(New Scientist) Nuclear fuel: are we heading for a uranium crunch?

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20427364.500-nuclear-fuel-are-we-heading-for-a-uranium-crunch.html

Nuclear fuel: are we heading for a uranium crunch?

25 November 2009 by Justin Mullins

AS THE world prepares for the largest investment in nuclear power in decades, owners of uranium mines last week raised the prospect of fuel shortages. To make things worse, the reliability of estimates of the amount of uranium that can be economically mined has also been questioned.

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Mined uranium caters for about 60 per cent of the global demand for nuclear fuel. The rest comes from secondary sources, including stockpiles left over from the 1970s and 1980s, reprocessed fuel and the conversion of old Russian nuclear warheads - the so-called http://www.usec.com/megatonstomegawatts.htm">Megatons to Megawatts programme.

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The http://www.oecdbookshop.org/oecd/display.asp?CID=&LANG=EN&SF1=DI&ST1=5KZLLSXMT023">2007 Red Book estimates that there are 5.5 million tonnes of uranium that can be mined for less than $130 per kilo, up from 4.7 million tonnes in 2005. The uranium resources that make up these estimates are split into two categories: reasonably assured and inferred. In the normal process of geological discovery, Dittmar says, increases should be to both categories. But "almost all the increase comes from this second category", he says.

Other changes also seem odd, Dittmar says. In Niger, for example, resource estimates since 2003 have fluctuated in a way that is hard to explain geologically. The changes may be politically motivated, he says, perhaps to influence investment in the country.

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[obliviously]

1. If we were allowed to mine it

we have enough to make everyone on the planet glow green in the dark! Just sayin

[greennina]

2. Best news I've heard all day.

If there's a shortage, then there's yet another good reason that even a Repuke can understand to not build those dangerous things.

[juno jones]

3. Right on schedule.

In 1979, as far as traditional energy was concerned it was estimated we had something like 25-35 years left of oil, 40 or so of coal, and not much more than that of uranium. That is, what is contained in easily exploited reserves. We can continue to wreck our enviroment to get more but it quickly devolves into a losing game from there, the resources becoming steadily scarcer and more complicated to extract.

I can't believe I'm standing here 30 years later and we still have no coherent alternative energy plans in this country and we are even more dependant upon these outdated technologies than ever. We are killing each other for them, we are killing the planet with them and ultimately it is greed that has been the lynchpin behind all the destruction.

IMHO, The cheapest, most availble and most sustainable alternative energy that was being studied at the time: Biomass.