A significant challenge facing the thermal heavy oil industry in Canada is supplying energy for the purpose of steam generation for use in a variety of in-situ heavy oil production schemes. Typically natural gas is combusted on site to fuel steam generation units which creates two problems. First, it exposes the project to economic risk through the highly variable nature of natural gas cost, which is significant given the large volume of fuel that will be consumed over the life of the project. Second, natural gas combustion is the primary source of greenhouse gas emissions for an in-situ project which puts growth in this industry sector at odds with carbon emission mandates set by the Canadian Government, and also creates negative sentiment towards ongoing development of the resource. Many attempts have been made in the past to show how nuclear power (both with established and pre-commercial technologies) may be used to supply the energy demand created by the growth of development in the oil sands regions, with assessments being carried out for mining, steam assisted gravity drainage (SAGD), upgrading, and integrated operations. The proposed configurations fail in one or more critical areas such as improper steam conditions at the plant outlet, excessively high capital requirements, or a mismatch in the scale of operations. The Molten Salt Reactor (MSR) is a Generation IV fission nuclear reactor that was first built and operated in the 1960s and was demonstrated to be a practical, safe and economically viable tool for electricity generation. It is the purpose of this paper to introduce the basic concepts of the MSR to the thermal heavy oil industry, and to demonstrate the viability of integrating MSR with thermal heavy oil production through the analysis of a conceptual SAGD commercial phase. It is shown that the heat requirements of a typical SAGD commercial phase may be met with a total thermal power output of 375 MWth, and
that by offsetting the costs of combusting natural gas (fuel and carbon compliance costs) a Molten Salt Reactor appears to be economically viable when natural gas is available at a price of 1.09 -2.32 C$/mcf. Therefore the MSR represents a potential path forward for permanently inexpensive steam and SAGD operations that do not emit greenhouse gases.