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I think it is high time to get rid of our extremely irrational fear of nuclear power. The world has moved beyond Chernobyl ... technologyreview.com/s/612940/

@yantrajaal Very appropriate, as I had been thinking of writing an article with a proposal - for Nuclear power usage in creating the huge amount of heat and steam needed to extract bitumen from the Canadian oil sands.

There is a lot of opposition to the oil sands operations, and the biggest argument (correctly) stated the ROI of energy required per barrel extracted is much higher than on a conventional oil well.

That is due to the nature of the oil sands -- heavy, thick oil that has diffused from underground deposits thru sand over long times and pressures.

My proposal is that a nuclear power plant would very efficiently produce large amounts of heat and steam, which could be directly used by the oil extraction plants.

This would reduce the carbon foot print substantially.

And, there are much newer designs than the old plants that have been around for long and had the scary accidents everyone remembers. Smaller size plants would be perfect, sited close to the end users of their output, since we are sending steam down the pipes.

I will get around to writing this, but we can start a discussion if anyone is interested.

Nobody in Canada has mention this idea, and the western oil producing regions are very inflamed with the ecological movement's complaints.

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