canada.