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The Problem With Nuclear: No Uranium
Nuclear foes have long cited environmental damage as a key reason to oppose atomic power. But even pro-nukes folks may have trouble supporting nuclear power in the future, since a new report shows that high-grade uranium ore, the raw material that powers nuclear plants, is steadily declining worldwide. In fact, uranium supplies have been waning for about 50 years and the situation will only get worse as more power plants go online in the near future, requiring more fuel.
Most uranium is now mined in Australia, Niger, Canada, and some former Soviet bloc countries. But as their supplies dwindle, raw uranium deposits will likely be located deeper, of lower quality, and harder to extract. This would, the scientists involved say, make nuclear power more environmentally damaging by increasing the amount of mining, digging, and refining necessary to create enriched uranium.
"Over time, as ore grades decline and more energy is required for uranium production, this will lead to a higher carbon intensity for nuclear power, eventually becoming similar to gas-fired electricity," said Gavin Mudd, the Australian Monash University environmental engineer who conducted the study.
You can read more about nuclear's carbon footprint here. And for an overview of nuclear resurgence in the U.S., check out our current feature article, "The Nuclear Option."
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The above opinion piece states:
"But even pro-nuke folks may have trouble supporting nuclear power in the future, since a new report shows that high-grade uranium ore, the raw material that powers nuclear plants, is steadily declining worldwide."
To unravel this opinion piece, I backtracked through the listed references. I eventually downloaded the actual six page report written by Australians Mudd and Diesendorf and accepted for publication by Environmental Science & Technology in their April 1, 2008 online edition.
Shooting to the bottom line, I quote from Mudd's paper: "In summary, the extent of economically recoverable uranium, although somewhat uncertain, is clearly linked to exploration effort?.and that ore grades are likely to decline gradually in the medium to long-term."
The conclusion is that the amount of uranium available is proportional to the effort we put into finding it! Really? Wow. Does that sound like we are about to run out of uranium? I do not think so and the authors do not either. Why?
One principle reference to which they refer several times to support their conclusions is a joint report by the OECD and IAEA published in 2005 entitled "Uranium: Resources, Production, and Demand." That report's conclusion, states: "?the uranium resource base is adequate to meet projected future requirements."
If they bought the report's data to support their paper, it seems they might have read the report's conclusion, too.
For balance, another Australian, Dr. Martin Sevior, Associate Professor in the School of Physics, University of Melbourne, was interviewed by Australian Broadcasting's Robyn Williams. When asked how long current uranium reserves would last, Dr. Sevior said at least one century, not counting technological improvements, recycling, and secondary sources.
I wonder if Blogger Phillips read the original research report or just lifted the thoughts from the referenced LiveScience posting by C. Q. Choi ? they sure look alike.
Both writers seem to have an agenda, pick and choose what they like, exaggerate, and add unsubstantiated red herrings to obfuscate the topic.
The above opinion piece states:
"But even pro-nuke folks may have trouble supporting nuclear power in the future, since a new report shows that high-grade uranium ore, the raw material that powers nuclear plants, is steadily declining worldwide."
To unravel this opinion piece, I backtracked through the listed references. I eventually downloaded the actual six page report written by Australians Mudd and Diesendorf and accepted for publication by Environmental Science & Technology in their April 1, 2008 online edition.
Shooting to the bottom line, I quote from Mudd's paper: "In summary, the extent of economically recoverable uranium, although somewhat uncertain, is clearly linked to exploration effort?.and that ore grades are likely to decline gradually in the medium to long-term."
The conclusion is that the amount of uranium available is proportional to the effort we put into finding it! Really? Wow. Does that sound like we are about to run out of uranium? I do not think so and the authors do not either. Why?
One principle reference to which they refer several times to support their conclusions is a joint report by the OECD and IAEA published in 2005 entitled "Uranium: Resources, Production, and Demand." That report's conclusion, states: "?the uranium resource base is adequate to meet projected future requirements."
If they bought the report's data to support their paper, it seems they might have read the report's conclusion, too.
For balance, another Australian, Dr. Martin Sevior, Associate Professor in the School of Physics, University of Melbourne, was interviewed by Australian Broadcasting's Robyn Williams. When asked how long current uranium reserves would last, Dr. Sevior said at least one century, not counting technological improvements, recycling, and secondary sources.
I wonder if Blogger Phillips read the original research report or just lifted the thoughts from the referenced LiveScience posting by C. Q. Choi ? they sure look alike.
Both writers seem to have an agenda, pick and choose what they like, exaggerate, and add unsubstantiated red herrings to obfuscate the topic.
If it's not one thing it's the other, aye?
A diversity of opinions on this topic exist.
In this case, the article is based upon an Austrailian ecology engineer's research. In support of the conclusions, Yale University industrial ecologist Thomas Graedel, who did not participate in this study said the report is "...as good or better than anyone else's."
I wonder if Mr. Graedel knew before making this statement of a joint research project by two world-wide organizations, the OECD and IAEA?
http://www.oecd.org
http://www.iaea.org
In their report, summarized here,
http://www.nei.org/filefolder/uranium_fuel_supply_adequate_0107.pdf
the authors state:
"Uranium is one of the world's most abundant metals and can provide fuel for the world's commercial reactors for generations to come."
The actual report provides the data to back up this statement.
The report also says something we cannot say of other energy supplies..."Bolstering confidence in future supply is the fact that some of the world's richest deposits of uranium are in politically stable countries, such as Canada and Australia."
Austrailia. Ok, let's start connecting the dots.
In summary, I will put more faith in a mutli-national multi-NGO research project than two university ecologists with unknown but suspect motivations.
Regards
Finally after years of watching the nuclear giants spout off about how nuclear energy will save drowning polar bears, the truth is coming out. Now the other truth, the last uranium boom poisoned Native Americans in New Mexico and South Dakota as well as in Canada. To pursue nuclear energy as a solution to global warming means that it increases the problems with genocide, environmental justice and racism as most uranium zones are found on Native American land.
The above opinion piece states:
"But even pro-nuke folks may have trouble supporting nuclear power in the future, since a new report shows that high-grade uranium ore, the raw material that powers nuclear plants, is steadily declining worldwide."
To unravel this opinion piece, I backtracked through the listed references. I eventually downloaded the actual six page report written by Australians Mudd and Diesendorf and accepted for publication by Environmental Science & Technology in their April 1, 2008 online edition.
Shooting to the bottom line, I quote from Mudd's paper: "In summary, the extent of economically recoverable uranium, although somewhat uncertain, is clearly linked to exploration effort .and that ore grades are likely to decline gradually in the medium to long-term."
The conclusion is that the amount of uranium available is proportional to the effort we put into finding it! Really? Wow. Does that sound like we are about to run out of uranium? I do not think so and the authors do not either. Why?
One principle reference to which they refer several times to support their conclusions is a joint report by the OECD and IAEA published in 2005 entitled "Uranium: Resources, Production, and Demand." That report's conclusion, states: " the uranium resource base is adequate to meet projected future requirements."
If they bought the report's data to support their paper, it seems they might have read the report's conclusion, too.
For balance, another Australian, Dr. Martin Sevior, Associate Professor in the School of Physics, University of Melbourne, was interviewed by Australian Broadcasting's Robyn Williams. When asked how long current uranium reserves would last, Dr. Sevior said at least one century, not counting technological improvements, recycling, and secondary sources.
I wonder if Blogger Phillips read the original research report or just lifted the thoughts from the referenced LiveScience posting by C. Q. Choi they sure look alike.
Both writers seem to have an agenda, pick and choose what they like, exaggerate, and add unsubstantiated red herrings to obfuscate the topic.
I found Mudd & Diesendorf's paper through the journal website, http://pubs.acs.org/cgi-bin/sample.cgi/esthag/2008/42/i07/html/es702249v...
Their abstract includes a classic piece of doublespeak:
"The central thesis of pro-nuclear advocates is the lower carbon intensity of nuclear energy compared to fossil fuels, although there remains very little detailed analysis of the true carbon costs of nuclear energy." The reality is that there have been some extremely vigorous attempts by anti-nuclear advocates (Storm van Leeuwen, for example) to own this debate and they have failed to make their case that nuclear power has significant carbon impact. The reason, of course, is that nuclear power does not have a large carbon footprint, and the dogmatic opposition is not grounded in carbon footprint considerations. I am still trying to understand why leading environmental activists are so very strongly opposed to nuclear power in the teeth of evidence that shows its overall positive nature.
One additional point:
You (Jen Phillips) say: "uranium supplies have been waning for about 50 years"
The paper says: "The extent of economic uranium resources has generally increased over time"
... care to resolve this?
Harold, you state...
"Now the other truth, the last uranium boom poisoned Native Americans in New Mexico and South Dakota as well as in Canada."
What is your basis for saying that?
Thanks
Breeder reactors are the solution. They eat their own poop(Dr. Webster, I didn't say the "s" word.)
Rochelle, India is ahead in the breeder reactor field.The Advanced Heavy Water Reactor is one of the few proposed large-scale uses of thorium. As of 2006 only India is developing this technology. Indian interest is motivated by their substantial thorium reserves; almost a third of the world's thorium reserves are in India, which in contrast has less than 1% of the world's uranium. Their stated intention is to use both fast and thermal breeder reactors to supply both their own fuel and a surplus for non-breeding thermal power reactors. Total worldwide resources of thorium are roughly three times those of uranium, so in the extreme long term this technology may become of more general interest. We are a very old civilization and ahead in this field.
We will have enough uranium ore to meet our nuclear needs for over a century, even assuming no reprocessing or breeding, and even assuming substantial growth in nuclear power. It's also doubtful that we will have to turn to significantly lower-grade ores over that time period.
After 100 years or more, we will have developed breeders, or some other inexhaustible energy source (e.g., fusion or a combination of renewables). I am not alone in my belief. Nobody in the industry is concerned about this issue.
Uranium is a fairly ubiquitous metal in the earth's crust. The amount of effort/money that has been devoted so far to uranium exploration is minimal (a tiny fraction of what has been spent for gas and oil). I believe that the current "official reserves" estimates are a tiny fraction of the (high-grade) uranium ore that is actually out there and will eventually be dicovered and developed.
Note that in the 1920s, the "official" reserves estimates for oil were ~1% of what has been subsequently discovered. The same will be true of uranium, as we are at a similarly early point in uranium's discovery/development history.
I talk more about long-term uranium supplies on the uranium supply page of the "americanenergyindependence" website.