Alberta Energy Board - Province's Natural Gas Production Peaked In 2001

Harper embraces the nuclear future

The time and place Harper chose to plug Canada's nuclear industry were telling. Just three days before his July 14 London speech, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, whom Harper greatly admires, had waded into a storm of controversy by formally proposing that Britain build new nuclear plants to stay on track with its plans to cut greenhouse gas emissions. President George W. Bush was way ahead, having signed an energy bill the summer before that offered billions in tax breaks and loan guarantees in a bid to jump-start the first new nuclear reactor construction in the U.S. since the 1970s. Given all that action, Harper's government casts its own embrace of nukes as part of an international wave of enthusiasm for zero-emissions reactor power. "Almost from the time we took office," says Natural Resources Minister Gary Lunn, "we've seen a nuclear renaissance around the globe."

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Perhaps even more politically intriguing is the prospect of AECL carving out a new market in Alberta's oil sands -- the energy story closest to Harper's heart. The concept is driven by global warming. Separating oil from sand in the enormous development requires vast amounts of steam. Currently, the oil companies are generating it by burning natural gas, making the project a huge spewer of carbon dioxide, a serious problem as Ottawa contemplates cracking down on emissions in a new climate-change policy.

Enter Energy Alberta Corp., a Calgary company that formed a partnership with AECL last fall with the audacious aim of solving the oil-sands' emissions problem with nuclear power. Wayne Henuset, one of two veteran oil-patch executives behind the concept, said this week the company plans to file a site application with the federal Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission within 90 days for an Alberta-based generating station -- he won't say exactly where -- powered by two AECL reactors.