President's Message

Given the importance of energy supply to the future of humanity, it is disconcerting that there is a conspicuous lack of long-term planning to meet the impending demand. Long term planning is vital, given the economic, environmental and social ramifications of energy shortages and rapidly depleting oil and gas supplies. The interrelated environmental, technical, economic and political challenges in the face of explosive growth in global energy demand require much more time and attention than what is afforded today.

Canada has a special place in the future of global energy development because of her vast resources and relatively small domestic market. The responsibilities inherent in this position are further enhanced by Canada’s proximity to the United States, the world’s largest energy market. Tens of billions of dollars in capital are presently flowing into the Canadian energy industry from around the world, particularly from the US. Most of this capital is being invested in the Alberta oil sands, with current production exceeding 1 million barrels per day, and the projected production of 3 million barrels per day by 2015. This oil supply is extremely important to the US, given their own decline in domestic production, dramatic growth in their demand, and geopolitical turmoil in most of the other oil producing regions of the world.

The Athabaska oil sands contain trillions of barrels of oil, though approximately 200 billion barrels are thought to be recoverable with present technology. The recovery of this oil is an energy intensive process, with process consumption accounting for 15% of total energy output when utilizing steam assisted recovery techniques. Most of this process energy is produced using natural gas, itself a diminishing commodity, resulting is large greenhouse gas emissions, and further depletion of gas supplies.

On the eastern side of the Athabaska Basin in Saskatchewan are the world’s largest known supplies of high-grade uranium oxide. This is also the location of the world’s largest uranium mining and milling facilities. Some of the uranium produced there is consumed in the domestic power generation industries in eastern Canada, but much of it is exported around the world. Saskatchewan produces approximately 1/3 of the world’s reactor fuel.

Canada has long been a world leader in the design and construction of nuclear power plants, through the 55-year-old crown corporation Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL). The CANDU reactor is possibly the greatest Canadian engineering achievement of all time, and this technology has been exported around the world. The AECL is also a world leader in the field of nuclear waste disposal, and has studied and advanced safe and permanent disposal methods through their Waste Technology Business Unit research facility, which has operated for decades in Manitoba. The CANDU reactor has an impeccable safety and reliability record, based on a half century of empirical and operational validation.

Now is the time for Canada to develop a nuclear power industry in northern Saskatchewan to compliment the expansion in Alberta oil production. After decades of exporting our expertise, we need to concentrate now on our own civilian use. We need to embrace a technology that can facilitate expanded energy production while reducing greenhouse gas emissions. We need to utilize our uranium reserves for our own purposes rather than exporting it, some of it to countries that engage in the proliferation of nuclear weapons. We need to proceed in a deliberate and objective manner, and we need to get started now.

Don Swanson P.Eng.
President

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