France's Areva Announces a Contract to Supply 20,000 Tons of Uranium to China.

[NNadir]

Some 20,000 tonnes of uranium will be supplied to China Guangdong Nuclear Power Corp (CGNPC) over a ten year period, while another deal promotes fuel manufacturing with China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC).

The uranium deal was finalised during the visit of Chinese President Hu Jintao to France, in which various contracts were announced. According to China Daily, France and China have agreed to double the current level of bilateral trade by 2015.

Two Japanese utilities, Kyushu Electric Power and Tohoku Electric Power have both acquired 1% stakes in the Societe d'Enrichissement du Tricastin (SET) – the operator of Areva's Georges Besse II centrifuge enrichment plant. The acquisitions was supported by the newly created entity Japan France Enrichment Investing (JFEI), which groups together all Japanese companies with a share in the facility and increases their joint share in SET.

The $3.5 billion fuel contract was signed by Areva CEO Anne Lauvergeon and CGNPC chairman He Yu in front of both the French and Chinese presidents as part of a wider strategic partnership in civilian nuclear power between the two countries which will see cooperation in nuclear reactors, fuel recycling and uranium extraction.

A typical nuclear reactor has an initial loading of 100 MT of uranium. Typically after about a year, the rods are rearranged, and about a third of the fuel is replaced with fresh fuel.

This is what is done with a "once through" cycle, with typical burnups of 40,000 MWd/ton of fuel.

China, like France and Japan is committed to a continuous recycling program however, and will achieve essentially complete burn-up of all the uranium it buys. This is very clear from the type of nuclear fleet that China has announced it is building. The theoretical limit for complete burn-up of uranium - converted to a plutonium intermediate as necessary - is about 930,000 MWd/ton, more than 20 times larger than is observed with the once through cycle.

This means that China is buying enough uranium to produce about 1600 exajoules of energy. China's current energy consumption, dominated by coal burning, is about 75 exajoules per year.

Have a nice evening.

[Odin2005]

1. Interasting, thanks!

That's a lot of energy!

EDIT: Now I got the song "I've got the Power" stuck in my head! :rofl:

[TheWraith]

2. Damn that's a lot of energy.

Let's hope that coupled with their purchase of new AP-1000 reactors can slow down their demand for coal. It's good at least that somebody over there gets the fact that they're killing the world.

[NNadir]

3. China will phase out coal long before the United States does.

They have a population 4 times as large as ours and use less energy then we do.

We need to get our own house in order before criticizing them.

[Fledermaus]

4. I thought you could get 20,000 tuns of uranium out of sea water?

I thought you said people could get uranium with a drinking straw and toilet paper used as a filter.

How long will it be before we start importing uranium?

[NNadir]

5. One can, if the price rises above $200 - $300/kg.

The topic is widely covered in the scientific literature, but one would need to know something about something called "science" to apprehend it.

I have pointed out previously that the entire planet could produce all of its energy for about a century using uranium that's already mined, never mind the larger amounts of thorium.

Ultimately, however, the Chinese and the French don't care at all about the views of dogmatic anti-nukes. They live in the real world.

Now shouldn't you return to arguments about how we can all run our cars on pigshit?

Have a nice day.

[TheWraith]

7. You actually need some fairly advanced nanomaterials. As far as I'm aware, the Japanese are the only

ones who are actually filtering for uranium, at least in quantity. Besides which, the cost per ton is higher than the current price for conventionally mined uranium, even though seawater-filtered uranium is more plentiful, because of the need to amortize the cost of the nanofilters.

The US already imports uranium, mostly from Canada.

[phantom power]

6. I have a question about what 20,000 tons of uranium "looks like".

For example, the density of uranium dioxide is ~11g/cm^3. 20,000 metric tons of that substance would (if you could put it all in a big lump) occupy a cube 12.2 meters on a side. Dense!

But, one doesn't store it that way, and actual fuel format isn't pure uranium dioxide, etc.